Festetics Palace

One of the free museums on St. Stephen's Day was the Festetics Palace. Concerts are also held here every now and then. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pics of the inside of the palace, but I was really impressed by the LIBRARY!!! It was a gorgeous room with wooden carvings all around the place and the amount of books are just impressive. :-D 

Anyway, here are some pictures of the palace building and its surroundings.

This is the entrance of the palace from the shopping street/Centrum:

The palace...

You can see an air balloon in the background near the tower:

Lots of lovely flowers in the garden:

Found this tree near one part of the palace. Not sure what kind of tree it is, though. Anyone???

I thought that the tree resembles an elephant.

We were enjoying the shade provided by the elephant-looking tree (and resting our weary feet):

Here's another view of the palace when the fountain was running:

And here's R2 checking out the sudial. He said it was an hour behind ha ha...

Here are two video clips of the palace. The first one is the palace and its outer garden:


The second one is the palace and the inner garden:



On St. Stephen's Day, the inner garden is closed for public and you can only get inside if you pay a certain fee because they held a wine tasting party in the inner garden, but we didn't get in because we're not wine drinkers he he he...

OK, that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed the pics and video clip. Oh yeah, after getting inside we found out that we could have gotten up to the tower if we paid a certain fee (if not mistaken 500 HUF/person), but we thought we didn't need it because it was supposed to be a free day to tour around the museum. We didn't want to go back there because there were SO many people going inside that day, so we just skipped the whole tower thing.

St. Stephen's Day

Before going to Hungary, I contacted a Hungarian friend to ask if she had travel tips or recommendation for us. She then told us about St. Stephen's Day on August 20th and I was grateful for her info, because had she not told us about this, we wouldn't have known. She told us that most shops would be closed that day and that there would probably be special programs to commemorate the day.

In Keszthely itself and the beach, a few days prior to August 20th and most especially on August 19th, we felt the festive mood. They had bands playing in the beach for a few days prior to the day and there were lots of food and wine stalls as well as a few souvenir stalls. Here are some of them:

In the first pic I failed to capture the moment when some water came out of some of the holes on the ground behind R2. That was why the area looks very wet ha ha...

One of the bands performing...

One of the food stalls...

The closed-up picture of the food sold by the above stall. It cost 600 HUF (€ 2.2) in Heviz, but only 450 HUF (€ 1.6) in Keszthely. In the pic below, we were in Heviz. I wanted to buy one more before going back to Budapest, but alas...the stall that sold this was closed after St. Stephen's Day! :-(

 

One lovely marzipan stall:

There were also some stalls intended for kids like this one behind R2. We secretly called the balls "Hamster Cages" he he he...

And then a few days before St. Stephen's Day we went to a tourist info office in Keszthely and THANK GOD this time the woman spoke English. She said that there would be fireworks on August 20th and she showed us the leaflet with some programs on it. She herself didn't particularly know the performing bands, but at least it was enough for us to know the schedule.

I then asked if everything would be closed on August 20th and she said that big stores and supermarkets would be closed, but museums would still be open as well as restaurants. In fact, some of the museums were free on August 20th, so we made a point NOT to visit those museums before August 20th so that we wouldn't have to pay HA HA HA HA HA...ahem...

Anyway, I personally feel that after August 20th all the places become SO quiet, including Heviz and Keszthely. The guy who was at the Thai massage place said that around Balaton area, it's always like that after August 20th. All the private souvenir stores are closed earlier than before and there are no more food and wine stalls in Heviz as well.

The pic below is a pic of the stage in Heviz, though we never stayed in Heviz long enough to enjoy any of the performers there, but we did see a few performers in Keszthely beach and in Centrum.

The two "towers" on the right is the entrance to the famous Heviz Thermal Bath. The bus stops are directly on the left side of this photo, so it's very convenient for people who want to go to this thermal bath. 

Here's another view of Heviz Thermal Bath taken from the air balloon just to remind you that it's a HUGE area.

On August 20th there were SO MANY PEOPLE in the beach area, waiting for the firework display. I suppose many of them were the locals themselves. I was a bit worried that we wouldn't be able to watch the firework comfortably 'coz I'm a short woman (145 cm), but thankfully the beach is a huge area and the people didn't stand too close to one another so we had clear views of the fireworks. Here are some firework photos (silly me, I only found out last year that our camera had a firework mode! Doh!).

I took lots of pics, but some of them failed 'coz I obviously clicked at the wrong second ha ha ha...

It started at 9 pm and lasted about 15-20 minutes. In the beginning they shot only smaller fireworks but then they got bigger and bigger and bigger. Lovely! :-D

Keszthely Beach!

We went to the nearest beach in Keszthely a few times. We went swimming there twice. I had known that there was a free beach, but it was farther away and because it was mostly hot there, we didn't really feel like walking all the way there. 

The first time we went to the beach, we were just looking around. To my delight, I found so many swans and ducks roaming freely in the shallow water. Here are a few pics outside the beach area (to get inside, you have to pay 920 HUF/person or € 3.4 if I remember correctly):

A pic of us with the swans and ducks:

Another view of the lake from the other side of the walkway:

This is the walkway...

This is the duck food machine:

Feeding the swans and ducks on a different day he he...'coz I just HAD to try the machine HA HA HA HA HA HA...

 
At the end of the walkway there is this cafe, but we never ate anything there. The end of this walkway is also used for tourists' boats.

Here's one example of the tourist boat and no, we didn't ride on it 'coz we had no time (this kind of boat leaves a few times a day and sometimes for certain boats, they only leave during the evening before sunset):

Here's a video clip of the area outside the beach. Over at the back there is a stage for performers and a few days before St. Stephen's Day on August 20th, there were lots of food and wine stalls as well as a stage for bands. There is also a shady park in the area.


Here's another video of the swans and ducks fighting for food!!! 


Balaton lake is really safe for kids because of the shallowness. One has to walk SOOOO far away from the beach to be able to reach more depth. One funny incident happened the first time we went to the beach. Even though there was a tourist info office right next to the beach pay booths, but because we had been there once before and the young men spoke more German than English, I was reluctant to go there and ask again.

The beach pay booths were manned by two older women who obviously didn't speak English. I just raised 2 fingers to pay for our tickets but then after we got in, I realized that I wanted to hire a locker so that we could both swim together without worrying about our money or mobile phones, so we went back to the pay booth and I said to her, "Locker?"

She stared at me with a blank look on her face. I resorted to using body language. I made a box in the air with two hands, then I pretended to put a key in the middle of the box with one hand and then turn the key around. She got it right away!

She gave me a receipt for that and then wrote "18.30" (had to pay 1,300 HUF for that or around €4,8 - a sum that I thought was rather hefty for a key!) and she said some Hungarian words and then she held up a 1,000 forint bill while pointing towards the "18.30" again. I just assumed that if we didn't return the key after 18.30, that meant we would have to pay 1,000 HUF more, but I knew that we wouldn't be staying that long anyway, so we went in and put our important stuff in the locker after paying for two sun chairs.

That first swimming day wasn't as hot as the second one. The temperature was 23'C and the water temperature was 22'C. The second time we went swimming there, the temperature was 33'C whereas the water temperature was 30'C.

Here's the view of inside the beach. Apparently after 6 pm, they opened all the doors so that people could get inside for free (but then most of the people stopped swimming at 6 pm or at the latest at 6.30 pm anyway).

A short video clip of the beach area. Lots of food stalls and beach bars and there was also a small swimming pool somewhere in the area, farther away from where we were sunbathing.


When we returned the locker key, the woman checked the key number in the receipt book and then she returned the 1,000 HUF to me. Ohhhhhh!!! So renting the locker didn't cost THAT much after all, but probably they kept the 1,000 HUF just in case we didn't return the key on time or something.

Here are some more photos in the beach area, just to show you different angles and how shallow the water really is...the first pic is just sunbathing pic hi hi...and we'd always hide under the shade once we got too hot (the second swimming day, though, it was too hot to sunbathe directly under the sun, so we put our sun chairs in the shade). THANK GOD for the shady trees!!! :-D

To be continueddddd...

Air Balloon Ride

OK, now it's time to write about the air balloon ride. This is one of the lifelong dreams that I have on my dream list that I wrote down years and years ago. I'm not really that ambitious about fulfilling all those things on the list, though, but it's just that while browsing about Keszthely on the net, I found the air balloon ride possibility in Balaton area (leaving from Heviz, another town close to Keszthely), so I said to hubby that even though it was rather pricey (€150/person), we'd better try it! :-D

It wasn't what I had expected, but it made me understand more that dreams can be different from reality/the experience. Dreams are made of all the sweet, tasty, nicely-smelling, soft-as-a-cotton-ball, gorgeous idealism in my head without knowing what it's really all about. It may be sweet, but there may be a slight tangy taste as well. Or it may be nicely-smelling, but it's a bit rough on the touch. It may even be bitter with a slight sweet taste only and mostly rough and not smelling like anything at all. It sure opened up my view, though.

I didn't think it would be THAT tough to prepare for an air balloon ride nor would it be that tough to land. After the balloon was almost ready for take off, the wind suddenly changed direction and the people preparing for the ride had to really act quickly to turn it all around and they had to do it all over again - they had to deflate the balloon in order to reposition it and then inflate it again before we were finally ready to take off.

Here are a few photos to show the preparation stage. In the first pic you can see that on the side of the basket there are two "holes" that could be used as steps to get into the basket (which was really important for me 'coz I'm short HA HA...)

 

 

Here's a video clip I took when they were inflating the balloon - right before the wind blew it up to the right side of the video and they had to do it all over again:


The take off itself went very quickly and excellently, though. It didn't feel like anything at all. I have motion and sea sickness, so I was a bit afraid that I'd feel dizzy or something, but I didn't feel it at all. In fact, the take off was MUCH better than a plane's take off. The only difference was that we both felt HOT!!! The heat of the burners above us was rather uncomfortable, though it got better once we got high enough and the air temperature around us dropped down. The burners were also so noisy, so it was hard to talk.

Here's a pic of the burners:

Here's one video I took when we got higher...the loud noises you hear is from the burner:


But we could see a gorgeous sunset that took place slowly from high up there as well as the bird-eye-view around the area. Despite the heat, the rather tight space in the basket that made it impossible to move around too much and the noisy burners (and a rather rough landing which I'd tell soon), it was worth it. :-D

After taking plenty of pics and videos (I had to hold on to my camera so tightly for fear that it would drop down ha ha...), we looked into each other's eyes and we both had that certain look that said, "Hey, it's kinda cool up here. I'm SO glad we can experience this together! Marvellous view!" :-D

Here are a few pics from up there. The first pic is the famous Heviz Thermal Lake.

 

Another view of Balaton Lake...it's such a HUGE lake...

 

Anyway, the wind picked up when we were preparing for landing, so the pilot told us to hold on with both hands to the ropes that were conveniently hung around the basket. The pilot became so very busy then because he had to use the walkie-talkie to tell the others where his location was so that they could prepare themselves down there as well as checking the wind speed and then he had to pull one of the ropes connected to the balloon so that we didn't graze on a tree that we almost ran into. Apparently by pulling the rope, the balloon then swerved a little bit to the left side of the tree. Phew!

Then we heard a low thud when we landed on a 45 degree angle and then one guy grabbed on to the basket to get it back straight up whereas the other had to grab onto one of the other rope so that the wind didn't blow the balloon back up. Then after securing the basket and the balloon, the pilot told R2 to get out of the basket, then he himself get out of there after a while and finally in the end I was told to get out of the basket. Then they had to pack everything before we could leave. Quite an adventure! :-D

After they had finished packing up, then we had a little ceremony before they took us back to the hotel. We got our certificates (because it was our first air balloon ride) as well as a bottle of champagne. Here are the pics:

And that's a wrap!!! :-D Air balloon ride: check. :-D