Sentimental in Berlin Blog: Rowing in a cave-lake is fun in Tapolca, Hungary

Being in a boat and rowing in a lake is normal....I guess...but this lake being under the ground in a cave...gives a twist....

The day after the wedding, even though we went bed late I was up very early and by 8:30am we were downstairs for another brekkie with the home made granny style apricot jam J at our accommodation Borbaratok Lodge and Restaurant. I personally did not just want to go back immediately to my town and since I saw and episode of BBC travel about Tapolca another small town in the vicinity of this area, I could not miss this opportunity.

I told about it to other peeps from the wedding, so the 6 of us decided to go to the Farmers Market in Kaptalantoti (neighbouring village), but since it was the Wine Harvesting Party as well, the roads were closed and after a super freaky teeny weeny narrow road, where I almost got stuck with my massive Renault Espace…we gave up to go there.

Tapolca_TavasBarlang_CaveLake_Hungary_Weekend_Getaway

So we just headed to Tapolca. Within 10-20 minutes we were there J It could have been much faster if the traffic was not on diversion.

The main attraction in Tapolca is the ‘Tavasbarlang’ cave lake. Entry fee is like 5-6£ and they accept student cards as well, making it around 4£. The tour did not include all the things listed on the Guardian, or at least we did not find all them, but it included a half an hour tour about the power of water, some geography, how dripstones and how these big cave systems were formed.

It was interesting with 3D pictures and a 3D video, however if you don’t speak Hungarian, unfortunately this time is almost wasted, because you will not understand anything, however whatever is exhibited has English and German descriptions written beside the Hungarian. So you could still pick it up, what they talk about in this tour. As we had a non-Hungarian speaker with us too, I would have preferred those podcasts in English at least for her.

Anyhow at the end we were led down to the actual cave where the temperature still does not drop. The water also is around 20C due to hotter water mixing with the colder one, reaching the 20C equilibrium. Down below, there are some short routes you can check out and then wait for the boats. Yes you can boat around this cave lake! This is the main thing! J This is what everybody wants to try!

Advice: there will be a long queue, we had to wait around 30-40 minutes, however if you are in the front of your group, then the waiting time could only be around 5-10 minutes. ;)

So it was our turn! I went in the boat with my friends, making it 3, but you can take one on your own too! You get a palm and then off you go! The lake is 180 meter long and you will come back to where you started from as it has a circular shape. It is super douper narrow, and even my short self had to bend over to make space for the ‘ceiling’ otherwise I could have hit my head in the wall. It is also narrow and in some tunnels we did not need to row, just push ourselves touching the walls. However a bigger, wider, taller atrium always followed these narrow routes. The water is unbelievably clear and also shallow; so don’t worry about falling in it J. The tunnels are well lit, providing opportunity for some nice pics. Don’t judge from my own photos, as my camera is not the best and we were moving, hence most of them came out as blurry.

After this adventure, we headed to Lake Malom, a small lake in the centre of Tapolca, with many restaurants around it and as we were all hungry to a certain point, we all had something to eat or drink J and with a filled up tummy we were ready to go back home! Some to the capital or to another country or to my hometown.