166 – Cave Spa and beehive rocks

Starting your week, waking up next to two huge piles of dog puke is pretty grim…and also an illustration of my epic deep sleeping skills. Mabel stole some food yesterday so we are guessing it was her, but she seemed happier as the day went on. Big thanks to the hubby for clearing it up!

To counter that gross start, I had a morning of pampering planned. Obviously you can’t go to Hungary and not visit a thermal spa. My hubby doesn’t do spa’s and I’m not a fan of busy tourist traps so instead of visiting one of the numerous famous spas in Budapest, I drove to the large industrial town of MisKolc to visit Miskolctapolca Cave Bath.

Here there are a series of natural caves with different lights and thermal pools, a long treatments list and sauna complex. It sounded great. The thing to consider however is what you expect from your spa experience. I was hoping for a long quiet relax, swim in warm pools, saunas and steam rooms and maybe even a massage.

The reality was a busy, family spa with children jumping of the rocks, shouting, screaming, lots of posing for photos (seriously who takes their phone into a spa?), lukewarm water, basic amenities, several saunas out of order, and from the long list of treatments only a massage was available. I actually found it rather stressful, but the massage was good and appreciated. Mark had his opinion confirmed that spas are overrated and found his massage painful 🙈 I think I’ve been spoilt in Berlin’s luxury spas, so need to do better research in future. (photo from google web link…add many more people).

Still it was an experience and it’s good to try these things. The next item on my to do list was the nearby bobsleigh club. Sadly though it was raining so it wasn’t possible to go and play. I will have to search out another one. Conceding that the weather is turning colder, I’ve finally accepted we aren’t going to Romania and need to start heading west towards Spain. And so we will have to visit eastern Hungary another time, especiallythe intriguing cemetery at Szatmarcseke.

We drove back towards Eger to a lovely town of Szomolyai to visit the beehive stones (kaptárkövek) and the amazing cave houses at Noszvaj barlanglakások.

This evening we are driving late towards the university town of Szeged in southern Hungary and very close to the Serbian border. I don’t think its possible for the pups to enter Serbia easily so will have to skip that country.