Day 239: Holloko

Back on the road! Quick breakfast at the same joint as yesterday, then packed up the car and headed eastwards out of Budapest. Our first destination was about 2 hours away, the tiny village of Holloko. This is a world heritage site because it's basically a great example of traditional Hungarian peasant life, still preserved here in a narrow valley.

Very small town, only about 50 houses and a permanent population of less than 300. Almost every house seemed to be involved in some sort of traditional occupation (eg cheesemaking, ironworking, farming, pub etc), though there were of course cars and street lights etc. All the houses were very uniform as well, built in the traditional style though not actually that old since a fire devastated the village in 1910 after the residents ignored the "don't build with wood" guidelines.

Had a poke around, did our filming and then headed up to the ruined castle on the hill over the village. Nice view back to the town, but ultimately it was a pretty small and brief world heritage site visit.

Picked one of the town restaurants essentially at random and got very tasty meals, though very hearty and stodgy as seems to be the case.

From here we drove a couple of hours eastwards again to the medium-sized city of Eger, not for any particular reason other than we'd heard a few good things, it was near our accommodation, and we had an hour to kill before checking in. Had a look at a few buildings, grabbed some supplies for dinner and breakfast, then headed off to our accommodation.

Nice little guesthouse above a winery, out on the outskirts of a village 20 minutes from Eger. I'd been steadily feeling worse and worse all day with my developing cold, so once we arrived I basically just crashed in bed and had a nap for an hour. Eventually woke up enough to have some dinner, but then straight back to bed. Unfortunately I didn't sleep very well and neither did Shandos, since I'm a heavy snorer at the best of times and the cold makes it even worse - she can't sleep, so she wakes me up to stop snoring.Read more