Cave Bath - Something Special

This place is something very special, which is unique in the world. Have a look inside a 100 years old public bath built inside a natural cave!

What to do in Europe? You can visit London, Paris, Rome as the most people do. If you are open for some really full of life and unusual places then you will travel to Middle and Eastern Europe as well, but I bet that you won’t step out from the bigger cities. But, you should! Tha Cave Bath is located in Miskolc, 2 hours by train from Budapest which is known as the capital of thermal baths and also of Hungary. Once you arrived you won’t go home anymore because the Cave Bath is so unique and the surroundings are simply magnificent.

Most of the guests simply don’t want to believe that the inside pools were made in a natural cave system, almost 60 years ago in 1959! What do you think, is it a theater?

Of course, it’s not a decor from Hollywood. This is the beautiful real life. We can bath in thousand-year cave passages created by nature, and enjoy nice massage of stream of wild water. Most of the guests are standing with their back under the falling water but the brave ones will face to it. It seems to be a bad idea but if you are careful, this is an unusual way to work on your abs! You will step out from the shower pool with stone-hard abdomen!

We really liked the thermal water of nice temperature arisen depth of mountain, and enjoy clear, fine air. Many swear on the curative power of cave bath, first of all thanks to the healing cave climate and warm karst water. The salt content of the water of 30 Celsius degree is lower than medicinal water – it does not reach 1000 milligramm/litre – so we can bath in it without time limit.

After the place has been too popular, the management decided to expand the area with new rooms and outdoor pools. The new parts contain also some decor but the water is the same like in the so called “Old Cave”. One new extraordinary pool is the “Star hall” where visitors can hear boding echo…Or could here if the children would not scream because they enjoy that pool so much! I think if I were a child that would be my favorite area as well. The other popular place among the children is the tropical looking bridge because there is a shower falling down in every half an hour from both sides of it.

That bridge has an other functionality for sure. It is important to ensure the pedestrian traffic inside the cave. If you go through one of the passages you will find yourself in the entrance hall or back to another pool where you already were. Sometimes I lost the direction but it was funny instead of scary. In case of emergency, you can go anywhere, the exits are easy to reach from every direction! There is also some Baywatch Guy around, look at him at the next pic!

It is allowed to take pictures anywhere you want, but it is a hard job inside the dark without a tripod. That’s why people nominated the Entrance Bath Hall as “Photo studio”, everybody is taking pictures from every angle you can imagine. It is easy to understand, the view is stunning and the lights are perfect so I took a shot about others taking photos.

Would you like to see some Sun and have a sunbath as well? Yes, you can! There is a beautiful but crowded huge park with 3 pools for children, 2 swimming pools, a so called Lake bath with experience basin, and the iconic Shell basin.

The picture above is special because the Shell basin and the Lake bath are existing together. The Lake bath with the building inside the pool was built in 1938 but it was broken down in 1969 in the same year when the Shell basin was brought into use. The original elements are waiting for us to relax nowadays. And this is why this place is so extraordinary. It is not simply beautiful but it gives the feeling of ancient times, rich culture and art. Water and massage for the body and tons of good feelings for the soul.

The Lake bath offers nice warm water with a temperature around 32 Celsius degrees. We felt the swimming pool a little bit cold so it was like heaven to sit in this basin after that. There is a whirlpool system with several type of water massages and it is working around in every 30 minutes.

The swimming pool has a real curve in it, not our camera has so wide angel lens. We liked that the 2 pools have different levels of water and the separator wall can be used as a sunbathing bank to lay down. It’s a shame that we missed the opportunity to take some cool pics laying “on the top of the water”.

The Shell basin offers some shadows in the summer heat which is quite a good thing for the children. There are so much families with children from the age of babies! There is no risk to bring them to this complex so we would do the same if we lived nearby. There are 3 pools for the youngest generation with low level of water and some built-in attraction to play with.

If you are hungry, try the Hungarian Langos and pancake in the buffet outside or one of the main courses in the self-service restaurant inside. Langos is so unbelievably popular that we had to wait almost 30 minutes to get ours, but it worth waiting for it!

This is the floating terrace where we placed our towels and built our camp center meeting point. We suggest you to do the same, find a place where you can meet after given period of time because it is easy to find something interesting and move so fast in a new direction, new pool, new passage or whatever that you will loose the other ones and vice versa.

The hot pools are the best place before the sad farewell! We could sit there for hours in the 35-36 Celsius degree water if it were allowed. They are used as venue of medical therapy on weekdays for people suffering from complaints of the locomoter system.