"Lake Balaton - The Hungarian Sea " a Balaton Travel Page by MedioLatino

The Balaton is often called the Hungarian Sea. No doubt it's the biggest lake in Central- and Western Europe (for surface, it's slightly bigger then Lac Léman, the Lake of Geneve!).

It's length is 77 km, it's widest part is 16,7 km, the coastline is about 195 km alltogether. It's surface is 600 km2, the average depth is 3m (the deepest part beeing 12m) and it contains about 1,8 billion m3 of water!

The lake was born about 20000 years ago. It was already populated in the Roman period and it still is "well used" since then.

Obviously it's mostly a summer destination, but it's also worth to take a tour in the wintertime. It has lots of nice cultural sites (Like the abbey of Tihany), wineries, hiking possibilities and even thermal waters in it's close neighbourhood.

The south sore is mostly flat, you have to walk in to get to deep water but then it's ideal with kids. The northern shore is mostly hilly and the water also gets deep faster.

Some info sources:
http://www.balaton.hu
http://www.cometohungary.com/html/regio.php?regio_id=2
http://www.balatoninfo.net/
http://www.balaton.net/hmpg0e.htm
http://www.bfnpi.hu/en_folap.asp
http://www.balatontourist.hu/