Gyor, Hungary to Kormano, Slovakia, 26.3 miles (42 km), 2 hours 9 minutes, 531 feet (162 m) of elevation (climbing):
I was hopeful when we left Gyor that the rain had come and gone. Our bike seats fared well overnight with the covers on them and were not wet. That was a short-lived benefit for me, though. The roads were wet as it had rained overnight. Unfortunately, we did not have a back wheel fender on the bike so everything the tire kicked up ended up on and bled through the mesh seat I was riding on. We never ride in the rain at home, so it didn't occur to us to make sure we had a rear fender to put on the bike for the trip.
Other than day zero, this would turn out to be the soggiest day of our trip.
Our ride started out not along the Danube but the Raba River, because apparently, there is one thing you must see in Gyor if you are walking around and by golly, we were going to see it. It is this giant reflecting sphere which is right next to a giant public square. While we paused here to take the picture for posterity's sake, there was apparently going to be a concert happening at some point during the day because there were musicians in the distance practicing under a canopy. It was really amusing to hear them singing a song in English. I think it must have been from the UK because I didn't recognize the song at all but could understand the words:
After our brief stop here, we continued our ride through Gyor to get back to the trail along the Danube. It was a little challenging navigating the bicycles, pedestrians and vehicles and the roads in the old city were a bit narrow:
And finally, it was back to this:
This is what we were riding on once we left Gyor. It's a dedicated cycling and pedestrian path, which is nice. You only have to deal with cars at intersections. There are two cyclists in front of us. We ended up following them as they seemed to be travelling, like us, rather than commuting and were headed in the same direction. I did get a little lazy about navigation once we got into town and we followed them into a park on a path that just dead ended. They realized we had followed them and laughed and said "sorry." We laughed back and said "No, our fault." I seem to remember them actually using the word sorry, so I think they knew we English or American.
I then figured out where we were supposed to go and we set off again. They were still ahead of us, and apparently, they were a little hardier than we were because it started raining and we stopped to put on our rain gear. They did not. We did eventually catch them and pass them. I have no idea where they were headed because we never saw them after that.
It was a damp ride through the countryside, next to a highway, with either fields or wooded areas on either side of us. We would ride through some small towns and villages along the way. I was soaked; my cycling pants absolutely drenched. The rain made me cold, so I was dying for a bathroom and a cup of coffee. We rode through this small town and there was no coffee shop, just a bar and it was open, on a weekday morning, no less. I went in and paid 500 Forints for five sips of lukewarm cappuccino and the right to use the bathroom. We had very little Hungarian Forints on us, so it seemed like a lot of cash, but it was only about $1.40. I honestly didn't realize how cheap it was until this moment.
I'm going to take a pause here and share some wisdom I learned this trip. We did not plan on needing to carry as many Euros, Forints and Czech Crowns as we actually needed on this trip. My husband decided on what we should exchange when we arrived, and I was skeptical but went along with it. He grossly (and I mean grossly) underestimated how much currency we would need to pay for meals and snacks (and his beer). If you ever plan on travelling Europe like we did, whether on bike, or foot, or train or however, consider this: if you are not going to be in big cities all the time, keep in mind that Europe is not like the US with respect to credit cards. Many of the shops and restaurants in the smaller cities don't take credit cards. Whatever amount of currency you think you need to carry, increase it by 50%... at least. I feel like we were always scrambling to have currency to pay for meals and snacks when credit cards were not an option. If you must use an ATM in Europe (we did several times) ONLY use those ATMs that located inside or outside a legitimate bank. There are other standalone ATM machines, but our tour operator for this tour told us to avoid them if they were not connected to the bank. We had to use ATMs far too many times for my comfort in all the countries we visited this tour but have experienced no issues. I also blocked foreign access to the ATM card I used once we returned to the states.
Back to the trip... So onward we ride, through the rain. At this point I'm so wet I don't even care about anything. We wear dry fit clothing when we ride so I know that however wet our stuff is, it will most likely dry overnight. Except for our cycling gloves. Those gloves have padding and like to stay wet. At some point the rain let up but not soon enough for us. We were both soaked to the skin, which apparently made our next stop a little easier.
On our first bicycle tour outside the US, we stopped at a river once and my husband decided that he was going to put his feet in that river, because then he could say he went wading in a river in country X. Yeah, it became a thing in every new country we visited. So, we came across a Hungarian stream and.... you know the drill, so here is a still from the video I took (because you have to document it):
After this brief stop, where I was sure he was going to slip and fall (he did not), we were back on the trail to Kormano. More countryside and riding along the highway. Then we had to cross back over the Danube to Slovakia. That meant big bridge. I will say this. I became more and more desensitized to my fear of heights on this trip.
After that we had one more drawbridge to cross over another river. That was more unnerving because we were on a sidewalk right next to the traffic. Luckily our hotel was right on the other side the of the bridge. It was really nice, and we felt like wet dogs when we walked in, and I'm sure we looked like it. We were very early, couldn't check in quite yet, and our luggage hadn't arrived. They explained where to store our bike and off we went to store the bike and find some lunch. We found a pizza place, ate a leisurely lunch, and went back to our hotel room to check in and wait for our luggage. Our bags arrived and we showered and changed. The weather, in the meantime, had improved dramatically. You'd never know it had rained as much as it did. We walked to the old part of the city and wandered around an area called the Courtyard of Europe:
Really neat place to walk around with shops, restaurants, businesses and little alleyways running underneath buildings. We really enjoyed our time here. We had a really nice dinner sitting outside. Eating outside is something I missed when we returned to the states.
That ends day 17!
If you would like to read more about our three week-long bicycle tour starting in Prague, Czech Republic and ending in Budapest, Hungary, here are the links to our entire adventure:
Day Zero in Prague (Weather or not I wanted to)
Day One.... The Hills are Alive .... and I am not
Day Two....Vistas and Grocery Stores (and an angry cashier)
Day Three.... Are we Hiking or Cycling? (Today it was hard to tell....)
Day Four.....My Favorite Place on the Entire Tour (and a nod to the Beer of Kings along the way)
Day Four and a Half (I couldn't do it justice in one post)
Day 5 ...... Will This Day Ever End???
Day Six... Pausing in Passau (AKA This is the way we wash our clothes.....I think....)
Day Seven - Off down the Danube (If we'd only had that meeting.....)
Day Eight - We needed a day like today.....
Day Ten Cycling the Danube - Cloudy With a Shot of Melk
Day Eleven Cycling the Danube... A rare short mileage day!
Day Twelve Cycling the Danube - Aahhhh Vienna!!!
Day 13 - Our Day in Vienna (It's not supposed to be this HOT)
Day 14: Vienna to Petronell-Carnuntum (Apparently, I can speak some Italian.....)
Day 15 Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia (Rain and broken Chain...)
Day 16 Bratislava, Slovakia to Gyor, Hungary (There's a snake in the grass....)
Day 18: Komarno, Slovakia to Esztergom, Hungary (A tense tummy and a tense moment......)
Day 19: Esztergom to Budapest, Hungary (A long ride for the last day)
Day 20: A Day in Budapest (We had to see the last of the "Stevens/Stephens")
