Danube - Budapest

Odd to get up this morning and not be packing up to go pedalling!  Funny how a bike tour becomes a way of life!

The morning started with coffee, of course, and then the dismantling of the tandem.  The Matild Palace Ballroom was the most beautiful place to store and dismantle a tandem!  Steve’s got it down to two hours to get this done and you wouldn't know he'd been there when he was done!

Liz’s last day so she got to pick what to do - double decker bus tour, which also included a boat tour.  The Danube was breezy and cool! Budapest has some of the most ornate architecture and beautiful bridges crossing the river.

Saw the Fisherman’s Bastion up on the hill where we had drinks the first time we came to Budapest - looks like a wall w/ arched windows that you can look out across the river and see the Parliament building.

After the tour, we went to lunch.  We’ve been to Budapest, briefly, on the Blackburn to the Black Sea motorbike tour in 2016, so there were some memories of the place.  As we walked along the riverfront promenade and had lunch, the view was really familiar.  Turns out, we’d had lunch in the same spot with the same view on our earlier trip!

Slept off the heat of the day and met in our room for a glass of wine, nibbles and a chat with Dad. Then went for a last promenade, a traditional Hungarian dish Langos and the biggest beer of the trip!

Found a very nice treat of wine, fruit and nuts in our room when we got back!  Best hotel ever!

Trip Stats:

Mileage - we’ve followed the Danube from its source all the way here.  According to the book, it was 781 miles from start to finish.  Our actual was 777 - not a lot of shortcuts taken!

Assembling and dismantling the tandem - 4 hours

Countries travelled to - 4 (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary)

Most scenic part of the route - Passau to Vienna

Flat tires - 0

Bike repairs - 0

Preventative maintenance - Daily

Hotels / flats stayed in - 17

Wrong turns - minor, quickly recovered from

Most useful apps - Komoot, Google Translate

Best Commenter - everyone who made a comment, really enjoyed them all!

Best ‘enhancement’ - Liz’s video camera 

Best trails - Austria

Most gravel trails - Germany

Bumpiest trails - Hungary

Most time on roads - Hungary

Ferries taken - 3

Food - delicious everywhere

Beer and wines - delicious everywhere 

Weight change - suspect it’s a net gain!

Overall reflection - great trip!  Highly recommend the Passau to Vienna stretch!  There are always easy parts, hard parts, stunning parts and ugly parts in these trips.  Except for Hungary, the majority was on paved, off-road trails winding miles and miles through beautiful countryside.  To be fair, Hungary did have some of that, but the EuroVelo 6 there has too much busy road time for us.  To also be fair, drivers are much more used to cyclists in Europe (as they should be with 35,000+ trails on the EuroVelo alone!) so they are a bit easier to deal with (unlike, say, Florida!).  As mentioned in earlier posts, getting into cities can be a challenge as navigation is trickier (‘Turn left.  No, not that left!’) and you’re dealing with a lot more people who actually know where they’re going while we're trying to find our way.  That being said, the Old Towns in big cities or small towns are lovely and worth the effort of getting to every single time!  An epic trip for us, a successful first big trip for Liz and I think Steve’s already looking for the next European river tour!

Comments:

Stephen HodgsonJune 25, 2025 at 5:38 AM

Great trip. There is some upside to following rivers, they flow gently downhill with very little climbing, the water has a cooling effect and people through the ages have built villages and towns alongside them with hotels and restaurants. So not the most physically demanding trip we have ever done but one of the best. The “mission controlling” was outstanding. 
In the end the bike did well, we need to decide whether we do some upgrades to this one or we find another but the concept of “public transport” travelling to another country, pedal hundreds (or even thousands) of miles then “public transport” back is proven I think though next time might pay a bit more to ship the box than this time so it’s more predictable. Quite literally “the world is our oyster”, though we do like Europe!!
Where next ….. likely we will do the other half of the “tour de Manche” in September (we did the first half last year), that’s by comparison a baby trip and we can start and finish at a cross channel ferry port so no need for portable tandems, shipping boxes etc. Next year if it’s another European river with a Eurovelo route there are some to choose from Meuse, Rhine, Rhine, all are over 1000km, start in the centre of Europe and flow to the sea …. Other ideas include France “end to end” (start in St Malo finish in Nice), Portugal “end to end” starts I guess at La Coruna

1. 
   Stephen HodgsonJune 25, 2025 at 5:40 AM

   Oops hit the wrong button …. And ends somewhere near Gibraltar… we will see.
2. 
   LizJune 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM

   Could not have stated it better. I loved being included in this trip, cycling lets you see so much you can miss from a car. Fantastic company!!! Can’t wait to dig more into the videos taken and find some more of the gems we saw.