As we suspected we had to resort to what we could for dinner last night. This consisted of 2 minute noodles to which we added tinned corn and peas. That was the first course. Secnod course was bread with sardines mashed on them. Oh how the culinary mighty have fallen! We are in a real quandary as to how we are going to finish our trip. Our route is based on being able to get to a place that has accommodation and the ability for us to buy food each day. Unfortunately these places aren't spaced the way we need them to be for us to follow our preferred route through Serbia and Bulgaria to Turkey. We've considered riding to the end of the Danube (Constanta) and flying from there to Istanbul, but the riding distance ... read more

We spent yesterday afternoon confirming our route to Belgrade. We'll take 4 riding days to get there including a big day of 85kms. Unless we change our minds - again. We asked the lady at our accommodation for some dinner recommendations. She mentioned Bongo Bongo and Romana's and then said she preferred Romana's. So we ambled the 1.3kms to Romana's in the still very hot evening air. When we got there it was closed. There was red tape across the doors which looked a bit weird. I got the translator out, took a picture and read the translation. "Tax Administration". They had been closed down for not paying tax. We were in hysterics (and still hungry). We walked the 1.3kms back to Bongo Bongo and it was closed (because it was Monday). The best we could ... read more

We had a hotel breakfast this morning. A small panic when the coffee machine was blocked (Arrgh!) but they had another one in reception, so disaster averted. We wanted to get away early because of the extreme heat again today (38C) and we did good, being on the road just after 8am. Distance today was only 48kms and our aim was to be finished before lunch (barring any mechanicals or punctures). From Kolocsa back to the river was 6kms on the road and then we were confronted by a long stretch of gravel back on the levee wall. It was about 12kms which is much slower going and the vibrations certainly make it tougher. By our morning break at 10am we had covered almost 30kms. The only shade we could find was in front of a ... read more

An early start was on the cards so we could get out of Budapest before the traffic picked up. We aimed for 7:30am. We plugged in the address of our accommodation and got very confused. It was somewhere about 55kms west of Budapest, not 65kms south of Budapest where it was meant to be???? The town name was Tassi. It seems there are a few of them and they have the same street name as our apartment in both. So where did we book? I got an awful feeling that we may have booked the wrong place. We checked and double checked and then realised there were duplicated town/street combinations. We had booked the right place - we think. As we set off this morning it wasn't as hot as we expected. There was actually a ... read more

The afternoon heat is stifling. Our washing was dry within 30 minutes and not long after we ventured out we were hot and sticky all over again. There was only one real destination this afternoon and that was the basilica. And it was a sweaty walk uphill to get there, but Oh so worth it when we did. As you can imaging the inside was huge but not over stated. There is a lot of maintenance going on do we couldn't see the inside of the dome which is a real shame. We explored the crypt under the church in cool air, we lingered a while down there. The highlight was, gowever, the walk up to the dome that Tom and I did (Jeff has a slight aversion to hights). There were 411 steps to the ... read more