South to where??.............Pecs,of course

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Neither of us had ever heard of Pecs before we sat down the other night and tried to find a town with a hotel halfway between Budapest and Sarajevo and Pecs came out on top.So today its south across the great Hungarian Plain(oh no,not more flat land to drive through!!)and onto Pecs.
One of the interesting things about Hungary is that whne you cross into the country and convert some Euros(even on a limited budget such as the BBA)you become VERY rich with HUF or Hungarian Florints.At HUF264 to €1 it doesn't take long and you have a heap of money.Things are cheap here like in other parts of Eastern Europe but by all accounts the economy is thriving and prices will rise especially if and when they join the Euro zone.HUF notes come in sizes from 200 upwards and with a HUF10,000 in your wallet you think you are rich!!It has taken us the 3 days we have been here to get our heads around buying an ice cream at HUF150 thinking that gosh that is a lot of money but realising that it is less than €1.And the ice cream here has been excellent as it has through most of Europe.The fallacy that Tip Top back home is the best is now dead and buried!!
Google Maps gave us a very confuluted way of getting clear of Budapest and after our trip out to the memento Park yesterday and seeing the signs for route #6 along the way the bus went Gretchen reckons we should just get out on the road from the hotel and wing it to the edge of town.Brave woman my Gretchen!!
It has worked well arriving in the cities we have visited and parking the car and taking public transport.We have been able to sit back and relax on the ride into town and sightsee without having to find parking and deal with traffic.And in reality we have had so much more time to see and do things than if we had been trying to take RR into an unfamiliar city.
So with RR loaded up its off on the road through Budapest following route #6 a sign for which we found a few hundred metres from the hotel.Even the traffic flow through the area of the city we had to pass through wasn't too bad and route 6 signs kept on appearing showing us the way.
Then what we dreaded happened!!Route #6 was no longer appearing on the road signs.Never mind we were still following the tram and bus route we took yesterday on the way to memento Park and even though the signs were only showing route #7 we thought #6 had to surely reappaer on the road signs again soon.And lo and behold it did.Perhaps they had run out of space to fit the number 6 in on the ones it was missing from??
We soon hit the countryside and out onto the large Hungarian plain which spreads over a huge area down to southern Hungary about where we are to spend the night.
Like much of the flat areas we have driven over it is pretty featureless with fields stretching as far as the eye can see broken only by small towns and villages along the way.Route #6 is interesting in that it seems it was built to actually miss having to drive through any of the towns and villages.Rather there are small roads leading from it to the town or village 100 metres away.So this makes for a more continuos speed of travel.
Most of the crops have been cut now although it is difficult to make out why the sunflowers have been left standing now all withered with the seed heads black.Perhaps the plant has to get to this stage before the oil can be extracted from it.
Heading down the highway we finally see some animals in the form of cows!!Not a lot of them but they are the first animals we have seen on the land in days!!
A lot of money is being spent of a new motorway south and it is being formed alongside the route we are taking.Many of the sideroads and bridges to take the locals to their villages have been completed already although the highway still looks a few months away.Building this highway looks easier than home though with just flat land to contend with.
On the outskirts of Szekszard we came across a huge Hankook Tires factory and warehouse which looked to be a new building for the area.From the size of the building we guess that it supplies most of Europe!!

As we got closer to Pecs the Hungarian Plain started to turn into hills and it was rather nice to have undulating countryside to look at for the final few kilometres into Pecs.
We didn't have a lot of information as to where the hotel was located except that if we reached a park on the main road into town we had gone too far.And guess what?Yep,we reached the park.So it was back a hundred metres or so and there was a sign directing us to the Retro Hotel.
A pleasant young woman who spoke halting English answered the door and showed us to our room.
We had arrived early so we had some time to take in the historic buildings of the city and so headed downtown on foot to see them.
The building that was originally a mosque but was now a christian church was located above the square but like quite a few of the historic places we have walked to see, the view was spoilt by reconstruction,this time the square in front of it.
So we headed down the road further and came across something that completely surprised us,a modern brand new indoor shopping mall!!It was so nice to do some window retail therapy after what seems like ages since we were in a shopping mall.
We explored a couple of other alleyways off the main street and strolled amongst small shops.By the time we got back to the main square that was under reconstruction we were too late to look inside the converted mosque so we walked back the short distance to the hotel for a cold beer before going back out for dinner and one of the many restaurants in a pedestrian mall.
It was a balmy evening and we chose a restaurant only 15 minutes walk from the hotel and sat back and enjoyed some people watching while we waited for our dinner to arrive.The waitress brought the wrong dish for Gretchen and she apologised profusively bringing us two free glasses of wine which were twice the size of the ones we had paid for.A great score for the BBA and Gretchen still enjoyed the shrimps that she got in error to the veal she had ordered.
We strolled back the short distance to the hotel and headed for bed ready for what should be the biggest challenge of the adventure so far,south to Bosnia-Hercegovina.

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