10 May 2007

We wiped out our jet lag by sleeping until 10:45. The minute we got up
Csaba's mom had a feast of a breakfast ready for us. We had bread,
tomatoes, paprika, salami and a variety of cheeses along with some hot tea.
Not quite the breakfast we are used to, but afterall it was 11:00.

Our bags were delivered to the house just after we ate and we decided to
work on putting the bikes together. They appeared to be undamaged at first,
but we quickly found out that John's back tire was out of true and his back
brake wasn't working. We took a short ride and Marie's was fine. We called
the bike shop in town that we had communicated with by email a little while
ago. The guy said he was a one man shop and couldn't help us until next
week. That wouldn't do because our plan was to leave Budapest on Sunday.

After some discussion, we decided to brave the crazy city traffic on our
bikes and make our way across the river to get a new brake cable and
housing. It was now about 3:00, not a particularly good time to go. We got
to the end of Csaba's mom's road (one whole house away) and stood on our
bikes staring at the busy road that we had to cross. There was traffic
going this way and that and coming from everywhere. Our plan was to turn
left, but after standing there looking both ways for a few minutes without a
break in traffic, we opted for plan B which was -- we really didn't know.

We took the bikes back to the house and walked across the bridge to the city
center in Pest to do the sightseeing we had planned for today (which wasn't
much of a plan because we're still not very good tourists - especially in
the cities). We had been discussing our plan for biking out of the city on
Sunday, so as we walked we tried to figure out the best way to go. Biking
out of a busy city that you are not familiar with is quite challenging, and
this one looked like it was going to fit that category.

We walked and walked through shopping areas and pedestrian malls and saw the
beautiful St. Stephen's Basilica and then walked to the bike shop that we
had spoken with earlier to see about getting some cable and maybe some
advice on a route out of the city. We got very little of both. The shop
guy directed us to a visitor information center which he said would have a
rudimentary bike route map. A different visitor info center was our first
stop today and they had nothing on biking but sent us across the road to
some place where nobody spoke English. The second visitor center also was
of no help, so we walked on and found an international book store where we
picked up a map that showed us the bike route for part of the city. It was
very big and bulky, but we decided it was better than nothing.

We walked on to see the beautiful opera house and then down to the big
market, but that was already closed. We had dinner sitting outside at a
cafe, walked back across the bridge doing some more bike route scouting and
past Csaba's mom's street to try to find the grocery store she told us about
yesterday. It was hidden inside a shopping mall, but we found it after
asking only one group of people.

When inside we did great in the produce section but were pretty lost after
that. Most of the items that we usually buy when we're on the bikes had all
the cooking instructions in Hungarian only. And we couldn't find any
pancake mix, our traveling staple. We only bought some grapes and bananas
and found out that we had done something wrong when we got to the checkout.
We were supposed to weigh our fruit and tag it before paying for it. Marie
found this out when see saw our checkout person go over to the produce
section and weigh our items. Then she watched a little girl do it by
herself. Now we know. Nothing like being schooled by a 5 year old. We
decided we would recruit Csaba's mom to go to the grocery store with us
tomorrow and help us find what we are looking for and probably more.

When we got back to the house, we were persuaded to eat the second piece of
the delicious chocolate cream cake that we didn't eat last night. Then John
worked on his bike and was able to fix both the problems. He usually can
fix everything on the bikes when he takes his time and relaxes. While he
was working, he got the beginning of a migraine which luckily ended about an
hour later.