14 May 2007

Not a cloud in the sky when we awoke this morning. We've heard that the weather is supposed to remain warm (80 degrees +) and dry for a week or so.
Our legs were feeling it just a bit today as we figured since it has been 3 weeks since we've been on the bikes. Yep, we take our training seriously.
The beginning of the day was a pleaseant ride through farm land with light traffic on the road. This lasted until Esztergom where we stopped to visit the largest basilica in Hungary. The outside was rather plain, but the inside was very nice.
We decided to try to find the cycle way out of town which we had seen when looking down from the basilica. Our search led us down some cobblestone streets and dead ends before locating the path. We weren't on it long before it turned into dirt so we headed back to the main road. This was fairly busy with many trucks but everyone seemed to give us plenty of room. The wind picked up from the side and was slowing us down and we really got battered around whenever a truck passed. Up ahead we could see the traffic on the road that we would be turning onto. It looked really busy but at least the turn would put the wind in our favor.
For a few kilometers we caught a bikepath that ran parallel to this busy road. We were cruising with the wind at our backs and no traffic to think about. That, too, came to an end. Then it was back to zoom, zoom, zoom. You get used to the cars passing you. The scary thing here so far seems to be the cars going in the opposite direction who are passing cars. Before passing they should check the oncoming traffic to make sure it's safe, right? Apparently we don't count as traffic because they go ahead and pass right by us and then we have 2 cars coming at us from the opposite direction at once. That's a bit unnerving!
We continued on this busy road through town after town until we arrived at our planned stop for the night, a campground on the outskirts of Almasneszmely. The book that we are using to help navigate the Danube has not impressed us so far. It said that this campground is expensive. It turns out that it cost just over half of what the campground in Visegrad charged. It's a very nice place with a pool and restaurant and is right on the river. Unfortunately, it's between the river and the busy highway, so again we"ll be hearing traffic noise all night. Oh well, at least we won't have the church bell going off every 15 minutes like last night.
The weather today was a carbon copy of yesterday - sunny, hot (we guess 80+) and quite windy. We consider ourselves spoiled so far. Tonight we are sitting at our campsite in bare feet enjoying the warm breeze with no biting insects yet. We know this can't last forever, so we're making the most of it now.

Kms 54.87
Time 3:15:00
Avg 16.8
Max 32.8