Danube Bike Tour Day 34: Vac to Budapest
Posted by Cassie, January 10th, 2010
Friday, October 30, 2009
Distance: 37km
Today was our final day of riding! It was a beautiful, sunny day! We started off by crossing the Danube on a ferry at Vac, and then, we rode down the Szentendre Island, which was where the Danube splits into two streams at the Danube Bend or Knee.
View of Vac from ferry
Trabant car on the ferry!
We had a nice, easy ride through the countryside of Szentendre Island. Then, we took the second ferry of the day across the Danube to the mainland and the city of Szentendre. Then, we rode along the Danube towards Budapest. The ride was easy until we got into the city. We had to wind through the city streets to follow the bike route, but we made it Budapest!
We made it to Buda!
Budapest Parliament
Budapest Chain Bridge
We found the first hostel on our list, the Boomerang Hostel. At first, we weren’t sure where to go. We knew we were at the right building because it was the right address and the same building on the hostel pamphlet. Finally, we found the door to the building, but we had to push “11” on the buzzer to talk with someone at the hostel. The only room that had available was actually an apartment. It was more expensive than a room. But, since we were going to be staying in Budapest for several days and needed to pack up our bikes to send home, we decided to go ahead to book it. The apartment was really nice! We had a kitchen, TV, private bathroom, and a loft for the bedroom.
Apartment in Budapest
Awesome stairs in our apartment
Our goal for the day was to figure out how we were going to get the bikes home. Since it was so expensive to take the bikes on the plane, we decided to try to mail the bikes home from the Hungarian post office. We went to the post office to see if it would be possible to mail the bikes. We talked with three different people, but we finally talked with someone that told us that it would not be a problem as long as the bikes were under 30kg. Then, we tried to find packing tape and a marker for packing up the bike boxes. We found the marker, but no tape. Finally, we tried to get bike boxes from one of the bike shops marked on our bike map. We walked a long way to go to the bike shop, and we looked all over and couldn’t find it. So, we decided to be smarter about our search for a bike shop that would have bike boxes, and we looked up bike shops online. We found a bike shop that was literally across the street from the hostel. Tomorrow, we hoped to find a bike shop where we could get bike boxes and also packing tape!
Despite our limited success in getting our bikes ready to send home today, we had a great time walking around Budapest. It was a really neat city, and we were looking forward to spending the next few days here. However, we would enjoy our time more once we got the task completed of figuring out how to get our bikes home.
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