Mon01Aug16: Hollókő - Budapest, Hungary (125.4km, 2,697.7km YTD)

Thunder and lightning and heavy rain about midnight last night, but the windows were wide open so the air was cool & fresh, and not a bug to bother us.
Last night I noticed that the bells on the restored Catholic church revived the medieval practise of having a loud and extended ringing of the evening bells at 8pm to encourage the farmers/workers to go to bed.  What we learned this morning is that they also revived the medieval practise of having the morning bells ring loudly and for an extended period at 5am!!!  This is far too literal a revival to encourage tourism.  And today our breakfast won't be ready until 7:30am because the first bus up to this village from the towns below doesn't arrive until 7am with the staff who will be preparing our food.  Ah, the delights of staying overnight in a 'tourist trap' town.
Because we have to catch the 1pm ferry across the Donau (a.k.a. Danube) River at Vac, some of the slower riders headed out before 7am so they could be sure of finishing the 86.5km ride in time.  Cloudy and cool and calm this morning, occasional spit but no real threats of rain, great weather for cycling.
Very hilly terrain between Holloko and Vac, and then Gergo takes us on a big long detour to a Electronic Recording Museum; problem is that we will arrive before they're officially open, and he can't get ahold of anybody to see if they'll open earlier just for us.  They're not, we can't, so we've pedalled an extra 15km on a rough patched oil surface side road just for the exercise.

Cindy (USA) and the Bandits (Kevin, Aus; Mark, USA; George, Swiss) seem to have more energy than me this morning and I'm having trouble keeping up to them.  However, a large group of us are together at the 67km lunch stop and ready to make our final run into Vac.

I leave the lunch van first, and several km down the highway catch up to Gergo - who's flagging the route from his recumbent bicycle - and his wife & son Laurence on their own bicycle.  After riding and chatting with the three of them (well, I don't exactly chat with Laurence because he's 6-months old and barely speaks Hungarian) for awhile, Cindy and the Bandits pull by, so I join the four of them in the final stretch into Vac. 

Our group arrives at the ferry landing at 12:03pm, just after the noon sailing, and enjoy a cold drink and/or ice cream while the rest of the group staggers in.  Ozcar, the 'sweep rider', makes it to the ferry ramp just as we're buying our tickets and boarding - you can't get any closer than that.

convoy assembly point, Buda

On the Buda (a.k.a. west) side of the river, we form a convoy and follow Gergo downhill and downwind southward towards Budapest.  The bicycle trail is a series of disconnected stretches of asphalt, which we attempt to stitch together, alongside the Donau River or on either side of very busy Highway #11.  I rode along this same highway back in 2005 on my solo self-supported bicycle tour, but traffic has picked up markedly since that visit.






Our route crosses a bridge to the Pest (a.k.a. east) side of the river, then after the obligatory group photo in front of the Hungarian Parliament Buildings just before 4pm, we pull into the Zenit Budapest Palace Hotel.  Nice old building just one block off the river, but the view completely blocked by a new concrete Marriott Hotel that totally blanks out the sun after 1pm.
Shower, laundry, then a 2km walk to located a bike shop to purchase a new 11/32 8-speed cassette & chain for the bike.  Seems that these lower cost bicycles and my particular slow cadence causes inordinate wear-and-tear on the drive train:  most people get 10,000km out of a cassette & chain, I've barely made it past 3,000km on the unit and its already threatening to jam and break.

There's a 2km pedestrian street that parallels the river immediately behind this hotel, full of restaurants, and shops, so George (Swiss) and I enjoy a final supper together.  Then we continue our walk to let the meal settle and enjoy coffee & desserts at a small bakery.  The end of a good day, and the end of a chapter on a rider relationship with George that has made this trip so endurable.  Hopefully we'll meet again in Zurich when Kathy and I are in Europe next April, because it's my turn to buy the coffee & desserts for him and his wife.