In a town called Hédervár, I snapped a bad photo of a great looking church or house or something. Turns out it’s the
Hedervary Castle, now a pretty posh hotel. When our ship comes in, maybe we’ll head back there and spend a few nights. It’s a very pretty, small town, lots of trees and shade.
Ended up the day in Győr, and checked into the Révész Hotel. This place gets great recommendations in various blogs and online reviews, it's right on the left side of the road just as you're getting into town and it doesn't disappoint. Tiny room for the three of us but perfectly functional and clean. We had probably the best dinner of the whole trip there, while watching a couple of World Cup soccer (futbol) games on a big screen they had out on the patio. It rained hard for about 10 minutes just as we were checking into the hotel, but apart from a few drops earlier in the day, that was all the rain we had during the trip.
Two long days in the saddle were starting to wear on us, so I attempted to walk into town but couldn’t quite get my bearings, lost my enthusiasm and went back to the hotel for more World Cup futbol and sleep.
Our savior.
I got us horribly lost as we were leaving Győr the next day, and it was a big disappointment. I’ve seen photos of “downtown” Győr, and it looks like great fun. Unfortunately, I took us across the wrong bridge, and after a half hour or so of wandering around, looking confused and swearing at the map, a very nice man stopped and asked us what was wrong. He spoke no English (and we speak one word of Hungarian—“thanks”), so he finally gestured to us to follow him in his car and he got us far enough so we could pick up the trail again, but we did miss the good parts of Győr. We ran into nice people like this regularly. I must be pretty good at that “deer in the headlights” look, because people were stopping to try and help us all the time.
The original plan on Day 3 was to go from Győr to Komárom and spend the night there. Other than initially getting lost, the day started out well. We’d had a couple of very long days, though and after a section of good, quiet roads, the “trail” started to deteriorate rapidly.
This was the worst section, kind of a jeep road that lasted for a few km, right after the turnoff at Nagyszentjános. If you end up doing this trip, I would suggest trying to find an alternative. If it’s raining, don’t even try this part of the “trail”. There are ruts all along the road from where trucks or tractors have gotten stuck when it’s wet. This wasn’t the worst of the road, just the worst I could manage to get a photo of without bouncing off the bike. Just outside of Bratislava, we had met a French couple with their two kids in a trailer and a Trail-a-Bike, and I hope they found a way around this section. Just part of the adventure, I guess.
Some of it ended up being kind of pretty, actually, once it smoothed out and got into the shade. Still slow going and rough, though. We continued on to Komárom, which didn’t really make a great impression on us (we probably missed the good parts of the town), so we had lunch and continued on to…
The Hilltop Winehotel and Restaurant. We were pretty tired at the end of Day 3, so we kind of figured we owed it to ourselves. Apart from the steep, winding road up to the hotel, the room, dinner, swimming pool, etc., were a treat.
Minnie Mouse strikes an artistic pose in the pool.
It was the first time for a while we’d been able to get a good view of the Danube, and the views from the hotel were wonderful. Their triple room was booked, so we ended up spending more money than we wanted to, but I wasn’t about to ride back down the road and start looking for budget accommodations. Pretty sure the girls would have killed me, justifiably, if I’d made the suggestion. It was a great break and much needed.
Day 4 eventually found us in Esztergom, pretty shelled. Kind of a neat town, with an interesting butcher shop. I was thinking we could either get to Esztergom and stay there for the night, followed by a long Day 5, or we could push on to Nagymaros/ Visegrád, stay there and cut down on the length of the last day’s ride. The more prudent members of our group thought we should take a train from Esztergom to Vác, so we went across the bridge from Esztergom to Štúrovo, on the Slovakian side of the river and got a train to Vác. Kind of a shame, since it’s where the ride gets pretty again, but it was much the best choice under the circumstances, since we were all pooped.
Staggered into Vác (the train trip was 3.90 euros/person, 7 euros/bike), and wandered around for a bit until we found Fónagy & Walter’s guesthouse. It’s usually described as quirky or kitschy. I loved it. The girls were a little put off by the stuffed fox right outside our bedroom window, but these guys were so nice, and they fed us a serious breakfast the next morning. With coffee. More than just one tiny cup of coffee, too. See if you can get them to take you down into the wine cellar. Really nice folks.