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Tour date: 1-17 June 2005. Total distance: 1400 km.
Bicycle Tour: Eastern Europe (Italy - Slovenia - Croatia - Hungary - Slovakia - Austria - Czech Republic)
Thomas Driemeyer2005-10-16 14:37:51
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cleaned our bicyles with his water hose. The brakes and wheels were packed with mud that was threatening to harden to a brick in the sun.
Soon that road turned into the road we had been planning to use originally, and we had some 20km of beautiful road through fields and forests to Medved'ov. They have a bridge to the Hungarian side there but we had no intention of getting soaked again, so we rode straight through town and on to Garcikovo, where we stayed at the Pension Hostad. There are two hotels, a few restaurants, and a supermarket in Garcikovo, but there is very little to sightsee there. The whole day we had sunny and warm weather, perfect road surfaces except during our mud adventure, level terrain, and very few cars.
After Garcikovo, the road stays as scenic and quiet as before, but even as it joins the main highway to Bratislava there isn't much traffic. Entering Bratislava is easy, we just followed the Centrum signs, but quite boring and ugly. Bratislava isn't known for its beauty and so I was expecting some sort of Kaliningrad, but it has a quite pleasant pedestrian street with a large square at the north end. We had lunch and ice cream there. There is a castle on a hill at the south end of that street, but we didn't stay to visit it. It's quite nice but I suppose a city the size of Bratislava should have more of that kind.
After crossing the large bridge at the castle, using the bicycle ramp and covered walkway, we took the first streer west along the Danube river, and quickly found ourselves on the Danube bike path. The surface isn't perfect but quite ridable with narrow tires, and we got whisked out of the city through the forest without seeing another car. I have never seen such an easy and pleasant way of leaving the downtown of a large city before.
After only 6km we arrived at the Austrian border. Checks were perfunctory as usual, even
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See photographs from:
Slovenia Gallery
,
Slovakia Gallery
,
Italy Gallery
,
Hungary Gallery
,
Czech Republic Gallery
,
Croatia Gallery
,
Austria Gallery
