Day Two, July 7: Cologne to Munich, Germany. Miles driven: 714km/443 miles
Spent most of the day in the car yearning to wear a ride a bike in a dirndl through the Rhine Valley. One of the prettiest roads I have ever seen, B42 follows the Rhine River, a UNESCO World heritage site full of castles and vineyards. I ate a lot of cheese. Got to Munich to late to have dinner so had to beg the bartender for bread.
Day Three, July 8: Munich to Bratislava, Slovakia. Miles driven: 544km/338 miles
I feel a little sorry for charming Bratislava, the not-as-cool cousin of Prague. Only a few hours from Vienna, Budapest and Prauge, little Bratislava gets overshadowed by some of Europe’s greatest cities. My journalist friend Michael Jordan lived here for years and every time I talked to him, he was in a coffee shop. Makes sense. I got to meet up with Patti McCracken who drove 12 minutes over from Austria with a broken headlight just to say hello. Had more cheese.
Day Four, July 9: Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Miles driven (I haven’t checked yet).
In Budapest, we spent the day at the Széchenyi Medicinal Bath in City Park. A huge complex of 15 indoor and outdoor pools fed by two hot springs in a gorgeous 1913 yellow building, the bath is the largest in Europe. The pools range from 26-38 degrees C (79-100 F) and are supposed to cure all kinds of problems such as gout, calcium deficiency, kidney stones and “chronic catarrh of the inhaling organs.” On Saturday it’s open till 3am with a DJ. Since we were there on a Tuesday we didn’t get to see the pools at night, but we did see old Hungarian men playing chess while chest-deep in 100-degree water and plenty of interesting swimsuits. This is my new favorite place and I want to come back to Budapest just to spend the day here again. Here a photo from the bath’s website.
Last night we had a rally meetup/pub crawl with Sophie from Go Help and a few of the teams including the hilarious Brighton Bandits, fun-loving Team Fly Down from Italy, On the Road….Again from Tasmania , the Wanderers and LeoYLu, a Dutch-Spanish couple. We ended taking Unicum shots up in a sprawling bar that seemed to be in an abandoned building missing part of the roof and whose patrons were doing pushups on the floor. Romania tomorrow….