When Robert took us to his house we instantly fell in love with his family, house and lifestyle. Robert is a father to Gasper(11), Sonya(13), Fruzsi(15) and husband to Sylvia. They live in a small town 30km from the Serbia border where they enjoy life next to the Danube in which they swim daily (weather permitting :-) ). This is mostly motivated by Robert as he is a swimming teacher and never misses an opportunity for a dip.
Navigating our way out of Budapest was a little stressful, but we expected that. It was the first in a long time that we were riding alone and it felt like we need to get back into our routine with food and sleeping – it was like it was all new to us again. The novice like feeling returned when we got stuck in thick mud then immediately delayed by yet another puncture and ended up looking for a wild camp quite late on in the day.
Budapest is cool, it's Jonnys number one city! They even have a cool camp-site! We stayed in the well situated 'Bikers camp' close to the Nepliget metro running directly into the city-centre.
Whilst still in Slovakia we ended our day in the border town of Komarno. Our intuition told us to ditch the first camp-site and head across the bridge to Hungary in hope of a better spot.
I should begin this blog with an apology for the recent lack of updates on my behalf. For those who don’t know, we’ve been home now for 6 months and I have only just found the frame of mind in which I feel comfortable to write again.
My brother, Nick, and his girlfriend, Carla, had booked a 3 week holiday to the Philippines to visit Carla's family at the end of January and I'd actually planned a much later arrival to coincide with them. When Carla found out Radka had gone home she realised I'd be alone for Christmas and suggested I should go one month earlier to spend it with her family. I'd set my mind on cycling to Vietnam but decided it would be really nice to meet her family and spend such a long time with them. It turned out to be a great decision :) I spent two months there in total.
So Radka was at home and I flew off to the Philippines for two months to spend time with my sister-in-law's family. Here are some of the cool things I noticed whilst there.