2025 Tour Aotearoa videos!

 Finally getting around to uploading videos of the 2025 Tour Aotearoa!

2025 Tour Aotearoa, Part 1.  Days 1-14

2025 Tour Aotearoa, Part 2.  Days 15-30

Bonus - 2025 Tour Aotearoa post ride.  Stewart Island and riding around Queenstown

Reflections on the Prague to Budapest Ride

Statistics:

Total Days: 25

Ride Days (some short): 15

Miles Ridden: 676.2

Longest Ride Day: 67 miles

Shortest Ride Day: 19.7 miles

Total Climbing: 27994’

Most Climbing in a Day: 4449’ from Cesky Krumlov to Nove Hrady

Ferry Rides: 1

Escalator Rides: 2

Miles walked / ridden on cobblestones: So many!

Walking Tours: 6 (Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Telc, Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest)

Highlights:

• Meeting up with Sunil and Donna in Prague, friends who happened to be on a trip to the Czech Repulic at the same time we were there.  We met at the astronomical clock, had dinner on the main square, hearing about their travels and catching up, then walked the Charles Bridge — a great first evening in Czechia!
• Riding into medieval town centers with the stonework, historic buildings, statues, and fountains
• Walking tours through the old town centers, hearing about history and art and architecture
• Art Galleries: the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, the Museo Antonini in Vienna, and the Lobkowicz Palace in Prague all had beautiful art collections
• Meeting other cyclists on tour, hearing about their rides and sharing about ours.  Although eurovelo 6 which we rode from Vienna to Budapest is an extremely popular touring route, we didn’t chat much with other cyclists. A lot of cyclists appeared to be day riders, and everybody is on the move.
• Riding out of the forest in southern Czechia and finding ourselves in wine country with huge bunches of grapes on all the vines, then happening onto a winery that evening and being given a tasting even though we are cyclists who have no way of carrying wine and wouldn’t be buying more than a bottle
• The night boat tour in Budapest was very touristy, but with good reason.  We had perfect weather, and it was beautiful to see the city lights on both sides of the Danube
• Happening upon festivals where we could listen to local bands, eat some local food, and feel like we were a little bit off the tourist track
• Going bowling in the basement of our hotel in Tabor.  We saw a few other bowling alleys advertised in hotels, though we didn’t visit them.  Maybe it’s common in Czechia?
• Exploring some of the smaller towns like Gyor and Estergom which were surprise gems
• Spending an afternoon at the Thermal Pools in Budapest — a fun change of pace

Our ride from Prague to Budapest was intended to be made up of easier cycling days with more time out of the saddle for sightseeing, and our trip hit the mark for us. Leaving home the camping equipment, the water filter, and only carrying 2 liters of water and light snacks at any time meant that our bikes were light, and riding was easy.  We travelled in September when most students are back in school, and there aren’t as many tourists out (though there were plenty). We were lucky with the weather.  Most of the days where rain was predicted, it only sprinkled and the downpours were at night.

In the Czech Republic, we were on bike paths or rural roads with very low traffic.  Once we reached the Danube near Vienna, we were on separated bike paths or marked bike lanes for almost all of our ride, and the ride was so flat that our main elevation gains seemed to be on bridges.

Our route combined the Czech Greenways routes with Eurovelo 6.  We spliced together the main Prague-Vienna backbone with the Roseberg Heritage Greenway and the Crafts and Beliefs Greenway.  We had to figure out our own side route to Telc on the “Crafts and Beliefs Greenway” since we couldn’t find a downloadable gpx route.  The EV6 runs on both sides of the Danube, and we put together a route that used a little of each.  Our resulting route worked great most of the time. The gpx points were far apart in places (point reduction), cutting corners across fields and through city blocks.  This made our bike computers think we had wandered off route, necessitating the use of our map app to figure out which way to go.  For the most part this was straightforward.

We booked hotels a couple of days in advance using google maps and booking dot com.  We had to choose a nearby town on two different nights, and we learned to book farther ahead for the weekends, but overall everything went ridiculously smoothly, other than the airlines gobbling up our boxes which required a lot of tape to repair.  It was a great trip.

Prague - Last Day of the Trip

We had one day in Prague before our flight home. It was raining in the morning and predicted to rain all day. The first thing we did after breakfast was pack our bikes. We count ourselves lucky that the hotel kept our boxes for us. We visited a local bike shop at the start of the trip when we purchased chain lube and air cartridges, and they had no bike boxes. It seemed like finding boxes would have been difficult, and getting them to the hotel in the rain it would have been unfun.

Ed had to make repairs to his bike box. One end was badly chewed up on the flight over. Spare cardboard and a lot of packing tape patched it up. We gave the rest of our chain lube (prohibited on flights) to a man from Israel we met on the train who was about to start a cycling adventure of his own.  We left our air cartridges in the small garage for the next cyclists.  While we were packing we ran into an Austrian couple who were gathering their bikes from the garage to take the train for a day rather than ride in the rain. After we packed our bikes and grabbed our duffel bag we were set for the airport the next day.

We had planned a walking tour of the little town side of Prague, but it was so wet and cold that we took a tram over and toured inside a palace. There were some good paintings, antique musical instruments, and original music scores from Beethoven and Mozart. Much had been looted and recovered and many of the buildings we saw had been rebuilt after multiple wars. 

We went to a warm cafe for lunch, then walked through the castle complex and another art gallery (less good), then we hopped a tram to return to our hotel. There were lots of tour groups out in the rain.

We had a quiet dinner in a cafe in the back of the Globe Bookstore, close to our hotel. Our airport ride comes at 9am.

Train from Budapest to Prague

Hotel: Mosaic Design Hotel

Our train departed at 7:30. We wanted to make sure we found the right platform and could load our bikes in plenty of time, so we packed up early and covered the half mile or so to the station. We spent some time reading the travel boards with Google translate, but boarding turned out to be easy, and our bikes with bags were easy to hang in our reserved spaces on the train. We were able to get coffee and croissants from a kiosk at the station well before the train left. 

The train was supposed to arrive to Prague around 2:15, so it would be a long ride, but we could get up and stretch and walk around a little. For the stretch to Bratislava, a cyclist from Israel was sitting opposite us. He was taking the train to Bratislava and riding back to Budapest where he would meet his family for a further vacation. We compared bikepacking notes and gave him our recommendations. He had travelled quite a bit around the world, and was an interesting conversationalist, so time passed quickly until he got off at Bratislava. We never exchanged names, but we wished him a good journey.

After Bratislava, we went to the crowded dining car, but never got food due to miscommunication with the waitress.  Communication has been surprisingly easy on this trip, so we were probably due for a miss. We returned to our seats and had our packed chips and cookies instead.

We arrived in Prague around 3pm, a little delayed, but all was good. We wheeled our bikes thru the train station, up some stairs, down an escalator. The ride to our hotel was short. Traffic was a little crazy, but after a few weeks of riding in the area it wasn’t too challenging. At our hotel we put our bikes in the garage, and we were happy to see that our bike boxes were still there. Getting a new bike box in Prague seems like it would be extremely challenging, so having boxes makes onward travel easy, even the one that was quite chewed up on our way over. 

After the assortment of hotels we’ve stayed on during this trip, we could appreciate how charming the Mosaic Design House is: comfortable, well located, nicely furnished, a good cafe and attached restaurant… We feel lucky to have found this place.

We had dinner in the QQ Asian Kitchen attached to the hotel, an assortment of appetizers and dishes similar to our dinner three weeks ago and equally good. Then we called it a night. 

Budapest Rest Day 2

For our second day exploring Budapest, we went to the Budapest side of the river to see the sights. We walked up the castle hill and went into the Hungarian national gallery that is housed in part of the castle. The collections were so good that we ended up staying for more than two hours. First we saw a temporary gallery of art nouveau posters in Hungary and beyond. Then we saw impressionist paintings, 19th century works, works by Hungarian painters, sculptures… There was more to take in than we possibly could in one visit.

After leaving the gallery, we took a walking tour. There is so much history and so much interesting architecture to see. We took a brief break to share a funnel cake (cinnamon sugar, decadent), then we finished our tour and headed back across the river. We took a brief detour to see the shoes on the Danube bank, an art installation honoring victims of a WWII massacre. 

We walked to a festive outdoor Mexican restaurant for dinner near the opera neighborhood, not far from our hotel. It was fun to be far from home and try a cuisine from close to home. Then we called it a night. 

Budapest Rest Day 1

 After breakfast in our hotel, we went to the train station to buy train tickets for our return to Prague. We knew a separate ticket was needed for bikes, but the web site said no tickets were available either tomorrow or the next day, a little concerning as we need to get back. At the station it was no problem getting two tickets to Prague with bikes, so we had two full days to explore Budapest.

We purchased a 24 hour all-transport ticket and took the metro down towards the river where we took a walking tour of the Pest side of Budapest. The architecture is amazing and extensive. Much is rebuilt after WWII, and some still has bullet holes or cannon balls in the facades. Mid tour we stopped for apple strudel which our guide claimed originates in Budapest. It was surprising to find statues of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush among the historical and artistic sculptures downtown. Most of the history is much older than those.

The day was hot. We returned to the hotel and did laundry at a nearby laundromat, and we finished booking our Prague hotel and airport transfer for the end of our trip as we waited. 

After a late pizza lunch, we rented towels and took the metro to the Szechenyi Thermal Baths, a spa housed in an ornate, hundred year old, neo-baroque building. After changing and stowing our street clothes in our respective, maze-like locker rooms, we met at the outdoor courtyard. In addition to the lap pool and hot pool, there was a tepid pool in the coutrtyard about 4’ deep with a donut shaped divider in the center that you could enter on one side. A strong current swirled in the donut shape and people packed in and walked/floated in circles. We never found out if the moving people created the current or vice versa, but we let ourselves be swept around in a circle with other laughing guests for a while. After some time in the outdoor area, where a few hundred people relaxed, sunned, and swam, we explored the indoor rooms housing pools of varied temperatures, aroma saunas (peppermint or cedar), and a salt sauna (not hot but very salty). There were even beer baths though we didn’t explore them. We finished with another swim, enjoying a change of pace from cycling and sightseeing.

Esztergom to Budapest

 Ride day 14: 55.3 miles, 1089’ climbing

Lodging:  Hotel Medos

We had a very nice breakfast at our hotel in Esztergom.  Part of what makes the determination of very nice is the coffee, and it was a good Americano.

After breakfast we readied the bikes and set off back across the bridge from the day before and out of town towards Budapest.

We rode about 30 miles on some roads shared with cars and on the Eurovelo bike path along grassy fields and trees, stopping along the way for a snack at a Coop grocery.  Then we arrived at an option in the town of Vac to take a ferry to a large island in the middle of the Danube or we could continue along the south/west side of River.  As luck would have it the ferry was just finishing loading, and we got aboard as the last passengers a minute before the ferry departed.  The whole trip to the island took maybe 5 minutes.

We crossed to the west side of the island, looking for a place to have lunch and stumbled upon a craft fair in a field with music and food.  We parked our bikes and went in, it felt like a wholly local event, and we got some lemonades and some mutton sandwiches which were a little questionable in quality. But the bread and lemonade were great.

After lunch we continued on and got closer to Budapest traveling on a nice path that got more and more populated with other rider and pedestrians.  The Sunday afternoon pedestrians here don’t really care much about the bikers or pay much attention to where they are going or who they might be blocking, so things got quite slow for a bit.  After a stop for a Coke at a cafe along the path, we made our way into Budapest, crossing the Danube, and onto streets to our hotel.  The traffic was occasionally intense, but helmetless scooter riders didn’t stop or hesitate in the face of cars, and we followed.  Directions got confusing and stressful, but we made it successfully. Our hotel faces a small park which is a quiet corner in the city.

After showering, we headed out for an evening boat tour on the Danube.  We decided to take the metro (subway).  The ticket system is a bit confusing, we purchased tickets at a kiosk but it never printed actual tickets, and we were never asked for tickets. The boat was one of those large tour boats, but we were able to get a seat on the upper deck in the cool air.  As night fell and the city lit up it was quite beautiful to see. The weather was perfect, and views were memorable. Budapest was full of people enjoying the evening on a Sunday, and it extended over many parts of the city.

After the boat ride, we grabbed dinner at an outside table in an area right off the Danube where lots of people were wandering about or eating too.  Then it was back to the hotel after a long day. Budapest is very charming. While there are a lot of tourists here, it doesn’t feel like a theme park the way Vienna does. We look forward to exploring more.