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.