Budapest to Vienna

For some reason I didn't sleep very well so I was up and at it early and we departed from the Citadella hotel by 08:00. They're busy renovating it so if anyone goes there, hopefully by then the Soviet era plumbing would have been removed.

We were doing fine until I took a wrong turn onto a road which wasn't there according to mabel (the gps with an english accent). After a little bit of driving across the bridge which also wasn't there, mabel plotted us an alternative route which we were following until the road disappeared into the Danube and re-appeared on the other side. We were meant to catch the ferry across which was fine until we saw the ferry split into two while midstream and begin a complicated waltz before it landed safely on our side of the river. I've never seen it before but the ferry is actually a barge and there is a tug boat which pushes and pulls it across the river.

Safely on the other side we continued on our detour but the roads got smaller and smaller until we were driving down this ...

at which point we started ignoring mabel and going on gut feel which eventually got us out of the bundu and back onto semi-decent roads.

Back on the scenic route up the one side of the Danube, we went past a school funfair which we stopped at and had a look around. It was amazing, there were all these activities which would have been a part of everyday life during medieval times. There was archery, sword fighting, throwing stars, falconry, blacksmiths, weaving, spinning, various ball games like coconut shy and the children seemed to be having a whale of a time.


Moving on towards Vienna we were stopped twice by the cops, once to check my drivers license which took a while to find because it was packed away in the luggage. The second time was to check our passports but fortunately all was in order on both occasions and we arrived in Vienna to find a really nice campsite just as it started raining. How is that for timing! We waited a while for a break in the rain which it kindly did before setting up camp and settling down to a good glass of wine. Strange as it may seem, we are actually more comfortable camping than in a hotel in a lot of ways.

The weather here is pretty cold and it's hard to believe that a week or so ago we were hunting for any shade available in Dubrovnik to keep cool; now the sun would be a welcome friend.