As written yesterday, Bratislava is the final destination of my bike trip along the Danube of this year because Hungary closes the borders at 1st September for foreigners. Although I already booked a hotel in Györ from 30 to 31 August and I would be within Hungary before the closing of the border, it probably wouldn‘t be good to travel through the country because of all the Corona restrictions.
Today my wife and I enjoyed a day full of Roman archaeology. We started with the museum in Petronell-Carnuntum. They reconstructed various houses and a thermal bath with almost only the resources they had about 1800 years ago, meaning no modern tools. The museum gave the feeling that they had a rather good donator and some parts were already a bit exaggerated.
2km later just before Bad Deutsch-Altenburg was another amphitheatre (we already visited one the day before). It had interesting explanations about everything related to an amphitheatre.
We visited in Bad Deutsch-Altenburg the museum Carnuntinum that contained various found pieces of the ancient Roman city, including the legionary camp and the civilian city. It was very interesting.
In Hainburg we hiked to the beautiful castle ruin Heimenburg that was already visible from far away. It has a wonderful view to the surroundings, including Bratislava.
We crossed the border and reached the next country Slovakia. Our hotel is directly at the Danube and we can even see the river from our window 😀 .
Tomorrow we will sightsee Bratislava and then go back to Wien in the evening. On Monday morning I will head back with the train to Feldkirch.
My trip „Along the Danube“ ends here after 1324km. At least for this year 😉 . I hope I can continue it in the next years in a hopefully Corona-free time.
For all the readers of the blog here: I hope it was interesting and maybe I could motivate some of you to do similar bike tours 🙂 .
Here are some key things I learnt during my trip:
- You see a lot more with the bike than travelling with a car. On the other side, you can not go too far away from your route (i.e. for looking beautiful castles 100km away). But there were most of the time anyway too many things to see 😉 . And don‘t plan too long distances. Sightseeing takes always more time than assumed. I usually planned around 50-70km and in the afternoon I still could decide to go further.
- I took too many clothes with me and probably most people are doing the same the first time. I used only a half of it, since I washed often some pieces in the evening and let them dry during next day on my bicyle rack.
- Make sure your tent is waterproof 😐 . For rainy days I prefered a rain cape instead of a rain jacket. It is maybe not as comfortable to wear, but keeps you dry, also your hands and legs. One very useful thing: shoe covers to keep your shoes dry as well.
- Bicycle repair set: even if you think you never needed it yet, it is better to take it with you.
- Offline maps: Although the bike route was marked very good, some offline maps on my phone helped me a lot of times. Especially if you go and see something slightly away of your original route, it will help. Or to find a hotel. I used the app Komoot, where it gives rather good paths to bike without too much traffic or along large streets. For hotels or restaurants I used sometimes Google Maps as well, but it uses soo much data! Just open it once and you already used 10MB. I used around 50-100MB per day. I bought twice a data package of 1GB.
- Make sure you always have enough water to drink with you. In Switzerland the people are used to refill their bottles at wells. But the wells stop abroad very fast and you have to refill them in restaurants or public toilets (at least in countries like Germany and Austria the water was enough good from there). I had also a water filter with me so that I could even take the water from the Danube, filter and drink it. But I never had to use it because I usually filled my bottles (3l) in the morning at the camping or hotel and its was enough for the day. Also have some food with you. A few times I arrived a bit late at the camping and the camping itself had no restaurant or it was already closed. Then I was happy to have some bread, fruits and chocolate with me 🙂 .
- Look at places to stay over night early enough. Campings have often some defined times, when the reception is open. I usually looked around 15:00 how far I can still drive today and kept 2-3 options to sleep, i.e. I also looked short at possible hotels in case that the camping should be closed. Because of Corona it was most of the time no problem to find a place, but I can imagine that in other years it is the contrary and to book earlier is more important.
If you have questions or comments feel free to add it here or write a mail at: ropeko(at)yahoo.de
Stay healthy, Roger