Greetings from Budapest!

Today we drove 350 miles from Czech to Budapest, via Slovakia. The
motorways in Czech were pretty hard going, being made up mostly with
paved concrete so we had to drop our speed down. We'd like to have
explored a bit more of Czech but there is pleanty of time for that! We
were thankful that the roads in Slovakia were tarmac and we were able to
make up our lost time. We stopped at a Tesco in Slovkia to stock up on
essentials (beer, cured meat, olives, cheese!) before crossing the
border into Hungary where we bought another vignette - can hardly see
out of the windscreen now for them!

No pictures of Budapest until the next blog post unfortunatly as we were to busy navigating the
traffic (I'll be sure to get some pictures on the way out!) and the
directions for the campsite were a bit vague... the campsite is on the
street that it says it is but its entrance is down the next street
(http://www.hallercamping.hu/).

Tomorrow we'll be getting the tram into Budapest and will report back
with pictures, we're sat outside the van with some food, it's been about
30 during the day and now its got to be 18 or so with a cool breeze.
More tomorrow!

Prague...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say that Prague far exceeded our expectations. We spent over 10 hours walking around all the sights and there were so many nice places to see that it was a hard to pick just a hand full of pictures for this blog.

Our first trip was to the Castle which rewarded us with fantastic views over the city for our hard slog up cobbled streets and endless steps. Then we walked across Charles Bridge which got busier as we crossed it a couple of times later on in the day.

The Old Town is fantastic and there  was a market in the Old Town square. Two rules for any city traveler 1.) Eat the street food – it's what the locals eat and gives you a proper  taste for the country and 2.) Put down the guide book once every so  often and get lost. We found all sorts of little festivals talking part in the side streets as well as markets selling fresh produce (I'm not sure what those hollow doughnuts are called, but they are lovely!) and beer at 30kc a liter. We then walked around the Petrin Hill to get a better view of the city. In fact we went everywhere on the map with the exception of the Jewish Cemetery which didn't really appeal.

Today we are making our way to Budapest, I think we managed to take in everything we wanted in Prague and the idea is to have a few days to chill out in Slovenia. I was going to meet up with our guys in Prague today but I've been told that the roads in Hungary aren't great and we need to allow as much time as possible.

One thing is certain about  Prague though – we'll be back!

Road to Prague

 

The drive to Prague was steady going and we made good time. We pulled over to get our Vignette and once we set off again the roads were pretty rough compared to those in Germany. The roads on the approach to the campsite were pretty poor and we were bouncing in and out of the grooves created by the lorries. The final approach looked like something from the 1970's, on one side of the island is old seats and buildings which look like they are something to do with boat races and on the other side between the island and the mainland are houseboats which people were building. We arrived at the campsite about 4:30 (50.05521, 14.41321).

Despite initial concerns the campsite was clean and tidy and reception helpful and friendly and spoke good English (just as well as the only Czech words I can remember are for special occasions only!) and was
clean and tidy with good views - although communal showers!. They did however sell beer at 15kc a bottle (less than 50p!)

The campsite is on an island (seriously!) but does however have great links to Prague, a bus and a tram right outside. We need to take the number 14 tomorrow and a 24 hour ticket costs just £3.50.

We were joined in the evening buy a double cab Land Rover with a fold out tend on the back. Two lads had just been to Bosnia and Croatia and were stopping at Budapest and Prague on the way home – now that sounds like a proper adventure!

Just over halfway to Prague

 

 

Last night we got off the Ferry and made our way towards Aire in Oostend
(51.22279, 2.92339) which was situated next to a lake. We managed to get
a space next to a Mercedes Sprinter and got our heads down for the
night. We woke about 10am and set about having some breakfast. I opened
the blindes to find a Hymer parked on the other side of us with our wing
mirrors nearly touching... not ideal... just about managed to squeeze it
out in front of a crowed of Belgians...

Today we drove 350 miles to an aire in Aschaffenburg (49.97835, 9.11565)
which is situated on a river with great views of the castle. Sophie did
all the driving today and managed 30.5MPG, not sure that I'll be able to
repeat that tomorrow!

Tomorrow we will be driving the remainder of the way to Prague, but hope
to have time to spend a few days in Germany on the way back. Might go
and explore some of the town in the morning depending on the weather,
it's pretty here about 25c and its 9pm at night!
Not much else to report... looking forward to getting into bed!

All Aboard!

 

Sometimes things just keep going wrong. It started last night when our
TomTom wouldn't load up and I couldn't get the eastern europe maps
uploaded onto it. Ryan and Mel (www.doyourdream.co.uk) sent me a set
through (thanks guys!) but after messing and realising that our model
only had 1Gb memory so not enough for UK and EU maps we bit the bullet
and got a new Sat Nav.

The drive down to Dover in the 694 was great, everything was really
light compared to our Suntor and how did we ever live without cruise
control!? We found the difference between going 55 and 65 looks to be
about 100 miles in a tank... looks like we'll be keeping the speed down!
About 1M longer then our Suntor too but much more steady being a low line!
Once in port we had a bit of an incident with some gas isolation valves
which saw us leaving our place in the que and returning straight away.

So here we are, got an hour earlier ferry then the one we had booked on
(this one was £88, the one we booked was £35, go figure!).
Sophie and I have positioned ourself in the middle of the ferry - it
looks a bit windy! First stop, Belgium to get some well deserved shut
eye and tomorrow on to Germany. Watch this space! :)

Here we go again!

So the adventure starts again. Last year Sophie and I gave up our jobs and went travelling around Europe. This year we’re going to try and cram in as much as we can into 18 days. In a CI 694 camper van we will be making a bee-line for Prague and then as many other places as we can fit in along the way.

The first days or two will be made up by travelling but once we get over to Prague the rest of the places aren’t far away. We have a comprehensive itinerary due to the tight timescales, something we didn’t have on our last trip. I’m not going to post that here though, where is the fun in that!

Once we return, I will develop europebycamper.com to provide information on travelling Europe in a camper van – without bias towards a particular book or camper rental as seems to be the case with most of the other sites out there.