{"id":4163,"date":"2024-05-19T19:31:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T23:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/?p=4163"},"modified":"2024-07-18T19:37:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T23:37:12","slug":"sunday-may-19-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/sunday-may-19-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, May 19, 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a looong day! My longest biking so far, by just a little. Our general plan at the beginning of the day was that we would cross from Komarno in Slovakia, south across the bridge over the Danube to Komaron in Hungary to see the Monostor Fortress, and bike to Esztergom, Hungary, former capital of Hungary. We succeeded, but it was not the direct route you might think. (More to come. Off to find dinner.)<\/p>\n

A tiny bit of history. The extremely powerful Austrian Habsburg dynasty ruled a portion of what is now Hungary, starting in the mid-1500s and eventually claimed all of it. In 1848, there was a Hungarian war for independence. They compromised and it became the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918, when Hungary became its own nation.<\/p>\n

For many centuries, the location of Komarom, Hungary, was strategically important. Between 1850 and 1871 (after the war for Hungarian independence), Hungary completed this huge fortress, Monostor. They had a great little movie (with English subtitles) explaining how clever it was for defense, with inner and outer rings, with interior walls facing each other (for shooting invading enemies). At any rate, it was very strong, but after it was completed, it really wasn\u2019t used that way – more for training and storage.<\/p>\n

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After wandering around there for an hour or so, Rick and I headed out on the Hungarian side with a key stop being a bathroom. (The whole bathroom thing here is such a racket – very few of them, and often charge .50 – 1 Euro to use!) So, we eventually made it to what showed up on the map as a restroom, and it turned out to be located at a ferry, which had not been on the map!<\/p>\n

So, we took it back to the Slovakian side.
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A note on Slovakia vs Hungary. Slovakian homes seem fairly modest, but mostly well kept up. My impression was that Hungary had more shabby, box-like houses and buildings with less well kept yards and structures.
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\nThere were signs of the old communist era too, such as the art on this building.
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\nDuring our rides (for several days), we have seen lots of slugs and snails. (Sadly, I caused the demise of a couple.) Here is a survivor.
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\nAlso saw lots of wild poppies along the roadsides, and one entire field of them!
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Anyway, Rick made a good call for us to move back to the Slovakian side of the river. The bike trail on that side was great! Big and smooth, running atop a flood control levee, with greenways on either side. No cars. And few bikers, pedestrians, and roller bladers.
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\nBut bugs. Lots of bugs. Stuck in the sunscreen.
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At one point, the official path veered off the straight line, going up, across and back down. We thought it would save time to take the short cut straight across.<\/p>\n

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\nWe eventually made it to civilization again, but no, we did not save any time. But we didn\u2019t run into any soldiers with machine guns! Just an abandoned factory and rail yard (what we had assumed from the map was an active train station), and lots of very old and unmaintained paths.
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(Civilization)
\nAt long last, we could see our destination in the distance – the basilica at Esztergom on the Hungarian side! We crossed the bridge back to Hungary.<\/p>\n

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Photos from the streets of Esztergom, before and after dark.
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\nTonight, we are staying in a hostel. I would say it\u2019s just ok. But it will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a looong day! My longest biking so far, by just a little. Our general plan at the beginning of the day was that we would cross from Komarno in Slovakia, south across the bridge over the Danube to Komaron in Hungary to see the Monostor Fortress, and bike to Esztergom, Hungary, former capital … Continue reading “Sunday, May 19, 2024”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4195,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163\/revisions\/4195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}