More Photos of Krakow

The famous fire breathing dragon of Krakow,
and a statue of some mythical creature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel_Dragon

Planty Park encircles almost all of the historical centre and is a lovely place to cool off.

Slovakia and Poland

We headed north out of Budapest and after finding Göd, continued onwards and upwards into the higher ground of northern Hungary. We crossed the border into Slovakia (no queues, no passports needed, nobody there!) and the further north we drove the more appealing the landscape became. Having had 10 nights where we actually paid to stay, something which is a rarity on our travels, we found a lovely quiet, peaceful car park just south of the Tatras mountains.

The weather has changed somewhat over the last few days, we have escaped the constant 30c heat, which seemed to have been with us since well before Amy joined us in Italy, and this has been replaced with 12c and eventually rain this evening. The shorts have been discarded in preference for warmer clothing, but the sun is due to return tomorrow.

Sunday morning was damp, and as we headed east and then north into the Tatras mountains of southern Poland we became engulfed by the cloud, so only had about 200 metres of visibility. By the time we arrived at Zakopane we had escaped the cloud and by late afternoon it was pleasant enough to sit outside with a beer.

Monday morning we ventured into Zakopane centre, which was like Keswick on a Bank Holiday weekend………TIMES FOUR! That was enough to make us do a U turn and head north for 70 miles to Krakow. Just when we were thinking that you can’t do cities in a camper Krakow has rekindled our belief that it can be done! What a beautiful historic centre and not too big that you can’t walk around it in a day, but as we only had an afternoon, we are returning tomorrow and spending a 2^nd night at this motorhome dealer's aire.

I think the pigeons fancied me!

£2.30 a pint in a posh restaurant in the centre of Krakow? 
Show me another European city where you can do that! 
Carlisle excluded.

Budapest

When we joined our first Hungarian motorway a few days back, the road signs made us suspect that we should maybe be paying for the privilege, but there were no toll booths. Having knocked off a few more motorways during our to-ing and fro-ing in and out of the country I thought it was about time we investigated further.

A phone call to the ‘English speaking’ switchboard of Hungary’s ‘charged speedway network’ has limited interest to a person with the attention span of a goldfish, so needless to say we drove 140 miles north to the capital without touching one ‘vignette’ motorway, yes, I’ve done it again, and if we get fined for what we’ve already driven then I’ll plead insanity.

The further north we drove through the country the more it felt like we were coming into a more prosperous environment, a bit like the opposite from England! The south is all farming villages, old tractors and Trabant cars, the north seems to be much further on, the towns and villages are nothing like the south where it’s Hungary’s version of Longtown and Frizington. People are dressed from this millennium, there’s a lot of modern architecture around, like Tesco superstores, a Mercedes factory etc etc, but there’s no escaping the fact that the people from the south are so welcoming.

Here are some photos of our day trip around Buda and Pest:

The Great Synagogue
 Largest in Europe and 2nd largest in the world, seats 3,000 people

House of Terror
Now a museum and memorial to those tortured and murdered
under the communist and fascists regimes

The view from the Citadel with 2 tourists photo bombing

A rather large lunch!

Budapest Castle

Parliament 

University of Technology and Economics

War Museum

and with a tourist to give some idea of scale

Felsőszentmárton, Hungary (text etc)

Monday was quite a tiring day in many ways, not only the 260 mile drive, but the stresses of being somewhere we shouldn’t be and trying to get out of it.

We both finally relaxed into Hungary and really needed the rest that two nights in the same place gives us. Felsőszentmárton is a typical village of this area of Hungary, most people travel by bicycle; everybody seems so friendly shouting “Hello” across the street as they ride past. There are old iron water pumps dotted frequently along the side of the straight streets, all of which seem to still work. The most noticeable difference though is that all the telephone wires and electric cables for the houses (and the transformers) are visible, so it made us think that we were in some village back in England during the war!

It’s strange to say this, but we were actually out of our comfort zone here, not because we are in Hungary, but it’s the first time I think we have had people so close to us. We spend weeks on the road completely happy and comfortable just being the two of us, so it’s strange when we’re in an environment where there are other people all around us. We embraced it, and had a very enjoyable evening with several Dutch and a Belgian.

Serbia

Although the roads we drove along in Hungary are dire, anything over 30mph runs the risk of all the clothes flying off their hangers in the wardrobes, the drive towards Serbia went quite well, until we arrived at the Danube. We expected to drive across a bridge, as led to believe by the satnav, but when we got to the banks of the river we found that actually there wasn’t a road there at all, just a ferry! The map didn’t show any other road crossings in the area, the ticket office didn’t take credit cards and we had no Hungarian forints. We found an ATM in town and returned 15 minutes later and paid our 3,750 fare for the 400 metre crossing, about £11. If that was expensive, at least we could be consoled by the thought that despite spending over 17,000 forints on fuel it worked out at less than £1 a litre.

The police at the border checked the inside of the van to make sure we weren’t smuggling any Brits into Serbia, and then we continued into the country for 20-30 miles until we finally arrived at the amazing oasis of a campsite. The owner, who speaks good English, laughed when I told him of the route we came in on, I used the word ‘route’ rather than ‘road’ as it was like driving through an orchard in places!

Harold and Albert (Serbian style)

The road leading to the campsite

Serbia, Hungary and Romania

Wednesday morning we headed back towards Hungary, the first 60 miles of northern Serbia is a landscape of flat featureless farmland of greens and yellows as far as the eye can see. The queue to get out of Serbia wasn’t so bad but trying to get back into the E.U. was a lot more difficult, I’m sure there’s a joke in their somewhere. Once through the border we headed east towards Romania, Rachel has now started a new hobby of stamp collecting and asks all the border crossing officials who examine our passports to stamp them. The guy at Romania said “No, you’re an EU country, when Brexit is finalised we’ll stamp it”, we had a laugh with him saying that we’ll come back in a few years and he stamped them anyway. The friendliest border crossing guard we’ve come across, most are miserable so-and-so’s!

The almost horizontal drainpipe was a feature of our first Romanian village

Felsoszentmarton, Hungary

Our two night place in Hungary