It is probably not the hostel's fault, but after a night in 'Hostel Blues' I couldn't say I would stay there again. The dorms are in apartments with a central section which people hang about in. The occupants of our room came in, in the middle of the night and assumed we all wanted to hear their long conversation. Then when we went down to breakfast the kitchen sinks were full of dirty dishes and someone had scrawled offensive graffiti all over the blackboards. I know we are older, but sometimes you think you are sharing with a bunch of five year olds.
Heading out we did some shopping in Tescos (yes they are in Slovakia as well!) and then set off for the Hungarian border. The signposting couldn't be described as brilliant, we made it out of Bratislava without any trouble along an old main road, which was excellent. It was afterwards that I took us on a little detour. To be fair the Slovakians probably want you to stay in Slovakia, whereas we wanted to go to Hungary. The sign pointing towards Hungary was in a peculiar position only visible from the opposite direction. It has to be said though that if I had paid more attention to the map then we wouldn't have missed it. I was just too excited at actually seeing a direction sign.
Unsure what we were to expect at the Hungarian border, we stuck to the official crossing point. We may as well have not bothered as like every border before, it was abandoned. Which was a shame as we could have saved ourselves some distance by going another way.
Making our way along the main road, we managed to get ourselves on the right route and almost immediately came across a Eurovelo sign. Thankful to see a route sign we followed it and immediately started heading north west. Now our geography may not be brilliant, but we were fairly sure we wanted to be going south east. On a plus point we saw our first horse and cart of eastern Europe. Giving up on the sign we went back the way we had come and trusted to our map and compass.
We travelled through several small villages and only missed a few turnings along the way. Having had no faith in the signs so far it was with some trepidation that we were directed onto an off road section. For a while the signs were fine, but it was only our trusty compass and some guess work that got us back on to the road.
As soon as we reached the spa town of Lipot the signing was excellent and we followed a well marked route all the way to Györ. Debs had found us an excellent hotel to stay in which was right on our route in to town.
Hotel Révész is cyclist friendly and the girl on reception couldn't do enough to help us. She even helped carry our many bags up to the room, plus she spoke excellent English.
A quick shower later and we walked into the town centre to have a look around before the light faded. If we had to pick a first Hungarian town to stop in we couldn't have picked a nicer one. The streets are full of lovely buildings and it had a pleasant vibrant atmosphere. The only shame was that our map and guide book that we had been given was only in Hungarian. Had we more time we would probably have visited the local thermal baths but as we are planning to camp beside some tomorrow we gave them a miss.
Back at the hotel we had a nice meal in the restaurant and then settled in for an early night.
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