Top of Hungary

Another weekend means another trip to Budapest to trade houseguests. Our son was going home, and my brother was arriving so we set up a rendezvous in Budapest for Friday afternoon. We decided to liven up the drive by doing a bold winter ascent of Kekestoto, the highest peak in Hungary. At 1014 m (3326 ft), it's hardly nosebleed territory, but the Hungarians are proud of it, and I'm always up for adding to my collection of country highpoints. We turned off the highway at Gyongyos and drove up into the Matra Hills on a nice winding road. This would have been an excellent ride on the road bike. After 14 km we reached Matrahaza and turned up the final few km to the summit. A few hundred meters from the top we were forced by one of the local tribesmen to leave our trusty steed under his watchful eye (what they call 'parking' in Hungarian) and set out for the summit on foot. There were dangerous snowfields to cross



but we were able to reach the summit cairn without breaking out the ropes or ice axes.


There was a nice view to the north, extending to some snow-covered peaks that were probably the High Tatras on the Slovakia-Poland border. After descending the same route, we drove back down to Gyongyos for lunch. I was looking forward to some gyros, but apparently in Hungarian the word 'gyros' means toyshop. We ended up at a McDonalds clone called Manhattan Burger where I had something called a 'wartburger' - kind of like a hamburger with mushrooms and a slice of lunchmeat on it. Now I remember why I hardly ever eat at fast food restaurants.

We reached our hotel in Pest after only one wrong turn and met up with my brother. We all took the bus downtown to the Buda side of the Danube and walked up to the chain bridge, Budapests most famous landmark. The evening light was just right for taking pictures, so Charles did his photographer thing for a while. Restaurants seemed to be scarce in the downtown area, but we eventually found a decent grill (although the prices were extremely high by our usual Slovak standards).



Breakfast at the hotel the next morning brought new meaning to the word 'mediocre', so we stopped at a highway rest area for espresso and croissants (you can't do that at a rest area in the US). After lunch in Kosice, we finally got back to Presov around 4 PM.