Day 11: July 18, 2025

We woke up in Budapest.

We were able to get in the exercise class before breakfast.

Here is what it looked like. 

Here is proof that we did it and I didn't just go up and take a picture of the setup.

Here is Vicky, the Wellness Coach, doing stretches we could only approximate.

Here's the room with the pool cover removed. The water was bathtub warm. I thought it might feel good to soak in there, but the only other time I went up there it was full of tourists!

 The gym wasn't really an option either.

Our first group activity was a walking tour. I was going to skip it to save my knees for the ride later but all the body parts felt intact.

On one of our previous city walks, I asked the tour guide about social services and the countries we were in had much more extensive safety nets than we have in the US. So it was always a little surprising to see pan handlers. It was also interesting to see pan handlers in these countries assuming this position.

I don't know what to say about this one.

We took a bus away from the port for our final ride. 

Every morning, the tour guides put a little something on our handlebars. Usually it was Haribo gummy bears.

All week, we passed walls with graffiti. Some of it was pretty good. This was not the best example, but it was hard to get a well-composed picture when trying to keep up with the boys.

Rather than shooting while riding, I stopped for this one. 

Since school was out, a lot of kids were at sports camps. While these courts were the size of pickleball courts, the kids had paddles with holes in them. I read a NYT article about a sport that was similar to pickleball and had become popular in Europe because a couple of tennis pros liked it and built courts in their backyards. Future Olympic sport?

Today's ride had sections of gravel and beat up roads. I was able to take these pictures because the road surface wouldn't throw me off the bike.

When we finished, it was time to strip the bikes of our personal stuff and say goodbye, Here's the "after" version.

Ride stats: https://www.strava.com/activities/15169393410, 12 miles

Every day, they take the batteries off the ebikes and load them on the trailer along with the road bikes and hybrids. Natalia lifted ebikes on the trailer same as Damian. I would probably throw out my back.

I mentioned earlier that VBT has a lot of "people" doing isolated tasks. There is a person whose job it is to drive the bikes back to the warehouse. Then there's another person at the warehouse who cleans them for the next tour. The tour guides don't have to do all of this work behind the scenes.

We had lunch in Szentendre. The town was populated by Serbians.

The cook (owner?) at our restaurant gave a short cooking demonstration of goulash (pronounced "gouyash"). He made a nice salad with falafel (a traditional Hungarian dish - ha!) for me.

He had passable English!

We explored the town after lunch and wandered into a functioning church. Two clergy came in through the front door singing and proceeded to the front. We thought it would be best to leave at that point.

This guy demonstrated his artwork in front of us.

The town was geared for tourism, including international tourists. The guy in the picture above asked me if I was from China and showed me a handout written in Chinese in case that would bridge the language divide better than English. Little did he know that I speak English pretty well. (Inside joke about TSA.)

When we passed this alley, I asked Walter to go to the top of the stairs for a picture and he obliged.

We had another bus ride back to the port to get back on the ship. Another nap.

We had a private VBT farewell reception in the late afternoon at the front of the boat. 

We reminisced about our favorite parts of the tour. Mike talked about our first ride. I delivered my usual joke about sociological research.

After dinner, there were some Hungarian dance activities, but I stayed in to finish the Vienna post.

When it was dark, the captain sailed the boat up and down the river to view the Budapest evening lights.