Where's Grayleen?

Upon entering Slovakia, we abandoned the open flatness of Hungary and quickly found ourselves with burning quads as we rode between small towns nestled in the valleys of the Tatras Mountains. It was worth it though– hills definitely make for beautiful scenery. We generally rode 50-60 km per day. While that may not sound like that much to those cyclists among you, I assure you, with fully loaded bikes and some hefty hills, we were beat by the end of the day and easily slept 10 hours per night. My quads are now HUGE! ; )

Esztergom, Hungary and the Danube from Štúrovo, Slovakia

A few noteworthy tidbits about Slovakia:

• The adorable old town centers, with beautiful old castles and churches, were frequently in the shadow of huge and hideous communist-era concrete block apartment buildings. It was quite a contrast and we saw it in town after town.
• Four out of five restaurants were pizza joints. The Slovakians love them some pizza (and we thought the pizza was pretty bad, to be honest). Who knew?
• To indicate the number “one”, Slovakians use their thumb rather than their index finger. To indicate “two”, they use their thumb plus their index finger. Until we got this down, we frequently accidentally ordered two items instead of one, since seeing our index finger up clearly means two to the average Slovakian. (Gray would no doubt appreciate me mentioning here that he got this down way faster than me.)
• Slovakian is a very difficult language to understand and pronounce to our American ears and tongues, and very few people spoke English. Lots of charades!
• Slovakians eat a lot of ice cream– the most popular spot in every town was the ice cream shop. Walking around, it seemed like a quarter of the people we saw were in the middle of eating an ice cream cone. Ironically, Slovakia also had one of the thinner populations we have seen on our trip. Now, before you rush off to eat some ice cream as part of your new Slovakian diet plan, I will note that a Slovakian-size serving of ice cream is much, much smaller than an American-size serving. And, other than ice cream, Slovakians don’t seem to eat out a lot.
• In my experience, most cultures have a societal expectation that you don’t drink alcoholic beverages before noon. Sometimes there are exclusions to the rule, like our Sunday brunch classics of Mimosas and Bloody Marys. However, back home we don’t generally see people having a beer with breakfast. Not true in Slovakia! Beer and other alcoholic beverages are a stand-by breakfast choice. (For those who are wondering, no, we did not follow the “when in Rome…” advice on this one.)

View from a Hilltop in Kremnica

In other news, we celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary in Slovakia, and to get mushy on you for just a sec, I have to say that I’m still so in love with Gray. This past year together has been so special and has really reinforced that we are great together. I feel truly fortunate that we have been able to travel together and experience such amazing things together over the past months.

More photos from Slovakia here.