Slovakia...

As we approached southern Poland the hills began to get bigger and turned to mountains as we got to the Slovakia boarder.  The route through northern to central Slovakia was quite beautiful - mountains, creeks and streams and every so often we would pass by a castle up on a peak or hillside overlooking a small town or village.  Slovakia has over 300 castles, some preserved - but many are in ruin.  We got to see both yesterday.  We were also riding through ski country and passed by several ski towns.  The day could have been perfect, but the weather did not cooperate and we pretty much got wet all afternoon.  The other drawback of the rain is not being able to take advantage of the twisty mountain roads which become very slick when wet.  Getting even the slightest bit aggressive and the rear tire begins to step out.  

It was beginning to get dark so we found a roadside hotel/cafe as the road was slipping down into the foothills.  The cafe had an Italian theme and featured pizza - which we had not had much luck with in other countries.  The saying is that there is no bad pizza - only pizza and good pizza.  But with pizza you just have an understanding of what is supposed to be like so are often times disappointed when it doesn't meet that expectation - which happened in pretty much every country we tried.  We found we were better off sticking to the local dishes for that particular country so there is no expectation - but sometimes when you see a familiar food group like pizza, you just have to try.  So we got the pizza and it was GOOD pizza - finally.

This morning we are changing plans due to bad weather in Hungary.  We were going to head south to Budapest but the forecast is for severe torrential rains - not ideal riding conditions.  We will instead head into Austria and stay in Vienna where the forecast is only for light rain.   

Cool castle overlooking the village.

Closer shot of the castle.

Slick roads.

Cool little place we stayed last night.