From Porto to Budapest and back

Is there a better way to travel than by car? Of course not. The independence, the rhythm, the comfort, the space are things you don’t find in any other mode of transport.
Of course the cost is important and perhaps it’s not cheap.
There’s also the details varying from person to person. I like even the packaging of suitcases, sacs and all the small things to take on a trip.

To prepare things in advance, to define the road, the goal of the trip, the cities to stay in and visit, also the alternate routes in case something goes wrong and you have to change the timetable or get back sooner than preview. I decided to drive in the morning till an interesting city then stop to visit it, have dinner at a restaurant and rest till next day.

I’m pretty sure the best area to live would be in the middle of a continent so it would be easier to drive to different areas. Not my case, though.

A few years ago it was worse because we didn’t have all the international highways or motorways as we have now. The secondary roads are much more scenic but it takes ages to go somewhere. So I defined the trip mainly with highways and a small amount of secondary roads. Also now we do not need a lot of different maps - paper maps, that is - I just downloaded and installed the maps I was going to need in my GPS or Satnav, my Nokia E75. At least I thought so - more on this later - I also had a Europe Map in paper just in case.

And there always is a reason, an objective. The objective was to pick my younger daughter who was studying in Budapest, Hungary for a year and was coming back home. So it was me and my wife from Porto to Budapest and me, my wife and my daughter on the way back.