A disclaimer right at the beginning of the journal today. Keith came up with the subtitle. Men are so predictable. I have to confess to finding it pretty funny myself...gute fahrt means good ride.
We had a quiet and incredibly comfortable night at the Gastehaus Donau. What a neat spot. We met a Romanian couple and their daughter over breakfast. They spoke fluent English and have many friends in both Toronto and Vancouver. It was a fun encounter.
Isn't this a delightful spot? Our room was lovely and we were warmly welcomed.
The first twenty km went by in a blink today. It was such a beautiful ride and we had perfect weather. The Donau is certainly living up to its reputation.
Once on the other side we cruised. The riding surface has consistently been excellent. We stayed on what the Bikeline book calls the left side until we came to the famous S curve in the river, and then took ferry number two to our first coffee and strudel stop. Keith forgot to take a picture of the strudel. Imagine! We met four bike tourers there, two from Rossland and two from Ireland. It took Keith and Theresa about two minutes to realize he worked with her cousin for twenty years. It's a small world!
Helen, this picture is for you. Taken from the other side of the river. I am thinking of sticking my thumb out when one of these goes by to see if the captain will pick me up. This was Viking Cruises.
At this point, fuelled up with carbs and caffeine we really spun the pedals. This led, in part, to the only mistake of the day. We arrived at ferry number three, met a lovely couple on bikes from Frankfurt there, and hopped aboard. Only trouble was, we shouldn't have. Oh well, flexibility is important when bike touring, so, since there are paths on both sides of the river, we just cruised on down, past a Viking Village, until we came to ferry number four and crossed back over.
When ferry number four returned us to the other side of the river, we met three Australians touring together. We rode with them for a number of kilometres and had a good visit.
I love this picture. We exchanged names, but I didn't write them down, and you know what that means. Yup, I have already forgotten. I love this picture, so I hope they check the blog so I can email it to them.
We find it is always best to ignore these when possible, so despite Austria's best efforts to fence us out, we found a way around. It is Saturday, so they weren't working.
Hmmmm. Seems there was a good reason this time. Oh well, you can just see me on the left of the picture, at least conceding a little by walking my bike, but hacking my way around this as well.
We found our hotel with no problem and are back in the room after an explore of the Linz old town. Another beautiful city with a fantastic pedestrian zone. We plan to do more exploration in the morning. We are staying at the Hotel Spitz, and are happy non campers. Another great day. We are so lucky.
This blog thing for me is really quite easy. Just snap a few photos during the day and Kathleen does the rest. Occasionally I am asked for additional input ... a bit of consulting here and there but nothing too onerous.
Today was a great 80 km ride into Linz. The weather was great with a temperature reaching around 24 C. Our typical cruising speed on this level grade is between 22/24 km per hour and as high as 30 kph at times. The higher end was when a cutie passed us on her road bike . I thought lets go - we can draft behind her.
It was fun to meet the Australian/New Zealand trio and a group from BC on a tour to Vienna. We hope to bump into them again in the next few days.
On the navigation side of things I really find the Galileo app with its route recording feature very useful. Here's what it shows me as we cruise down the bike path.
