We struggled finding an affordable place to stay in Lubeck. This amazing city is a worthwhile place to explore and we could have stayed longer. It is impossible to see it all and it is a city of much history and beauty. With some misgivings, we succumbed to the lure of the youth hostel. Despite a shared bathroom (with the whole floor) and 2 bunk beds, it seemed so calm and well located. However, as we should have realized, the place was full of many school groups of kids with middle school angst and secondary school rebellion. When they returned from their days’ activities, to put it mildly, the place was a zoo. As a former teacher, Barry found the lack of diligence by the teachers and the behavior of the kids hard to take. Our lasting image was of a group of teachers smoking and huddled in a group across the road watching the chaos ensue. At one point, the teacher in him found its voice and he opened our door to tell the kids that partying outside our door with a boom box was unacceptable. It was quite impressive as they apologized and settled down...for a while. To add insult to injury, this region is like Bavaria in that they add a surcharge of €10 since we are over 27. As Barry said to the clerk, for our advanced age shouldn’t we get a discount? Anyway, suffice it to say that Lubeck Youth Hostel will be the last one of our trip.
And, what were we thinking? Two 60+ people with bad backs trying to use bunk beds with bathroom visits down the hall in the dark. As the expression goes, we are old enough to know better!
Happy to be on our way. Just in case we were feeling nostalgic and might forget that one should not stay in a Youth Hostel during the week,the troupe of smoking teenagers that we had to walk through with our bags reminded us that this is not for us.
Touring the historic streets of Lubeck is amazing, but a visit to this historic bakery Niederegger, the marzipan specialists is a must see. You can learn about marzipan in their free museum and the cafe offers wonderful treats,
Barry was touring the museum in Niederegger and Mary Ellen was watching the bike. As usual many people came up to chat, but this fellow was interesting. A fellow Canadian from St Catherine’s, Ontario, he comes to Europe annually by taking the train to New York and the Queen Mary ship to Hamburg. Today he is heading back to Hamburg to go home. We’d love to try this and avoid airplanes. Also, he is a member of a local cycling club at home...we had lots to talk about.
At times today we have taken secondary roads to avoid the path when it is tough to ride on. Here, the canal route is good and we are enjoying the cooling breezes of the Canal.
The Tourist Office in Molln was great. She found us a room at Hotel Waldlust for a good price including breakfast. We felt a bit like we had walked in to a time warp as the hotel has been run for over 100 years by the same family and little has changed. However, that is not a bad thing for us as our spacious room was filled with character, charm and comfort. Needless to say, there was no wifi, and on that point, they were firm. We like it here.
Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles) Total: 2,630 km (1,633 miles)
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Mike Ayling Mary and I met through youth hostelling and we still use Australian hostels from time to time. You can get private rooms with a double bed and sometimes with en suite.
We were in Canberra a few years back for a tandem weekend with the local vision impaired tandem club (Mike used to ride with a similar programme in Melbourne) and stayed at Canberra YHA hostel.
There was a school group there and the room next to ours was multi bed and it sounded as if the little darlings were jumping off the top bunk in rotation and went on for a very long time. In the morning we bailed up one of the teachers to complain and a short while later a number of the miscreants were brought around to us to apologise.
Mike Reply to this comment 5 years ago
