Day 56:Waldshut to Gailingen, Germany: Dropped in to Switzerland for lunch and then back again for tea - Grampies on the Go - Again! Summer 2012 - CycleBlaze
Day 56:Waldshut to Gailingen, Germany: Dropped in to Switzerland for lunch and then back again for tea
The facilities were so good at Waldshut, we were hoping for rain today so we would have an excuse to just hang around the showers, rec room, and restaurant.
At Waldshut camping, all tiled interiors, washers, dryers, hair dryers, etc. etc
Unfortunately, though variable, the weather was OK, and we headed out. We have decided to shift our day a bit, getting up between 5 and 6 and never heading out later than 8. We have found that we need 10 hours out on the bikes to net out 6 hours of actually pedalling (as opposed to looking at stuff, stopping to take a drink or goof off or study confusing road signs or eat lunch). And we need the 6 hours to achieve the 70 km needed to hit the next camping. After all that we need time to set up the tent, cook supper, and write this darn blog. It's also a good idea to sleep sometime! We sure are short on time for retired people on vacation!
Our theme for today continues with heading up the Rhine, through villages and countryside, on the way to the Bodensee. The countryside is just plain gorgeous, with a mixture of crops (mostly corn and wheat) and views of forest and the River. The villages have houses of exceptional quality construction, floods of flowers in window boxes and everywhere else, what we see as "Bavarian" style architecture, and everything neat and organized.
We are wondering about the relative lack of old buildings and quaint town centres, whether new or old. We suspect the War might be implicated in this somehow, but it is not clear quite how. Comments?
The other big thing in our day was the Rhine Falls, an impressive feature on the Rhine near Shaufhausen. Not only was this impressive to look at, but since our German friends Marius and Sandra had mentioned it at a time when we had no idea what they were talking about, it was a thrill to actually be there.
Finally, despite leaving in theory lots of time to find camping, we were still may 8 km from a known spot, in Switzerland (at Stein am Rhein, I think). So we took the advice of a passing couple and just set up in a Rhine-side park. Since this is Germany, the park has a restaurant, kids swimming pools and play areas, showers, and every other thing one could wish for. We put our tent up near a vineyard by the park, so overall its a pretty swell spot. We think we are supposed to put some money in a machine to "park" here, but not only are we generally dumb Canadians but we honestly can not make head nor tails of the machine instructions. If we could figure it out, we think the cost would be 2 Euros!
With that, I leave you to look at these captioned photos. I'm off to watch Big Bang Theory on the cell phone!
We needed to carefully avoid these guys on the path.
Bakeries are not too hard to find. Unlike French ones, there is not much standardization about what they have on offer and quality is variable. However, all have coffee!
Prices were pretty high (Toblerone was way cheaper at the Pound Store in London) and we think the Euro to Swiss Franc exchange was pretty bad (though need to check it sometime)
This lady saw us looking lost, pulled over, and though she spoke only German, gave us detailed instructions. After trying out her instructions and getting lost again!!! we found a nice man back along the route we had entered the town on. He also gave us complicated instructions, which we only attempted to follow for a few minutes before Dodie found a back road leading to a hill leading to more back roads and...the right signposted path!!! Yay Dodie.
Edelweiss based jewellery. Edelweiss featured in the Sound of Music, but some Swiss people I talked to had never heard of the movie or Julie Andrews. Maybe because the setting was actually Austrian?
