Well, it turns out that little hill climb we did yesterday to the castle was a good warm up for what was on the agenda today: We found ourselves in the mountains and put in our biggest up (and down) day ever. We climbed 757 meters today and reached 27.7% incline at one point. I had no idea it was going to be this mountainous on the donau, it was absolutely beautiful. Wait till you see the pictures!
The temperature this day was HOT. Up to 39 while moving. Never less than 35 for most of the day.
Well there are some disadvantages to camping in a free campground. For one thing we really didn't have any access to electricity or a place to work on the blog. The bathrooms were pretty dirty etc. and we had some yahoos that came in around midnight and carried on talking loudly until about 2:30 AM. One of them kept singing "La la la, la la la, Figaro, Figaro" over and over again. They sounded like nice happy guys but were obviously a little drunk. No one seemed to want to mess with them so we just waited for them to finally crash. In the morning, a French woman and I made kicking motions at their tent which was between our tents and laughed about it. We don't think they came by bike, so when the city official came around in the morning he was handing out tickets to any cars in the parking area. Hopefully they got a good one :)
Erika located a laundromat and she took the laundry to get it started while I packed up everything else. There was also a farmers market going on so we were pretty willing to take our time getting out of town. While at the laundromat, I plugged the batteries in to get them topped up a bit and we had some breakfast from the market.
A picture of the pool area outside where we were yesterday afternoon. This area of the pool was, obviously, outside. It had several stations where water under pressure would target different areas of your body to give you a wonderful massage. For a couple of older cyclists, it was a dream!
This shows just a very small portion of the grassy area of the park. In the morning it was quite empty but last evening it was full of people visiting, relaxing and enjoying the sun.
This little statue of pigs really appealed to me. I love how there are on the roof of the house that is partly underwater. They are stacked inversely to limit who get wet feet!
Old stone buildings. Amazing to think that these were constructed using basic tools and no machinery. I wonder how many of our wood frame homes in Canada will still be standing in 500 years.
Although it was getting pretty hot by this time. The trail wanted us to by pass this town but Erika wanted to see what was there. We discovered a lovely town center full of half timbered buildings and locals enjoying lunch. We decided it looked like a good idea.
followed by a great schnitzel. This time of year the mushrooms known as pfipherling (unsure how to spell and do not know the English translation) become part of local cuisine. We love them and seek out local dishes that use them. Marvin loves his schnitzel so this was idea for him.
This little restaurant was off of the track a bit, but we had a great meal and inside it was very cute. We were filling our water bottles when I went inside for this picture
Bench of the Day! occurs when a structure for holding water shows up. You may have noticed that in this head the bench of the day must be in the shade.
We had stopped at a couple of places along the way looking for accommodation. First, at a hunting lodge turned into a camping area for youth groups. They offered to let us put our tent with the group area but we thought maybe we would press on. We checked out another town but didn't find anything that wasn't over a hundred euros. So we went on to Hausen im Tal which we knew had a campground and quite a few other accommodations. We had a look at the campground and they had space for us but it was going to be in broad sunlight and the day was so hot that we thought surely we could find a zimmer of some kind, even if we had to pay 80 euros. We were pretty bagged, even though at the time we didn't realize how much up and down we had done and how hot it had really been. (That just shows how beautiful it was and how much we are loving this area)
We went up the hill into the neighborhoods where there were signs indicating a zimmer or two. We went all the way up a street and couldn't find it, then on the way back down I spotted the little sign, and it indicated it was a 3 star B&B. We though "Oh this will be too expensive" Erika went in and discovered they were asking 60 euros for a full suite, so cool it felt air conditioned, breakfast included. We figured we had died and gone to heaven.
They really were wonderful, did everything they could to make our stay perfect. They were friendly and interested and interesting. Their son, who was away, spent quite a bit of time in Canada and we hope he (and they) will come visit us in the future.
