I don't have any exact cycling stats because we still hadn't figured out the app yet. My explanation from the previous day's post was learned after we completed day eight's ride from Niederranna 3 to Linz, Austria. It was roughly 40 miles with a steep hill (according to Google Maps) and a ride into a city. I don't have anything overly exciting or dramatic to share about this leg of our Danube tour. I actually had to look at our photos to remember what happened that day. It's probably a good thing it was an uneventful day after the horrendous time we had the previous day.
I think we needed a drama-free day....
It was really windy, though. I remember grinding through the wind wondering if it would ever stop.
Our ride started out trying to get to the start of the day's GPS route (remember we were still using the tour company's GPS as we hadn't figured out the better way to navigate yet. The starting point of today's ride was five miles from our hotel and on the other side of the Danube. This required another six Euros for the ferry to cross back over the Danube (I think the ferry pilot knew us well by this point).
We rode along the Danube for some time and at one point, found ourselves cycling through a park along the Danube and I decided I wanted to spend an obscene amount of money for a cappuccino for myself and an orange juice for my husband (who does not drink hot drinks at all). It also gave us the opportunity to use a toilet/water closet, which seemed to be in short supply. It was right before we had to climb up to a bridge to cross over to the other side of the Danube which required some side street riding in this town to get to the cycle path on the correct side of the bridge. This is a view of the park and where we had coffee from the top of the bridge:
It was a beautiful day and from the other side of the bridge, we got one of our two glimpses of the Alps on this trip:
You can see the snow-covered peaks in the background.
We rode through all kinds of places. Fields, forests and little towns with narrow side streets. Of course, there was some climbing (there always seems to be some):
One thing I do not enjoy, almost as much as crowded city cycling with lots of cars, is suburban cycling when you are riding on a cycle path that is parallel to a highway or a busy boulevard. It's noisy, smelly from car exhaust, and it can be boring as there is not much to look at. As we approached Linz, it seemed like we were riding through the suburbs for a long time. We were also behind three women cyclists who were cycling fast enough but I felt like we were chasing them or something. It was also getting very warm, and the sun was beating down on us. It was a long day, too. I did take some suburban type photos out of boredom:
Our route finally got us back along the Danube where we rode for a few miles before having to ride another bridge back over the Danube to get to our hotel in Linz. As soon as we got on the other side of the bridge, we were directed back down along the Danube into this park, which is where we got turned around and headed in the wrong direction. The tour company's GPS frustrated the hell out of me. We stopped, regrouped (which is code for my husband saying, let me see it.... ha ha) and then worked our way over to the city street where we did some more lovely city cycling. However, this cycling was nice because there were separate cycling paths and they were very wide. This city was clearly bicycle-friendly.
By the time we arrived at our hotel. I was ready to be done with cycling. Surprisingly, our hotel was a Marriott Courtyard, the only American-style hotel we stayed at our entire time on both bicycle tours. When we got to our room, our TV had a welcome message on it, personalized with our names, and our bed was made up American style (which I was sad to see having gotten used to the no-top-sheet-plus-duvet thing.)
All I could focus on was getting a shower, food and then maybe a nap. I had a really great hamburger at the hotel and then crashed for a few hours in our room. I think the headwind that day, the previous days' stress and extra miles we had ridden wore us out. At least our luggage showed up on time.
We were a very long walk from anything interesting to see in this part of Linz and I was not going to take a five-mile jaunt back over the river. I didn't have it in me.
Instead, that night, we walked a few blocks (and I mean only a few) to grab dinner, took a different route back to the hotel and decided to have a dessert pastry at this cafe we saw, stopped at a Spar, which is like a convenience store, so I could get some horrendously expensive Peanut M&Ms to carry on the bike as a snack, and then went back to the hotel.
I have no idea what we missed seeing in Linz, Austria. And you know what? I'm okay with that.
It was at some point later that night that I became determined to figure out the tour company's cycling tour app because I was tired of getting lost trying to find our hotel. It just didn't make sense to me that we could not get GPS directions to our hotel. It seemed really silly to create an app that would not do this, especially since most people were going to be staying at the same hotels. And that's when I found the "Points of Interest" list in the tour app and saw our hotel on that list. Ah ha....!!!!
Why I wasn't told we could navigate directly to the hotel, I'll never know....
No, it was not intuitive.... at all.
Well, that was one problem solved. We also started checking our luggage tag app a few times a day to see where our luggage was to make sure it was on its way to us, unlike the first day of our Danube cycling tour where it got forgotten.
Tomorrow is another day and onward we ride.....
If you would like to read more about our three week-long bicycle tour starting in Prague, Czech Republic and ending in Budapest, Hungary, here are the links to our entire adventure:
Day Zero in Prague (Weather or not I wanted to)
Day One.... The Hills are Alive .... and I am not
Day Two....Vistas and Grocery Stores (and an angry cashier)
Day Three.... Are we Hiking or Cycling? (Today it was hard to tell....)
Day Four.....My Favorite Place on the Entire Tour (and a nod to the Beer of Kings along the way)
Day Four and a Half (I couldn't do it justice in one post)
Day 5 ...... Will This Day Ever End???
Day Six... Pausing in Passau (AKA This is the way we wash our clothes.....I think....)
Day Seven - Off down the Danube (If we'd only had that meeting.....)
Day Eight - We needed a day like today.....
Day Ten Cycling the Danube - Cloudy With a Shot of Melk
Day Eleven Cycling the Danube... A rare short mileage day!
Day Twelve Cycling the Danube - Aahhhh Vienna!!!
Day 13 - Our Day in Vienna (It's not supposed to be this HOT)
Day 14: Vienna to Petronell-Carnuntum (Apparently, I can speak some Italian.....)
Day 15 Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia (Rain and broken Chain...)
Day 16 Bratislava, Slovakia to Gyor, Hungary (There's a snake in the grass....)
Day 18: Komarno, Slovakia to Esztergom, Hungary (A tense tummy and a tense moment......)
Day 19: Esztergom to Budapest, Hungary (A long ride for the last day)
Day 20: A Day in Budapest (We had to see the last of the "Stevens/Stephens")
