Our first rest day and I'm glad to sleep in a bit, enjoy a leisurely breakfast knowing that the only thing on our agenda today is laundry and a walk to the old city to see the things my husband has on his bucket list here.
I really don't have a list of things to see and do. I figure we will see interesting things wherever we end up. Some people have a plan and a list that they tick off when they visit a place. I can be like that on some things, if I'm going to a place to do something specific. But for bike tours, it's a little different, because we don't know what each day brings on the bike. On this trip, my main goal was to wait until we got somewhere, look around to see what interests me and then go from there. Usually, the things we do by surprise or unexpectedly turn out to be the best ones. The last bike tour we took in 2018 around the Netherlands found us wandering around every day and one of the best unexpected surprises we had was finding a windmill that was also a museum, getting a tour and being on the exterior catwalk of that windmill when they rotated it as the blades spun. Unplanned and unexpected. I realize I may miss some spectacular things this way but having a list to tick off when I'm somewhere just adds pressure and takes away from the enjoyment of the day for me.
But first on the list is laundry. Easy right? Uh... not so much. It should have been, but it wasn't. You put money into this vending machine type of thing, choose the number of the washing machine you want to use and that is the one you use. I was able to translate the instructions easily but figuring out how and when to set the washing machine cycle was hard. And we screwed up. Why on earth anyone needs clothes to wash for a three-hour cycle is beyond me but that's what we ended up with on the first load. We tried to fix the second load and ended up voiding the wash, shutting down the machine so we couldn't get back to the start point.
I don't know if the owner got some notice on his phone or just happen to come in at that time to remove cash from the machine (I think he got a notification) because he immediately asked us what was wrong. We were very relieved to see him and that he spoke English. We explained what we wanted (the short 40-minute cycle), and he reset the machine for us and didn't charge us for starting a load as we had already put money in for the load we had stopped. That was a relief. The clothes dryers were much easier to figure out.
While we were there, we met an Australian guy who was traveling by bike to Budapest and a lovely, retired couple from the Hamburg area cycling to Vienna. We chatted with the couple, exchanged itineraries, discussed cycling trips in general and agreed to try and meet up on the trail for coffee or lunch at some point. I even took their email and contacted them about getting together in Vienna several days later. Unfortunately, that never happened as they had obligations there. After hearing our tales of our 'moderate' tour through the Czech Republic, they recommended we look into tours along the Rhine River. They assured me it was really flat.
We finally finished laundry, got repacked for the start of our second tour and headed out to look around Passau. We walked a few miles to the old part of the city and had to tour St. Stephen's Cathedral. It became a 'thing' on this tour to make sure we visited every 'Saint Steven/Stephen' structure we came across (that's my husband's name.... without the 'saint'....).
The inside of the cathedrals we saw on both tours was really beautiful. The detailed artwork is incredible. I couldn't stop looking at it.
I was a little grumpy after the walk as it was a hot day, and I probably didn't drink enough water. My husband wanted to walk out on the peninsula that juts out into the Inn and Danube rivers, I believe. We did that and then walked along river for a bit.
We stopped at a cafe off of this little cobblestone side street and had some pizza for dinner. We needed to get back to the hotel for our pre-tour meeting the representative from the tour group at 7:00 pm, per the instructions in the booklet we found in our tour packet. We had picked up our tour packet from the hotel reception but hadn't received any communication from the tour company.
We headed down to the lobby to wait... and wait... and then we were told the lobby was closing at 7. We asked what usually happened and she told us their rep usually met people in the driveway to the garage because they would then go down into the garage to get bicycles assigned. We brought our own bike, so we didn't need that, but I had questions I wanted to ask about the tour. Mainly we had a train ticket and boat ticket with no explanations. Plus, I wanted to talk to them about their phone app, which had its own GPS navigation system, get a feel for how much cash we would need to carry, and where I could and could not expect to use a credit card. I wanted some practical knowledge for this tour.
We waited the in the driveway for 15 minutes and no one showed up. We then sat on our balcony, where we could see part of the driveway and by 7:30, it was clear that no one was coming to meet with us. I was not happy. I emailed the tour company and asked if there was any information we needed to be aware of. I was told there was not. That turned out to be a huge understatement.... at least for me.....
If you want to see more photos, you can go to Instagram, and they are under the handle 7th_decade_redhead.
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")
