Munich to Luxembourg via Strasbourg

Sat. 8/18:  Left Turkenfeld (suburb of Munich), where Alexandra's sister lives.   About 4 hours later, had my first flat, which looked like a pinch flat (occurs when you hit a bump with an Under-inflated tire).  The leak was on some ridges on the tube, so, the patch was destined to leak. 
All bike shops are closed on Sunday, so getting a new tire or tube was not an option. 
Within 3 hours of heading out from Gunzburg, it was leaking again.  I was about 1/3 of the way to Stuttgart when I decided to head South to Ulm to catch the train.   By the time I got there, the tire was really flat. 
The earliest open bike shop in town opened at 11, precluding any full day of riding, so I hopped another train with the new tire, and spent Monday night in Freudenstadt as scheduled and had some decent German food for dinner. 



a light German dinner in


  Canal de la Marne au Rhin

  

On Tuesday, arrived in Strasbourg, France...  a country that is serious about fine food.

Great to be back in France!!

There are 3 light shows that run nightly in Strasbourg.  The video below is from the one at Notre Dame cathedral.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg, France

Carousel in the square a few blocks from the Cathedral

 with some excellent "dirty dancing"

Along the Marne–Rhine Canal biking from Strasbourg to Sarrebourg

Thursday in Sarrebourg, awoke to rain.  Since the forecast was sketchy for the afternoon, and the rain didn't stop til about 10, I decided to take the 11:30 train to |Metz, and do laundry in the afternoon.

Friday (8/24) arrived in Luxembourg city.  The city festival / fair is going on right across the street from my hotel.  It's huge!

Glad my hotel (Best Western) has a computer that's not "locked down" with that hideous kiosk software, so I could write this blog using Remote Desktop via my computer in Palo Alto.  French keyboards have Q where A is, M where ; is, W where Z is, A where Q is, and the @ sign is accessed by an ALT key +0.  the period and all numbers require shift.  It turns out that when you use remote desktop, the keyboard functions like a US keyboard.  Makes typing the blog much less painful.
It's unlikely I'll find a computer that's this open any time soon, so this may be the last entry for a while.

Getting Ready to Ride

I am in Munich in the lobby of the Hotel Metropol which is a few blocks from Munich Hauptbahnhof.
I just bought a used Giant bicycle.  Finding a used bicycle with a suitable small frame is a challenge in this country of Aryan giants.  Most of the bicycles for sale are 58cm frame size or larger.  My inseam translates into 50cm of smaller.  Fortunately, there was a bike on the German EBAY site I found a few weeks ago.  Since there don't seem to be any short bicyclists, the thing was still there at Haveabike. 
Alexandra and I both went schlepping around to the 2 used bike shops.  I found a suitable rack for the panniers, and a pump at another shop, and assumed I would take it back on Wednesday.   Unfortunately my assumption was incorrect, because Wed. was "assumption day" here in Bavaria (the Catholic part of Germany), so almost all shops were closed.

Long story short, I now have the bike.  The rack's on it, and I'll be ready to roll on Sunday morning.

Click link below for the route plan;

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1k95mH1pxwBwWcjgyZKuaKurpby4YTQV8&usp=sharing

I don't plan to post very often during the bike trip, as composing on the phone is a royal pain.... so check back in a month if you're interested.

My vehicle for the next month

Kandersteg, Oeschinensee, Bonn, Vevey and back to Zurich

Monday 8/6/2018:
A drive from Emmetten to Interlaken, stop for lunch, and to load up on Laderach (best chocolate ever), and we arrived at our lovely hotel in Kandersteg, a bucolic Swiss Alps town in a valley surrounded by mountains.  On our first full day in town, we took the cable car up to Oeschinen Lake, a beautiful Alpine lake surrounded by cliffs and waterfalls.

And lots of cows with bells

We rented a rowboat and did a grand tour of the waterfalls.

Ducks on a log

The next day, another cable car and more magnificent views at Sunbiel ...

Herd of white goats, with full udders, on the top of Sunbiel

The next day, (Thurs 8/9) we headed over to Bonn.  Actually we stayed in Fribourg, which is about 1/2 hr. commuter train from Bonn.  A lot cheaper.. but has its drawbacks.  The first of which most of the restaurants there were closed for summer vacation (from last week of July to last week of August).
The good news is that the heat wave had broken by the time we got down from Kandersteg, so our non-A/C room was just fine.   This hotel tends to be booked by Chinese tour busses, which arrive in the afternoon, and depart in the morning.  The main issue there is their Internet service can't handle the peak load, and it crashes and burns... so I was off-grid for most of the time we stayed there.
So... we schmeid around Bonn for a day, then did a day-trip to Vevey, which is a lovely town on Lake Geneva.  Then next day, we went back to Zurich to

1. resupply the Chocolate (Laderach) 
2. Catch our train back to Munich

Lake Lucerne, and Pilatus mountain

On Friday 8/3 we drove through Lucerne to our hotel in Emmetten, a small town overlooking Lake Lucerne. 

Sunset from our hotel restaurant overlooking Lake Lucerne

The hotel, like most in Switzerland, has no A/C, so our room is sweltering as daytime temps top 90°.  The only ventilation is the balcony door.  No screens.. .so the mosquitos come in.   A less than ideal situation.  There are essentially 2 things to do here :

1. Take a cable car up one of the mountains that overlook the lake
2. Go jump in the lake to cool off

We did some of each.  The high point (literally) of our stay here was the excursion to Mount Pilatus on Saturday.
There are 2 ways (other than hiking) to ascend to the top:

1. Cog Railway up the eastern face.  It's was built in 1890, and is still the steepest cog railway in the world, with a peak gradient of 48°.  It still uses the original track, although the cars were upgraded in the 1930's when the line was electrified.   This is how we went up and down.
2. A cable car from near Lucern ascends the North face.

In the cog railway ascending to the top of Pilatus

The views from the top of the mountain are nothing less than spectacular.  There are lots of hiking trails and even playgrounds for children.  We did what we do best... walked around and then had an excellent lunch at Hotel Pilatus-Kulm. 

Cog railway base station

It was nice and cool up top, with some breeze, but stinking hot at the base... so we found an area along Lake Lucern that we could swim from (with very slippery concrete at the water's edge), and spent the rest of the day there.
On Sunday morning, we took the gondola from Emmetten to Stockhütte.  At first we were going to go up to Niederbauen, where the hang gliders launch from, but the line was too long, so we went for the less youthful option.  The hang gliders land about 300m from our hotel:

After lunch and a short hike around the top of the mountain, we returned to the swimming hole we had found the day before, and spent the rest of the day there.

Zurich - Hot Chocolate and Cool Water

Monday   7/30
The bad news:
Europe has been in the grips of a record-setting heat wave... both in length ( began around 6/25 and is still going as of 8/5), and severity.  Parts of Spain have hit 45°C (113°F).  Here in Switzerland, very few buildings have A/C, since summers are typically mild.  Enter Global Warming... Highs were above 90°F every day since we arrived in Switzerland.  That's the bad news. 

The good news:
Zurich has many public beaches.  Some are free, some have a nominal fee... so most of our days in Zurich were spent swimming in cool water.   Also, there were several Laderach chocolate stores a short walk from our apartment... that's the chocolate part.

This past school year I was the AFS liaison for Alessandra from the Zurich area.  She attended Woodside High in Redwood City,  joined the cheerleaders, and had a fabulous time in the Bay Area.  She arrived back home in late June, and starts school next week... so I invited her to come into town (they live about 20 min away by train) to join us for a beach day at Strandbad Mythenquai on Tuesday.   We spent pretty much the whole day there relaxing, cooling off in the water and talking... then, after all that swimming, we went to old town for a very late lunch / early dinner.

Wed, Aug 1 is Swiss National day and is typically celebrated similarly to July 4 in the US.   We were invited to spend the day with Alessandra's family in Lenzburg.  Lunch was served under a lovely arbor in the back yard covered in grape vines.   Alessandra's extendedfamily was there, including 2 cousins, her aunt, and grandmother. 

Alessandra in the back yard arbor

Alessandra's dad presses the grapes and they make a strong liquor from it, which we, of course, sampled.  Before leaving, Roland, Alessandra's dad gave us some recommendations of what regions in Switzerland to visit... which is largely what we based the rest of our time in Switzerland on.

Aug 1 was also our 25th wedding anniversary.  You could say we did nothing special.. although I would argue that everything we did that day was special.

On Thur we tried Flussbad Au-Höngg, another swimming hole, which is up the  Limmat river, which flows north from Zurichsee.  River.    The park / bathing area is just downstream from a dam.  There's a grassy area with shade trees, changing rooms, showers.  And it's free, and a short trolley ride from downtown.  

Summer in Dubrovnik

On Wed 7/25 we spent most of the day travelling to Dubrovnik.  Apparently Durbrovnik became a wildly popular destination after Game of Thrones became a wildly popular HBO series (we never watched it...) Game of Thrones was filmed on location here.  Now there are Game of Thrones tours, souvenir shops, etc.    After a 4 hour drive that included passage through Bosnia and Herzegovina (that's one country with a compound name) with 2 passport checkpoints, we finally arrived at the Dubrovnik airport to ditch the car and take an Uber back to Old Town Dubrovnik.  No cars are allowed inside the city walls, so we were dropped off outside the Pile gate and walked down to the fountain where our AirBnb hostess met us and walked us about 50m down to the apartment.

Our main outing on Thursday was to the cable car, which takes you up the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik.   A high-priced lunch at the restaurant on the top, and our day was complete enough.

The next day, we took a ferry to Cavtat (promounced "savtat") to have lunch with Jack and Nane, who have a flat overlooking the water there.  There were a lot of huge yachts in the harbor there.  I think this area of Croatia is where the high rollers spend time.  Some of these yachts were so big that they had speedboats on the deck... kind of like an RV towing a smaller car to go around town in.
Jack is quite an accomplished artist, and showed us an apartment full of his creations.

We also paid a visit to the Dubrovnik synagogue.  It's modest, with a small Jewish museum on the lower floor.   Dubrovnik synagogue currently has only 30 members.  See https://www.dubrovnikcity.com/dubrovnik/attractions/synagogue.htm for the history.

Dubrovnik old synagogue

On Saturday, we did the "wall walk" around the top of the Dubrovnik   It was pretty strenuous (lots of steps) and very hot in the morning before a breeze kicked in.

View from the top of the old city wall - ocean side...

Must have dessert

The "Jewish Fountain" .  The first thing you see as you enter the Pile Gate into the Old Town

Sunday was beach day.  We escaped the crowds in Dubrovnik old town and took a bus north to the Lapad area of town.  Most of the beaches up there are associated with hotels.  I chose the Dubrovnik President Hotel, which has a lovely beach.  All beaches here must be accessible to the public.  In return for having a hotel on the beach, the hotel must allow non-guests to use the beach and other facilities for no charge.  They can make money by renting you an umbrella or lounge chair, and selling food / drink, but you are not obligated to buy any of that.  You can come, swim, shower, etc.
The water was cool and clear, and the beach was busy, but no overcrowded like the beaches near the old town.

On Monday, we hit the road again to fly to Zurich.

Krka National Park / Šibenik

7/23 :  Rented car at Zadar airport to drive to Šibenik.  Ostensibly a 1 hour drive, but it took us over
2 hrs including a very interesting stop for lunch in the tiny town of Sopot.

Sopot restaurant "menu" consists of a tour of the "kitchen" which is 3 fire pit rooms for roasting meat

Spongiola resort, our hotel in Šibenik, is on Krapanj island, which I was not aware of when we drove to Šibenik... so Google Maps navigated us to a pier across from the island.  Took a while to locate Eddie, a young guy about my age, who guided us to the resort's parking lot, about 1km away, then drove us back in the big red van to the private ferry to the resort ... about a 5 minute ride across the water.   Our suite was lovely.  2 beds, 2 baths.  Much more than we needed.  Krapanj island is a small island, with not much going on.  A very peaceful place to stay. 
On Tuesday morning we drove to Krka National Park, about 1/2 hr away from where the car was parked.

Skradinski buk waterfall in Krka national park

If we visit Croatia again.. it will be in the off season (probably mid-Sept) and we will devote at least 2 days to explore more of the park.  While the water at the falls was clear and refreshing, there were hoards of people.  Lunch was excellent, fresh grilled trout (caught in the Krka river) at a lovely restaurant below the falls.

Zadar - more crowds, good Italian food

Drove on 7/18 to Zadar.  Our apartment is in the old city, where everyone else is.  1000's of tourists packed into about 1 sq mile.  It's the height of the high season here.

Last night (Thurs) we went down to the Sea Organ, which is a series of pipes which play "music" whose intensity and pitch depend on the wave patterns hitting the wall that which contains the under-ocean chambers that fill up with water, driving the air through the pipes to make sounds like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZj5ID_9TvQ

And, of course, everyone comes to listen to the "music" and watch the sunset.

On Friday, we rented bicycles and biked up to a beach about 5km north of the old city.  Beaches here are generally rocky.  No sand.  The best you can do is pebbles, but where we were was mainly rocks.  It's best to use the rubber shoes that are sold pretty much everywhere as flip flops just slip on the rocks and fall off or fall apart.  The good news is that the water at every beach we've been to in Croatia is crystal clear, and has lots of fish you can see from the docks.  Once you make your way into the water the temperature is perfect and it's a great way to cool off.

Walrus on the rocks

On Saturday, we took an all-day boat tour to Sakura beach which is on Dugi otok (Croatian for "Long Island").   This is a pebble beach with some shade trees and a couple of places to get drinks / food.  The boat ride takes 90 min each way, and then a 10 minute walk up a hill to get to where the bus picks up, then a 10 minute ride across the island to a dirt road to walk down to the beach.  While this is a relatively inexpensive way to get to this remote place, it's not the easiest way.  The rich people go there by speedboat, drop anchor and swim in.

On Sunday, we rented bikes again ( from Dominic... he delivers ) and took a ferry to Preko, a town on Ugljan island, with the ambition to bike down to a pizza place .  Didn't quite make it... turned around after 7km and took next ferry back to Zadar.

Plitvice - Waterfalls and crowds

Plitvice is about a 2.5 hr drive south-south west of Zagreb, on the way to Zadar.  It's a large national park, on the order of Yosemite in scale, but with lots more water.

Lots of little fish everywhere in crystal clear water

We stayed at the Guest House Rustico.  A bucolic setting.  Really clean and quiet!

Zagreb - World Cup Fever

Wed.  7/11
Don't take the train from Budapest to Zagreb.  We arrived at the train station in Budapest at 6:10 AM for our 6:35AM train.  Found out that the train to Zagreb was going to depart from a different station, so we were to take some other train 1 stop to get there.   OK.. We get to that station, and there's no announcement, no instructions, and no conductor who would tell us what track to go to to get to Zagreb.  Then... all of the sudden, people start running (down one set of stairs, then up another... schlepping luggage) to get the train.   Then, we're about 3/4 of the way to Zagreb, and we're told we have to get off the train and wait at this run-down deserted station for another train which would take us the rest of the way.   Again no announcement... etc.
We finally arrived in Zagreb around 3:30 PM, about 3 hours late.   'nuff said.

Meanwhile I'm feeling terrible.  Fever is still there and nothing stays in... not even water.   By Friday I decided to seek medical help.  After some calling around, we went to the pharmacy where I bought imodium (and Alexandra bought shoes) on our arrival day figuring that the pharmacist, who spoke English, would tell us where to go.   We ended up at their equivalent of urgent care / emergency room.  It turns out that emergency room care is free for Croatian citizens, so most everyone goes there for most everything. 

We got excellent care.  I saw a doctor within 15 minutes of arrival (try that in the US) .   They then took a blood sample and started IV fluids.   I was there for a total of 9 hours.  Total cost $130.  Imagine what that would cost in the US (probably $8 to $10K)

That night, Zagreb defeated England in the World Cup and the town began going crazy!. 
On Saturday, we ventured out and wandered around the main town square.   There were lots of drunken Croatians celebrating Zagreb's making it to the finals. 
On Sunday, we went up to the square again for lunch at Capuciner, which is opposite the Cathedral of Zagreb. 

Things were about to get really crazy, as Ban Josip Jelacic (central square) was filling up with fans ready to cheer their team on from a distance. 

Ban Josip Jelacic on his high horse with Croatian Colors draped over

There were so many people coming up for the 5:00 PM game that they shut trolley service down within about a 1km radius, so people had to walk from the central station to get up to the square.  It reminded me of New Year's Eve at Times Square, only drunker.