so it’s only taken me almost two months to get to the photos in our bike trip that were taken at the town where we spend the night on sunday, sept. 16th. we had just coasted over a very long bridge over the river and into the tiny town of emmersdorf.
our hotel, the zum schwarzen baren, was lovely. here’s the view out our window.
there were lots of flowers all over the hotel. it was very old, but had been very nicely re-decorated. there was an indoor pool and a whirlpool, which we tried first thing. we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the whirlpool and decided it must be broken, but the pool was nice. empty most of the time, after a couple of older women left.
we ate dinner on their outdoor patio. we were the only ones outside, and our waiter, although he spoke no english, was really friendly. he took our picture and it’s too bad it’s blurry, but you get the idea.
as we sat there, we looked up and somebody was hang-gliding by. this is the first and only hang-glider was saw on our trip.
after a delicious meal, we strolled around a bit. here’s the entrance to the hotel, right next to the patio.
that’s the “baren.”
the place was filled with bear images, including the fancy doorknobs.
we walked around a little bit but it was suddenly way too dark to see. the next morning, though, we found that the tiny town was lovely.
this is the first cemetary we saw in austria. instead of covered with grass, the tops of graves are filled with flowers. it’s really beautiful and i’ve never seen this done here in the US and i don’t know why they don’t.
we found this in somebody’s yard. everybody took such good care of their yards, with flowers and plants and much more interesting than i usually see on walks around here.
this day, monday, was our sixth day of biking. we rode through austrian wine country, the wachau region. it was more beautiful than the sonoma/napa wine country in california. or maybe it just seemed more beautiful because we were on bikes.
picture to follow shortly.
if you have the day off today, i hope you rest. yesterday evening i gave chair massages at the restaurant where my friend jill works. it was an employee appreciation party, and they all really needed massages. most of them seemed to work two jobs, plus many of them had children. i tried to encourage everybody to try to make time to rest. but if you have two jobs and three kids, i guess that’s probably not so realistic. but at least they got massages. on my brand new massage chair, which is quite fabulous.
ok then,
monday grace.