which will be filled with much activity.
today, though, i’m pretty sure i’m not getting far from the new red leather chair.
i did take mollie for a walk, and she was sufficiently delighted.
ok, like i promised, more photos of our austria bike trip. the last time i wrote, it was about tuesday, september…what? it was the seventh day of our trip, a tuesday. we were sure it was going to rain, but it literally only rained about one drop. we had to ride through a field that day, one that was clearly marked with giant white arrrows that they’d painted right there on the field.
we got to the town of stockerau and were worried that the hotel wasn’t going to be so great, because it had been bought by best western. it’s called the best western drei konigshof, here’s the link if you’re dying to see it. three kings
we biked into stockerau and did only a little bit of trying to figure out where exactly the hotel might be, and we found it without too much tension. and it was a GREAT place. old, well-kept, and they had a giant golden lab that wandered all around the lobby. our room wasn’t quite ready when we got there so we sat in the lobby bar and had a drink.
our room…it was pretty big, and i wish kevin had taken a photo, because the bed looked kind of odd, and then we realized it was a water bed. why a water bed? there was a large display on the nightstand, with lots of water bed brochures so clearly they were advertising the beds. it was one of those very very watery water beds, but nice to sleep in once we stopped rolling all around.
the room also had a little raised portion next to the window along the wall, it was like having a stage in the room. there were steps leading up to the stage. we took a little walk around town (everything was already closed) but it really looked like rain, so we went back to our room and sat on the stage looking out the window. and then the rain came, and it was nice that we were warm and dry.
we had a delicious dinner there in the hotel dining room; when we got there we were the only ones in the room, except the dog wandered in a couple of times which i thought was great but the owners made him leave. they served us wine from the owners’ recent wedding, and it was also delicious. i had a big plate of some kind of giant sauteed mushrooms; they were kind of yellow in color and i’ve never seen them before. did i write down the name of them? yes, i’m sure, it’s somewhere…
at breakfast the next morning, there was a little sign on our table with our room number and it said “fam. hughes” and “guten morgen” and we took a picture but it’s very blurry but here it is anyway. i’m sure i kept the sign, but once again, where might it be?
this was the very last day of biking, and it looked like it was a short distance to vienna. so for the only time, we decided to take a detour. 5 km northwest of the town of Korneuburg (korneuburg was 11 km from stockerau, where we started in the morning) was a castle called the Kreuzenstein castle. in our book it said it was destroyed by the Swedish armies, and rebuilt as a typical 15th century castle in 1879, using original parts collected from throughout europe.
i had some guidebook somewhere that said it was like a crazy disney-style castle, not to be missed. so we decided not to miss it, since we’d whizzed past plenty of other “don’t miss” places on our ride.
we rode out of stockerau, and this is the bridge we’d crossed over the day before.
we got to korneuburg with the wind at our backs, and it was a strong wind, but then we had to turn back into the wind to get to the castle. this was ok, if a little chilly. but then we got to the little town where the castle was located, and we could see the castle way…way…way…up.
way up. i rode as hard as i could up the first leg of the climb, but then i couldn’t ride any more.
we weren’t sure if there was an easier way to climb the mountain to the castle, and the bike route signs had disappeared. we did see a really funny sight, though – we passed a row of houses, and a giant dog was lying on the roof of one of them. he just watched us as we rode past. unfortunately kevin didn’t take a photo, but i did videotape it, so someday, maybe in the next five years, when i edit a video of the trip, you can see it. but of course you’ll have forgotten all about it by then.
anyway, up the hill…here’s a glimpse of the top of the castle.
we pushed up, riding and then walking, and then we finally had to just walk up the rest of the way. a large road led up to the castle, but luckily we saw no vehicles. here’s a shot up close.
they were about to start a tour, although there weren’t more than a few cars in the huge parking lot. we figured that since we’d struggle so much to get up there, we should take the tour. there was a guy in a booth at the entrance next to the moat. he took our money and we entered the grounds.
after about six or seven of us were assembled, the guy taking the tickets got out of his booth, entered the grounds, and shut and locked the mammoth gate behind him. hmm.
was it just a one-guy operation, this whole sprawling castle? we didn’t know, because the man spoke no english.
we walked around the inner courtyard and it was really cool…but the man was talking, and no english was being spoken.
but still it was very impressive.
and then he took us inside. we weren’t allowed to take any photos or video, but i can’t recall how we know this since no english was spoken.
first we went into a room with lots of swords and stuff. lots and lots of them. it was interesting, but the guy was relating things and people were laughing a little and interacting and i was feeling very left out. but it was still ok.
and then we went into the kitchen. more old stuff, more talking, no english. lots and lots of talking.
and then we went into another room. and another. and through halls and into other rooms. all very interesting, or at least for the first few minutes in each room, but the explanations and clearly uproarious anecdotes got really really long. and it started to get chilly, since it was a castle.
i started muttering under my breath, and deeply sighing, and wandering around each room as the guy continued to go on and on and on. was it never going to end? maybe not. i started to hate him, and to hate all the other people on the tour, all the german-speaking people who could take part in the lively discussions.
and since we kept going through one hall after another, twisting and turning, it was impossible to figure out how much more torture i’d have to endure.
finally, we reached the last room. it was kind of odd, because even though the rooms were all full of old furniture, there were some strange little touches, like a couple of manequins standing in one room. they were clearly there to show the attire worn back then, but the mannequins looked like they were from the 50’s, and one of them was only wearing a jacket and no pants.
i imagined that this guy owned the castle, but didn’t make enough money doing tours so he couldn’t afford to keep the place up, and he had to start selling stuff off, the like mannequin’s pants.
as we were leaving, one of the other people on the tour asked us (in english) if we’d understood any of the tour. no, we said. that’s too bad, said the girl, he’s the owner’s brother he was telling us all kinds interesting things about the history of the place.
i stomped out. i think at this point i decided i was going to learn a lot of languages so this would never happen to me again.
by this time i was hungry and cold, so we sat at the outdoor cafe outside of the castle and i had a large hot chocolate. the view was spectacular and it was a sunny day and the hot chocolate was good, so my mood improved a lot.
not to mention the fact that we’d get to coast all the way down the hill.
we got back on the trail, and rode onto the island, the donauinsel, leading into vienna. off in the distance we could see the city, and it looked nothing like the old city i’d envisioned.
the island was great because there were no car allowed. every once in a while there was a picnic table, and we started looking for one with a good view so we could stop and have some lunch, but they were all occupied. we finally found one with no view, but we were glad to stop.
at this point we had a bunch of vienna maps, and we figured out how many bridges we needed to pass before crossing the river into vienna. we had the option of leaving our bikes at a hotel near the river, or we could ride all the way to the hotel we were going to stay at. we decided to ride all the way; we’d come this far, we might as well.
we started up one bridge and quickly realized it was the wrong one, no big deal. we continued on and came the the bridge and even though it was a huge bridge going into a huge city, we rode on the level of bridge that was strictly for bikes and pedestrians. not a problem. getting to our hotel probably wouldn’t be bad. we also saw that all the new-looking skyscrapers we’d seen were on the other side of the river, not in vienna.
this is what the river looked like as we got off the bridge.
as we got into the city it was the very beginning of rush hour. we were able to continue riding on the bike path, it was always clearly marked, but the traffic started getting heavy. there weren’t many other bikers on the path, and the ones that were riding were clearly commuters who did the ride all the time. none wore helmets, and all whizzed by us.
on and on we rode, stopping a lot in order to look at the map again to make sure we were going the right way.
finally we got to the huge street that the hotel was on, and the traffic clogged the street. there didn’t seem to be any room to ride on the bike path, so we decided to get off and walk.
we started walking and it was like new york city on a busy afternoon. wall-to-wall people, nobody on bikes, and it was way too crowded to be there.
we saw a break in the traffic and headed back out to the street. a bus followed us, but it didn’t run us over at all.
we continued on and finally came to the side street where we turned into the hotel. it felt like it took us forever to make it there, and it was definitely the most challenging part of the whole ride. we had thought about keeping our bikes to ride when we were in vienna because i’d read that it was a very bike-friendly city, but we were glad to leave our bikes in the hotel parking garage. we emptied out our packs and climbed off the bikes and didn’t look back.
when we’d arrived in vienna at the beginning of the trip to get on a train to start our ride, we’d seen a hotel that said HOTEL MERCURE which was the name of our hotel, and it was right next to a place that said SEX SHOP. so i’d been worried about what our hotel might be like.
it turned out that our hotel was a different hotel mercure, not next to a sex shop at all. it was a nice place, very big, but our room was very small. here’s our view.
we were so happy that we made it alive to the hotel, so tired from our harrowing last bit of riding. we had two days, thursday and friday, to see as much of vienna as we could. i’d been doing too much researching and had a list of about 30 things i wanted to see.
but wednesday night we relaxed.
ok then,
grace.