Leaving Innsbruck we began our journey to Salzburg by first abandoning the official bike route along the Inns River given its tendency to get swallowed up by construction or to disappear completely. Instead we opted to take some lovely country roads north of the river (and the major highway). We lucked into a local cycling race day in the town of Schwaz and took in the action, as you can see in the photos below.
This segment of our journey we will remember as marked by stays at en-route, rural-ish gasthaus accommodations in places like Munster and Rosenheim - the ones along the side of country roads, loaded with flower pots on the balconies and windows, and equipped with restaurants of good ol' home cooking. It will also mark the start of Peter's-flat-tires, the first of which occurred approximately 3km outside of Worgl. We pulled into a sheep farmer's laneway, just in time to see him sheer his first sheep of the afternoon. Aside from this entertainment, we did our best to change the tire (which went well) and then struggled to pump it up with the f*&@-ing little pumps we had brought along. They do NOT work - we pumped and pumped and then pumped some more. Then we abandoned the activity and Peter chose to run the bike (Alice rode hers really slowly) into Worgl where quickly we came upon a cycle shop. Problem solved and we rode on to Rosenheim (and another quaint gasthaus).
A highlight of this segment, and indeed our european travels in general, was our two day stint in Salzburg. What a beautiful city! Alice was thrilled to take in a four hour (yes, a four hour) Sound of Music tour while Peter wandered the city; we also took in a local beer hall (one of the largest in the country apparently) at St. Augustine's Church (in the basement) where we indulged in huge steins of beer and delicious tapas-like goodies.
And who could resist the traditional marionette staging of the Sound of Music - it was hokey yet a sight to see and Alice now has her fill of the SoM soundtrack for many years to come. Yes the hills are alive!
Peter managed to fit in one last climb up Gaisberg, one of the highest peaks around the city - a one kilometre climb over nine kilometres of distance, including a super steep 20% grade finale to the very tip top.
Alice opted to take in the Modern Art Gallery and buy herself a new outfit (three months of the same garb is starting to get to us). Amazing how bright and shiny new one feels with a new pair of pants :)
Salzburg easily entered into our top five cities of our trip and we highly recommend it!
And as a final note to this blog, we have been taken aback by the number of retail stores selling (for real) traditional costumes of leiderhosen for men and drindls for women, as well as the number of Austrians wearing them on a daily basis. People are very traditional, nationalistic in their dress - it is very surprising to see. We cannot imagine what would be a similar fashion in Canada?!
Innsbruck to Salzburg grading:
- weather - B (chilly mornings but sunny afternoons - solid cycling weather)
- landscape - B+ (Salzburg pushes up this grade definitely but Innsbruck and rides in the area were picturesque)
- cycling challenge - moderate
- physical and emotional response - C (we were definitely meandering, cycling fatique, landscape let-down after the alps and focuses was starting to turn towards Czech rather than our original cycling intensity)
- food - B+ (still enjoying home comfort foods from gasthauses)
- accommodations - B+ (loving our accommodation in the gasthaus settings and city settings were nice)
- other people - n/a (we met absolutely no one - seriously just the two of us - is there anybody out there?!)
- entertainment - A (great - Sound of Music overload, Salzburg cultural sites, birthday party celebration in Munster complete with local musical sensation on keyboard playing traditional Austrian sing-a-long songs and telling bad jokes
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