Day 1: Holzkirchen to Kreuth

 

In the morning, I bought some Weisswurst at a local butcher, and made it in the hotel room, since the rooms were equipped with a stove, pots, and full dining set. Our plan for the morning was clear: Cynthia would go shop for the remaining bike gear, and I would go visit the train station to see what our options were. The problem was the only place with good weather near the alps would be all the way in Geneva, on the other side of Switzerland. The train ticket promised to be pricey, but worse, the alps near that area was also getting snow and rain! I went to the train station anyway, hoping to meet Alan Wissenberg of Euraide, but the Euraide office was closed and the person manning the Euraide counter looked busy and did not really want to deal with bicycles. He told me Alan was supposed to be in later today, but could not say when. I made up my mind that we would just take the shortest easiest route to Austria and then figure things out from there.

By 11:00am, Cynthia was done with all her shopping, and we got everything ready and checked out of the hotel. Cynthia already had an inner city Partner tageskarte, so all we needed was an "outside the inner city partner" partner tageskarte to get all 5 of us out, but we still needed 4 bike tickets. By the time we arrived at Holzkirchen, it was 2pm, when supermarkets opened and we could have a supermarket lunch.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

After lunch, we took what was for me a familiar route, part of a 100K ride out to Tergensee, Schliersee, and Seehamersee. My thought was that we could ride over to Tergensee that day and then ride over Achenpass to Austria the next day. It was overcast, but the riding was pretty and there was very little wind. The route winds along several farm roads and little towns, and I knew it, we were almost to Tergensee and I now had to deviate from the route I laid down 2 years ago to head into Tergensee instead of Schliersee. "If this is rain give me more of it," said Phil. "Don't jinx us!"

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

We arrived at Tergensee at 4:00pm, which was too early to stop. I visited the tourist information center and they informed us that there was lodging at Kreuth, between Tergensee and the Achenpass, so I made the call to push on. The bike path to Kreuth led us past a bunch of commuting cows and then into a forested bike path. The rain which Phil had summoned started in earnest, but with the tree cover it didn't get us very wet until we got near Kreuth and then the sky really opened up. We headed to the first hotel we saw, but it turned out to be a rest day for them. While we sheltered into the awning of the hotel trying to wait out the rain, the person who told us it was closed called down to the hotel around the corner and claimed some rooms for us.

From Tour of the German Speaking Alps 2010

She provided directions to us and we rolled some 200m down to the lodging, where a garage door was open waiting for our bikes. The rooms turned out to be very nice and the dinner was excellent. By the time dinner was over, the rain had stopped and we could walk around town and admire the gardens.

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