June 26th: Tergensee to Schliersee

 This time, we managed to leave a little earlier: 9:33. Eschewing the bike route, we took the main road all the way back to Gmund where we gave the kids 10 minutes at the zipline before following the bike route to Hausham.

Despite the earlier start, it was quite warm by the time we left on the bike route and the route immediately began climbing steeply. I confirmed with various cyclists going the other way that we were on the route to Schliersee, and they all said "OK, kein problem."

The road was shaded, and I was very pleased with it --- until it degenerated into dirt fire roads, and then became very steep. On no less than 2 occasions did I have to stop, ask Bowen and Boen to get off, push the bike to the summit, park the bike, turn around, go back and pick up Boen, take him to the summit, and then go back down for Bowen. I noticed that all the cyclists I saw on the route had e-bikes, and there were warning signs about how steep it was to become.

This would have been fun if the descent was good, but the descent was also a dirt road! While it was well within my ability to handle at this point (I'd done much tougher descending on the way to Garmisch), it was frustrating not to get back any of the energy I'd put into the climb!

Our arrival into the Schliersee Seehotel hotel, however, was great. Not only was there easy parking for Xiaoqin's e-bike without needing to separate the battery and haul it up the stairs (we could charge in place), our check-in was immediate, and the swimming pool looked awesome.

After lunch, I showered the kids, took them to the swimming pool, and had them swim until they complained about the cold! Then I took them back upstairs, and then headed over to the Schliersee train station. At this point, we were committed to going to Salzburg, so I needed to book train tickets on a train that would take bikes. Long distance bike reservations can fill up, and you need an international bike ticket as well to go from Germany/Austria into Switzerland, so I needed a Deutsche Bahn ticket office with real people.

Alas, Schliersee's train station was too small to have a real ticket office, but the tourist information center told me that there was one at Prien Am Chiemsee, our likely next destination. I fired off an e-mail to Alan Wissenberg in case he could help. And then headed back to the hotel for another round of swimming with the kids, this time, dipping in the lake proper. I also ordered the hotel's half pension for both Xiaoqin and I, figuring that the huge discount for the fixed menu would be sufficient for both kids to feed off our plates.

The dinner was utterly fantastic, though it was hot, with the setting sun shining directly on our backs. After dinner, nobody felt like doing more swimming and it was a french-style dinner, finishing at 9:00pm, so we went back to our room and slept.