July 3rd: Kappl to Galtur

 

We made way too much breakfast and had a hard time eating it all. We had paid for our stay in cash the night before, so only had to leave our keys behind, put luggage on our bikes and tried to ride off. This was a short term failure as the way was blocked by a giant vehicle taking up the entire road. In fact, a neighbor had come to ask if the car in front of the house could be moved --- since it wasn't our car, there wasn't much we could do. 

We picked a route that would try to make use of our climb the day before, paralleling the main road as much as possible before dropping down to the main road to minimize elevation lost. This was just a conceit as the road went up and down in parallel to the main road so we gained nothing. Nevertheless, it was traffic free and the road dumped us out near Ischgl on a bike path! 

In Ischgl, the bike path ended and the road resumed its climb, bypassing many tunnels that were only used in winter. As we approached Galtur, however, I spotted rain in the distance. "That looks like rain, Arturo!" "No, that's humidity." As the sprinkles got denser we took shelter under a hotel's awning. "Look, Arturo, that car is soaked!" "It's just wet, not soaked!" Arturo was in denial. I started looking for lodging on booking.com as he looked at the satellite info. 

I looked at all the options and decided that if we were staying at Galtur, the place we stayed at last time (Vaya) was the right place and we probably would get a better deal just by showing up than by trying to mess around with booking.com. Arturo looked up from his phone and said: "It looks bad. Getting over the pass will be fine, but the other side is absolutely pouring and it'll be a miserable descent." With that, we gave up and rode up the hill to the central bus stop at Galtur. We parked out bikes outside and walked into the Vaya hotel, where I asked for a room for 3 with half pension. The receptionist was training a new employee, so she asked us to sit down while she came up with an offer letter. 

The best thing about that situation is that she probably trained him in the use of all the discount codes and situations, so when the offer letter came it was for 152 Euros for the 3 of us, dinner, lodging, and breakfast. Arturo couldn't believe it, and kept asking if it really included dinner. "Yup!" I said, pointing to the front of the letter. 

Our room wasn't ready, so we got out our rain gear, put it on, grabbed our backpacks and our bus pass (given to us by our previous stay) and went back out to the bus stop to try to hike around the Stausee Kops. Arturo had other suggestions but they were either all closed or too hard for a day with lots of rain. 

In fact, despite the decent weather at the hotel, by the time the bus dropped us off at Kops Stausee's campground it was raining. By the time we got to the lake proper our rain gear was being put to good use. We were headed for the cable car (which was also free with the pass), for a short hike. We saw hikers coming down a steep muddy path. "Did you come from the cable car?" "Yes. It's muddy though." "Is this the only way?" "It's the only way we know of." Arturo argued for the other path on Google maps, but we decided to go for the ones where people had obviously come down. 

The hike was steep, and the rain came and went. It turned out that both Arturo and I were right --- we saw the other (much less muddy and wider) trail connect to ours right before the cable car station). We got onto the cable car, and it dumped us out to within 40 minutes walk of the hotel, but we got to the bus stop 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to show up so we waited for the bus and took it back. 

By the time we got back to the hotel the room was ready. Our key cards were already issued before the receptionist left for lunch, so the only question was how to get into the luggage locker to get our luggage. To our surprise, when we got into the room, there was already a luggage cart with our luggage in it! "Just for that, I'm willing to give the hotel 5 stars!" Arturo declared, "They actually thought about this and were anticipated that we'll get back before the receptionist opened." 

We looked at the room and while it had a kettle, it did not have a stove, but it did have a refrigerator. We decided to walk out to the supermarket to buy lunch. There was also a bakery on the way to the supermarket. We got to the supermarket and bought ramen, sugar free, caffeine free Coca Cola, and chcocolate and fruit. They had Weisswurst but since we didn't have a kitchen we couldn't buy it. We bought sandwiches and baked pastries at the bakery and went back to our room to boil water for ramen and eat what we bought. 

After that it was still raining so we went for a swim in the hotel pool, making use of the sauna as well. By the time we were done with laundry and shower after, it was still raining so unless the towel hanger in the bathroom worked we were out lof luck for drying stuff. The reception was open so we went to ask about the towel hanger but they told us it should already be on if we turned the tap all the way to the right. Sure enough they were right! 

Dinner was the fixed menu and fortunately not Rabbit. We ate it all as well as the buffet salad bar which had a surprising amount of meat. Arturo ordered wine and to his surprise the next day that was included in the price of our stay! 

The forecast for the next day was for fabulous weather, so we were confident that we would make it over the pass and down to Buchs. Arturo debated what to do, and I showed him the video Xiaoqin shot of the Walensee route into Zurich and he decided that would be his goal. That meant he should take the train to Walenstadt while Boen and I would take the train to Glarus at the bottom of the Klausen pass so we could ride the Klausen pass the next day. After that we would decide either to visit Bowen and Xiaoqin in Bern or take the train to Goschenen and ride Sustens pass the next day.