June 20th: Trento to Bardolino

We had a great breakfast and then rode down to Trentino downtown. Bowen had lost his sunglasses, and his cough which he had brought with him on the plane from California didn't seem to be getting better, so I bought a bottle of cough syrup from the pharmacy, and $3 pair of sunglasses from a Chinese-run knick-knack store. In 2010, Phil Sung told me that European cough syrup was the best tasting cough medicine in the world, and Bowen said nothing to contradict this statement, eagerly awaiting every spoonful 3 times a day. Looking at the ingredients, it looked like the cough syrup was basically honey spiced up with a few herbs like menthol and other throat-soothers no different from any cough drop sold at an American pharmacy, but with a much more pleasant taste. The pharmacist told Bowen to drink lots of water, which probably did more good to eliminate his cough than the syrup did. Bowen would insist on taking the cough syrup whether or not he had a cough for the rest of the trip until we used up the bottle.

The bike path didn't get any less boring than the day before, but with the knowledge that we had far fewer miles to cover than the day before, I was far more motivated to ride hard and move fast than the day before. Unlike the upper part of the Aldige river, this part of the bike path had far fewer water stops, and was equally unshaded, so we wanted to get it over as early as possible.

In Rovereto, there was a tourist information kiosk staffed by a woman who told us that all we had to do was to follow the bike path signs for Lake Garda. The kiosk was right next to an ice cold water fountain, so we refilled and sure enough, the bike path soon departed from the river side, and we found ourselves climbing. We were now in the Italian-speaking part of Italy, unlike the higher parts of the Aldige valley which spoke German, having been historically part of Austria until after World War 1. Once we climbed out of the Aldige valley, we saw a shaded spot with a water fountain and stopped to eat the apples so kindly given to us by our hotel just before we left. These were golden delicious apples grown on the other side of the Merano valley and tasted delicious! I'd mistaken them for granny smith apples in the past (which I hate), and now wished I'd eaten more of them on previous visits to Italy.

The ride over Passo Giovianni turned out to be much less steep than the climb up from Rovereto. Despite signs broadcasting a 10% grade or something like that, nothing we rode over fell into the "challenging" territory. Even though it was warm, a gentle headwind cooled us off, and the anti-climatic pass sign wasn't even exciting to Bowen. I suppose 287m is no big deal once you've already climbed to 1500m a couple of days before.

Once over the pass, Komoot recommended one direction while the bike path pointed to another. Sometimes this is a trap: bike paths might be optimized in the uphill direction and then not grant you a smooth descent. In this case, however, I reasoned that most people would be riding the transalp route from North to South, in which case the bike path was likely to be optimized in the direction we were going. This turned out to be correct.

From the bike path, your first sight of Lake Garda is dramatic and impressive. The road sweeps away beneath you at a steeper than 10% grade, and you cannot see the other side of the lake. "Wow, I didn't expect it to be this pretty!" I said. "Well, I did." came the reply from the back of the bike. Bowen's 6 years old and already he's hard to impress. The descent was fast and fortunately the bike route while on a road shared with cars didn't seem to have much traffic. We rode down to the lake side, found a supermarket, bought a picnic lunch, and proceeded to find a bench and picnic table at the lakeside for lunch.

There's a hard headwind blowing from the South, which I did not feel like fighting. I knew there were ferries servicing various destinations on the lake, so asked for the tourist information center and got an answer. We rode there just in time, as they were about to close. It turned out that many of the passenger ferries took bicycles, and the big ones had no problems taking the tandem, so we didn't have to take a car ferry like I thought we would have to. We could take the slower one from Torbole, where we were, or ride over to Riva di Garda where a faster ferry would depart later but arrive earlier but would skip Torbole. We decided to ride over to Riva since we were so early, and were told that Riva was  a much bigger town than Torbole and we could walk around the old town while we were waiting.

Riva di Garda was a gorgeous lakeside town and very walkable through its downtown area. We had ice cream, and then I realized that if I wanted to see Lake Garda without cycling, the ferry wasn't a bad idea, and the slower ferry would visit way more destinations than the fast one. So I found a hotel in Bardolino, and then we proceeded to buy tickets for the slow ferry and braced ourselves for a 5 hour tour of Lake Garda.

The various towns around the lake very much reminded me of the small towns we visited in Greece on our 2013 sailing trip. In many cases, the terrain was extreme, with mountains coming right down to the lake and the town simply nestled in the small flat section of lakeshore. I could see why there would be bike hotels in Garda catering to cyclists, but it was also very hot, so I guessed that it was only a cycling destination in the Spring or Fall.

Each town looked like it would be worth staying at. By the time we disembarked in Bardolino, it was 7:00pm and we were hungry, despite having eaten snacks on the ferry. We rode down the street and found our hotel.

In retrospect it wasn't a bad idea to arrive late: our hotel's AC was so old and worn that it could barely keep us cool in the evening. I expected that it wouldn't have even been able to cool our room 2 degrees if we had arrived earlier. We turned on the AC, took a shower, and hurried out to a late dinner at a restaurant hotel owned by the same owners as Hotel Bardolino, granting us a slight discount. This far south, it was not unusual to have dinner late, and even the supermarket was opened after dinner and we could buy some fruit for desert.

With the continual heat, I decided that to attempt to ride to Venice would be suicide. Since no train stations serve Garda had lines that would bring us back to Bolzano, we would have to ride to Verona to catch one. We went to bed knowing that our best bet for a cool ride to Verona would be to eat breakfast at 7:30am and then head out as quickly as possible. I pre-plotted our ride to the Verona train station, sync'd it to the Wahoo Bolt using the hotel's fast WiFi, and we went to bed with the AC running. To my surprise, I slept well, indicating that my jet-lag was finally resolved.

Next

June 19th: Merano to Trentino

The morning's breakfast was generous, and Bowen would develop a taste for tea after deciding that hot chocolate was too sweet for him! (Yes, I have an odd kid) He was still disappointed that we weren't going to do Stelvio but were going to keep riding down the Aldige valley until we got to Lake Garda, which I've never done. Recognizing that it was going to be a hot day, our hotel gave us ice in our water bottles, a much appreciated gesture.

The ride down Merano was easily, and just on the outskirts of Merano we found another Zipline.

I'd done the ride from Merano to Bolzano only once, and going the other way, but I'm afraid I don't have much to say about river-side bike paths. I find them fairly boring: miles after miles of same same with not much elevation gain or loss to distinguish them. The Aldige bike path is particularly bad, because there's almost no shade at all, though there are many water stops.

We stopped in a little town of Mezzocorona, following signs to a restaurant, but the food was not very good, though an ice cold coke was much appreciated. Over lunch, I searched and found a hotel in Trentino with AC and created a route for it in Komoot to sync to my computer. Once back on the bike path we didn't go 3km before finding a huge rest station with snack bar and restaurant right on the bike path! In Lavis, Komoot took us off the bike path into some local climbs which apparently would make it easier to get us to our hotel. Once in town, however, it failed, and routed us up a route that looked like it might connect, but a neighbor living on the street told us that it didn't, so it was back to having Bowen use Google Maps on the phone from the back seat to navigate, since the Wahoo Bolt would want to take hours to sync with the phone. I certainly did not appreciate the extra climbing in the afternoon heat. The hotel turned out to be a new B&B in the middle of a renovation, and wasn't really a "farm stay", more like a winery stay. The facilities were brand new, but they didn't have a restaurant yet. We got into our room and turned on the AC and kept it on while doing our shower and laundry routine. When it was dinner time, we called the number supplied by the hotel but the taxi dispatcher claimed that there were not taxis available! We walked down to the lobby and the owner of the hotel said, "We'll drive you downtown!"

Downtown Trentino was a happening place, despite the heat. We were early enough that we had no problem getting good seats and had a nice dinner, followed by ice cream. I'd noticed that there was a bus that might serve where we were staying, and sure enough, Google Maps gave me routing directions via transit. It looked like it would only be a 400m walk, but that was better than trying to get a taxi.

Well, I guessed wrong. Google Maps routed us to the wrong place via transit, and we ended up with another 1.5km of walking. That by itself was no big deal, but it was 1.5km of walking on a highway with signs that said: "No bikes." I don't know about you, but if a highway says "No bikes," walking on it would be very unpleasant as well. I tried hitch-hiking but that was a no-go, so we ended up walking.
Back at the hotel, I looked at the map and debated dropping the rest of the ride and taking the train back to Bolzano. Once I noticed that we were only about 60km from Lake Garda, however, I decided that we should at least see Lake Garda, which Bowen had started calling "Lake Gaga".
Next

June 18th: Reschen Am See to Merano

The morning started with a lovely breakfast, after which while packing up in the hotel room, we saw a lovely rainbow which made me glad that I had a real camera and not have to rely on the crappy camera on my LG V20. After we were packed, we immediately made a stop at the zipline that so captivated Bowen the afternoon before. He made 10 runs before we decided that we didn't have infinite time that day.

The lake itself is famous for a town that was famously submerged when the hydroelectric dam was built, flooding the town so that only the top of a church tower can now be seen. This was my first time in this part of Italy, and the views were outstanding. Unlike the lower part of the Alto Aldige valley, it had a lonely isolated feel to it. The bike path runs on the opposite side of the main road, ensuring that you were isolated from it for even more solitude, especially in the morning.

After the dam, we saw the Monte Maria Abbey. We stopped for a picture, but it didn't seem particularly remarkable, and almost immediately after that, the bike path took a series of descents that quickly dumped us out into the Glorenza snack stand that I was so familiar with from previous years.

From Glorenza, it's a short ride down to Prato Allo Stelvio, where I told Bowen that the only way we'd climb the Stelvio was if we found someone to carry our bags up the hill. My memories of Nobert's pass was still fresh, and I felt as though I need a few rest days before signing up for more intense riding. At the visitor's center, the information center person gave us a list of numbers, but I called all of them, burning about $3 in Skype fees and nobody was willing to even quote me a price for carrying 2 panniers up the mountain. Bowen was surprisingly emotional and disappointed about not getting to do the Stelvio. "You've seen the mountain, so why don't I get to see what you've seen?" I assuaged his disappointment by spotting the zipline playground right outside the visitor center, and then as we rode down towards Merano, found an ice cream place and fed him a banana split for lunch.

From Prato Allo Stelvio, the descent down to Merano along the bike path is pretty easy. We found a self-service honor system fruit stand with some of the best tasting fruit we'd had (Bowen remained a huge fan of apricots for the rest of the trip), and also another zipline playground.

I'd booked a hotel near the center of town while Bowen was on the zipline, but as we approached Merano, my phone rang and it turned out to be the hotel, which was calling to cancel our reservation as they were full! This led us to a mad scramble: we checked out one of the hotels near the center of town, but it wasn't acceptable and the man running it tried to take advantage of my desperation. I ended up booking (via booking.com) Hotel Verdorfer, which had excellent reviews. Of course, Komoot would route us but my Wahoo Bolt stubbornly refused to download the route, so I ended up giving Bowen the phone and having him use Google Maps to navigate us while we were riding. By the time we arrived at the hotel, my Vivoactive HR (which wasn't fully charged in the morning) was dead, and Bowen's Garmin Edge 25 was also in low power mode. I learned to be more careful about charging those devices and we never had a ride as long for the rest of the tour. I would get more and more frustrated with the Wahoo Bolt for the rest of the tour.

In the future, I'll know that when in this situation, I could have hired a limousine to take us to the hotel and then charged it to booking.com for reimbursement, but the bicycle ride up to the hotel, painful as it was, was under the rules of the web-site not considered worthy of compensation.  Nevertheless, when we were greeted by a very friendly young man who looked fresh out of college, I was inclined to let bygones be bygones. The hotel's not great for cycle tourists, as the walk to the nearest restaurant was substantial, but the pool was crystal clear and the facilities very nice. At dinner, the world cup was playing but the food was just not that good, though portion sizes were generous enough to feed two very hungry cyclists. The wind was high so I was certain that our clothing would dry by the next day.
Next

June 17th: Landeck to Reschen am see

The morning had us riding up along the Inn river bike path. Having ridden this 4 years ago, it was interesting to see it going the other way: the climbing was pleasant and not at all overwhelming, and in Pratz, we found a zipline playground right next to the campground that the other bicycle tourists we met yesterday was heading for.

Paset Pratz, the road opened up and we started seeing signs for Switzerland! "Hey, we can have breakfast in Austria, lunch in Switzerland, and dinner in Italy today!" I said to Bowen. That sounded so good to him that he would repeat it over and over again like a mantra throughout the day.

Just before Martina, the road suddenly took a huge dip, and we sped rapidly down towards the Swiss border. I realized once we got to Martina that Arturo and I had passed this very same spot 4 years ago, but there wasn't a lunch place in sight except for a little kiosk with bicycles parked outside. Going in, we bought what looked like the last packet of meat, some chocolate, and half a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven. Bowen was fascinated by the Swiss army knife display and asked to see my Gerber Dime, which was smaller than any of the knives on display.

After lunch, we crossed back over to the Austrian side of the border and immediately started up Norbert's pass. At this point, the afternoon heat combined with cumulative nights of jet-lag and the prior days' climbing finally caught up to me and I struggled up the hill at a dog-slow pace. While I was never distressed enough to stop, the pass felt like a much tougher pass than it should have, a memory which would color the next few days of the tour.

At the top, we ate the partially melted chocolate, and I found myself dreading the climb over Reschen pass, which I thought was around 1800m, while Norberts pass was at 1405. Another cyclist said, "It's not a hard pass, compared to Noberts pass", and I'd already promised Bowen dinner in Italy, so no matter how exhausted I felt, I was committed to making it over the pass. My initial plan of riding all the way to Schluderns was gone.

There was a fast and furious descent into Nauders, and then a bike path pointing us to Reschen pass. Despite the relatively high elevation of 1300m, it was warm, but the bike path led us away from the highway despite giving us occasional views of it. The climb was gentle and I didn't feel like I was climbing a pass at all. When we finally crossed over to the Italian border it was a surprise! Indeed, I had misread the altitude of the pass: it was 1504m, not 1800m. I was pretty happy to be wrong.

I was warned that the bike path kept climbing despite having crossed over the pass, which made this the most anti-climatic path I'd ever seen. But at least the weather had cooled off a bit and we were now riding through greenery and flowers that were missing on the Austrian side. We finally got a view of the lake and what did we find but a playground with a zipline!

While Bowen played on the zipline, I searched on my phone for lodging. Not surprisingly, most of the good deals on lodging were on the Austrian side, where I'd spotted large numbers of hotels, mostly to cater to the ski resort. The Italian side didn't have any ski lifts, so there was no summer competition to keep prices down. I eventually found a guest house (which looked much more like an apartment building) nearby, and booked it. On the way to the hotel, Bowen complained that he couldn't clip in any more! Upon later examination, we found a piece of stone (from the playground) embedded in just the wrong place that was blocking engagement. I got out the Gerber Dime multitool flipped open the knife and pry'd it off. This would happen a couple more times during the trip. This never happens to my adult shoes no matter how much I abuse them on dirt and gravel hikes, but the Giro Manta that Pardo had bought for Bowen (from a thrift shop) seemed to be much more susceptible.

When we arrived, we discovered that nobody was there to greet us, but a phone call led to the owners/managers having a mad scramble to come and meet us, and all was well. It turned out that the place was quite far away from the main "town", but we were walking distance from a restaurant and so after our afternoon routine we could walk there. It was quite clear that e-bikes had taken over Europe as there was a free charging station right next to the restaurant.

I was quite tired, and hoped for an easier day the next day.

Next

June 16th: Bschlabs to Landeck

The guest house at Bschlabs offers a generous breakfast, including eggs that you can make yourself. Bowen discovered that he really liked soft-boiled eggs, and would eat them whenever he got a chance. We packed up and left by 8:40am, and immediately started up the mountain.

I'd forgotten how tough climbing on a fully loaded tandem was. Add to that my lingering jet-lag (which my melatonin pills were absolutely not helping with), and problems getting used to my HDM Z1, it took no fewer than 4 stops to get to the top of Hahntennejoch. I was grateful that I did not try to do the entire ride from Elmen all in one day!

At the top of the pass, there was an ice cream vendor, so Bowen got a popsicle, while I relaxed and recovered from the ride. Other cyclists and motorcyclists would make it up the hill and stare at the tandem, and we were the only obvious cycle tourists on the mountain that day.

The Hahntennejoch descent was my first descent in the alps, and it made a deep impression on me back in 2003. 15 years later, doing the descent on the tandem, I'm a much better bike handler and the scary parts no longer seem scary. Even the steep 20% grade in the town of Imst posed no problems, and I wasn't even concerned about overheating the brakes because I wasn't using them very much. In town, we stopped at a supermarket to buy lunch, and then proceeded down into the valley where I found the bike path as described to me by the late Jobst Brandt way back in 2003: follow the signs to the Bahnof, look for the river rafting put-in, ride past the put in and look for the bridge across the river with the bike path marked for Landeck.

Now that we were in the valley, the afternoon heated up rapidly. We were getting hungry, but kept not finding picnic spots, and eventually just gave up and parked the bike on a bench outside somebody's house where it was shaded and ate bread and meat. A woman bicycle tourist rode by and gave Bowen some cherries! It would turn out that they were part of a group going over the Reschen pass (which we planned to do) over to Lake Garda and Verona (which was also potentially part of our plan). We'd see them on and off that day, but not see them again after that day.

In Landeck, we saw a swimming pool, which looked really good given the hot weather. We found a hotel nearby on booking.com, and rode over to pick up guest passes and drop off some of our panniers and rode back to it. The swimming pool had very cold water, and neither of us lasted 15 minutes in the pool, but it was still a refreshing swim. On the way back to the hotel after the swim we got hot again and bought some ice cream before checking into our hotel for our regular routine of shower and laundry.

For dinner we walked over to the best reviewed pizza place in town, which turned out to be right next to the Sport Camp Tirol. We really should have stayed there instead, since it appeared to be quite nice though not quite on our way up to the Reschen pass. I went to bed hoping that after all that sun exposure my jet-lag would get better.

Next

June 15th: Fussen to Bschlabs

If you wondered why I opted to head straight for Fussen instead of leaving it until later in the trip, it's because of the on-line ticketing system for the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles. During the summer, all on-line reservations are prebooked months in advance by tour operators and scalpers. Knowing this, the ticket center deliberately holds back some tickets for same-day visitors which cannot be reserved any other way. Technically, the ticket office opens at 8:00am, but it's an open secret that the ticket office actually opens at 7:30am. As a result, the best time to attempt to visit the castles are when you're jet-lagged and getting up early in the morning anyway!

I woke up at 2:00am, managed to sleep again until 4:00am, and then Bowen woke up at 6:30am. We packed, and were on our way by 7:00am, after a quick stop at the bakery to pick up breakfast. Crossing the Lech river, we followed the signs to Hohenschwangau until we got to the ticket office, where we parked our bike and stood in line, eating breakfast while waiting. Sure enough, the ticket office opened at 7:30, and we weren't too far from the front when it opened. To my surprise, Bowen asked to see both castles and the museum, so we bought the ticket for all 3, since entry for him was free. As expected, the earliest opening for all 3 was easily available. We parked our bike and proceeded to hike up to Hohenschwangau.

The castle grounds were pretty, but we were not allowed to take pictures once inside the castles. The tour was very well done, and Hohenschwangau is much less crowded than Neuschwanstein would be. Most people would choose to visit only Neuschwanstein, but Hohenschwangau was actually the better tour and had better stories. Bowen loved the secret passages that were used by servants to maintain heat: they looked like they would only be usable by 6-year olds. Once the tour was over, in the past I'd just ridden the bike up the 13% grade to the castle, but I was informed that this time it wasn't allowed, so we took the bus.

The bus drops you off at the famous Marienbrucke, which was a zoo. You could barely get your picture taken. Past Marienbrucke, however, there's a hiking trail that can take you to higher spots. We didn't hike the whole thing, but there were places where it was obvious that platforms were being built. From Marienbrucke, it's downhill to the castle, which explains why the bus charged only 50 cents more for a round-trip ticket: once you walked down to the castle, you realize that there's no reason to walk back up to the bus and wait when you could walk straight down. It's faster. We also saw cyclists on the pedestrian path, giving lie to what the ticket office told us was a prohibited route for bikes.

When the castle tour was over, we ate lunch at the expensive castle cafetaria, and then walked back down to the museum, which was where we parked the bike. The museum isn't worth the money: it merely repeats what you've already been told during the castle tour, while providing a little bit more color to some lesser known members of the family. But as part of the package it isn't expensive, so you might as well do it.

The reason for bringing our panniers with us to Hohenschwangau is that there's a direct bike path from Schwangau into Austria that doesn't require going back to Fussen. It's a very pleasant route right next to the lake, and having missed it the first time I visited, I wanted to try the route. As expected, it was a very pleasant route, shaded and car-free, though it turned into gravel once we were in Austria. Fortunately, the gravel portion was actually mostly downhill into Pflach, and from there we rode a small pass into Reutte where we had cake.

The Lech river valley is very pretty, and made a huge impression when I first toured in Europe many years ago. The bike path runs right alongside the river, but Komoot routed us back onto the main road across the river right after Weissenbach, while it would have been smarter to stay on the bike path all the way to Voderhornbach. This was because Komoot thinks there's an alternative bike path on that side of the river, but as far as I could tell, it's a hiking path and not easily navigable by tandem, even if one were interested in doing the extra climbing prior to starting the Hahntennejoch.

In Elmen, we took a water break at the water fountain and ate our Clif bars, then proceeded (after a false start provided courtesy of Komoot's navigation) up the Hahntennejoch. This was a stiff climb, not helped by the two tunnels prior to the last long one which fortunately does have a tunnel bypass.  After that last tunnel the grade evened out and the weather cooled, so we arrived at the Bschlabs guest house at 5:15 with plenty of time to do laundry before dinner. There's not much to do at Bschlabs in the evening, but we took a picture at the same church where Arturo took one 2 years ago.

Next

June 14th: Tutzing to Fussen

When I first thought about doing this trip, my thinking was that we'd spend the first few days in the Salzburg Lakes, getting acclimated to jet-lag, and then maybe make our way over to Landeck and the Alto Aldige area. Bowen completely upended this by telling me that he wanted to visit Neuschwanstein, despite showing absolutely no interests in castles the year before. The Neuschwanstein area is completely impacted by tourism, so I scrambled and booked a hotel in Fussen. The nice property about Fussen was that if the weather had turned horrid, it would have been a fairly cheap and easy train ride to Fussen.

Unfortunately, I was suffering from severe jet-lag, waking up at 2:00am and then tossing and turning. I'd might have slept for another hour or two, but finally gave up and started packing panniers and otherwise getting ready for the morning. Bowen, on the other hand, did not have any jet-lag at all, waking up only at 7:00am.

My plan was to take the S-Bahn down to Tutzing and then ride directly to Fussen. The S-Bahn did not allow bikes before 9:00am, but by the time we were done with breakfast and gotten the bike ready it was already past 9:00. Getting the bike onto the train was actually a challenge: the tandem was just a bit too long to fit in the elevator, so I had to unload the panniers, bring them down to the subway, and then fetch the bike separately. Fortunately, I knew I only had to do that once, as the scheduling algorithm for the S-Bahn allowed me to change trains by getting off at a platform and then waiting for the next one to arrive at the same platform, and once at Tutzing I had all the time in the world to get the bike out to downtown and start riding.
The initial ride from Tutzing was pleasant, but we soon found ourselves routed down B-2 in Weiheim. I looked and saw what looked like a perfectly decent bike path, and then realized that I had set my Komoot routing for "road cycling", which apparently means to use the same roads a car would. We immediately stopped at a nearby supermarket for lunch, and proceeded to reroute to Fussen using "touring bike" settings instead, which resulted in a much more satisfactory route.

The route took us along an  old bridle path and some farm roads, and while there was occasional dirt, there wasn't anything that would require us to get off and walk. I remember being concerned that the touring path was a good 5 miles longer, which would eventually make this a much longer day than I'd wanted, but Bowen was a lot stronger that last year, and didn't complain about the riding.

We stopped at a fruit stand for raspberries, and then started a series of climbs as we approached the foothills of the alps. Around 4:00pm, the bike path suddenly dumped us onto a major road, though one with a bike path on the side so we weren't riding in traffic. The road also started descending. While in town, I spotted a bakery that was open so we stopped for a snack before riding on.

Now, the scenery started opening up and we got glimpses of the hills near the Austrian border with Bavaria. The scenery got better and better, while the path remained straight through the plains with a lovely tailwind behind us.

Near Bannwaldsee, I finally spotted a playground with a zipline and of course we had to stop and let Bowen make several runs at it. By the time Bowen was satisfied that he'd done enough zip-lining for the day it was 5:00pm, and we made the mostly flat run to the hotel, passing through Schwangau along the way, granting us far-away views of the Neuschwanstein castle. Hordes of mountain bikers (most of the on electric assisted bikes) were finishing up their ride as we finally crossed the Lech river into town and found the hotel.

The hotel gave me 2 options for bike parking: either park outside with a lock, or bring it downstairs into the basement. It was awkward, but I opted for the basement. Whenever I've toured with adults in the past, I've often contended with "The Curse of Piaw", where I was always given the room on the top floor in any hotel, no matter how far I'd ridden that day. Riding with Bowen seems to have eliminated that curse, as we were given a ground floor room.

At this point, we settled into our regular riding routine: take off all our clothes for soaking, take a shower, and then dry off. Then use the towels to wring our clothing dry so that that's a chance they'll be dry the next day. Then we wandered off to dinner downtown, taking note of the bakery's hours the next day since we were planning to eschew the hotel's breakfast and beeline it for the ticket office at Schwangau first thing in the morning.

We went to bed early, knowing that an early start was our only hope of getting the tickets for both castles the next day. The forecast looked good, and I figured we'd have a good day of riding even after spending all morning at the castles.

Next

June 13th: Prologue

We took a Supershuttle to the airport, which fortunately wasn't doing too many pickups as we pretty much used up all their cargo space for the tandem, which was split up into a Trico Ironcase and a Co-Motion Co-Pilot case. One of the panniers was emptied and stuffed into the Co-Pilot case, which contained the wheels, rack, and stoker handlebar parts, as well as Bowen's shoes and a bunch of gel packs as well as the tools required to put the bike back together. The Trico Ironcase contained nothing but the frame. When packing, I had carefully weighed the cases so they fit under the airline mandated 50 pound limit. To supplement all this, the second pannier was packed with our clothing, and then packed into a rolling carry-on suitcase. The carry-on was wheeled so that Bowen could push it along while I wrestled the Ironcase as well as the Co-pilot wheel case. On top of that I had a backpack which contained mostly the airplane necessities: a tablet for Bowen, noise canceling headset, charging equipment, camera, bike computers, toiletries and the like. Bowen carried his Camelbak (emptied of water), and inside the Camelbak, as a last minute decision, he had decided to bring his stuffed bunny, even though he knew the bunny couldn't possibly fit in the pannier.

All that weighing and careful compliance with airline regulations came to naught, however, as at the United counter, the airline employee looked at the case and immediately charged me $150 for the bike! I was quite miffed but paid it anyway, as experience had taught me that arguing with the employee on such matters was futile.

Once everything was checked in, we ate lunch after clearing the security check point, and then boarded what would turn out to be a fairly uneventful flight. One hack which you may or may not consider is that I'd pre-ordered special meals for both of us: a Hindu meal for me, and a Kids meal for Bowen. This does two things: first, I've noticed in the past that the Hindu meal was usually more tasty than the bland default meals. Secondly, because it's a special order, the meals usually arrive ahead of everybody else's. This might not be a big deal for most adults, but giving Bowen extra time to eat was always a good idea as he's not a fast eater at the best of time, and tends to be even more finicky when stuck in an airline seat.

Once in Munich, we cleared the passport control in typical highly efficient German fashion, and picked up our bikes with no problems. The main reason for booking direct flights when on a bike tour is that every flight change was a chance for your bikes to get lost, and so making the effort and paying extra for a direct flight was well worth the cost. The Munich airport hotel is the Hilton, and I had pre-arranged with the hotel to store our bike cases while we traveled. What I didn't realize, having never visited the airport hotel before, was that the hotel lobby was a great place to assemble the bike, and that hotel management didn't mind me doing so there. The entire process took a good 90 minutes, but after I took it for a short test ride I deemed the bike good to go, and checked it into left luggage with the hotel, got the keys to the room, and then moved in to wash up. It wasn't even 2:00pm, so I asked Bowen if he would like to visit a castle in Munich, since he wanted to see Neuschwanstein badly enough that I'd rearranged the entire tour schedule at the last minute and booked a place in Fussen the next day.

The Munich's public transit system is complex, mostly because of the interaction between zones and rings. But when traveling with a child, it's even more complicated, because rather than a group ticket, the cheapest way to get a day pass is to buy a separate day pass for an adult, and a day pass for the child, because child tickets are much cheaper than group tickets. On the way downtown, we visited the Shuster in downtown so we could buy an extra pair of smartwool socks. For whatever reason, I thought Bowen had 2 pairs be he only had one at home and it was too late to make an REI run by the time I found out, so paying European prices was the only alternative.

A quick stop to the Euraide counter at the Munich main train station on our way to Schloss Nymphenburg revealed Alan Wissenberg working at the counter. He didn't have time to talk, and we were leaving tomorrow, but indicated that we should arrange to meet for dinner when we got back to Munich, with arrangements being made over e-mail.

We took the tram to Schloss Nymphenberg, and paid my entry fee to enter the castle to look around. Bowen was free, of course. It was drizzling and we actually ended up putting on our rain jackets. The weather was cold, but Bowen gamely walked around until he got hungry and then we went back out to first get ice cream, then bought a to-go dinner to take back with us to the airport. At our hotel room, we ate our dinner, and then went back out to the airport supermarket to buy breakfast the next day so we would have something to eat and not have to pay for the hotel's buffet breakfast.

I took a melatonin pill and went to bed at 8:30pm, hoping that I wouldn't wake up at 2:00am. But all things considered I felt pretty good about how the trip was going so far, as the weather was scheduled to turn fair mid day the next day.

Next