Through end of trip, 8-30-18

Our final day of cycle touring took us as far as Bramsche, in northern Germany. From there we packed up the bike and took a train to Copenhagen. Four trains, actually. Travelling by air is easy with our two bike cases, 50# each, and two sports bag carry-ons, given adequate connection time.  You can catch a train most anywhere in Europe, and the stations are in the city or town centers. But otherwise train travel is more difficult. Most train stations have stairs to climb or descend. With heavy bags that's a workout. Boarding a train is a scramble to quickly find the right car, hoist our bags aboard, find a place to stash the bags, and find our assigned seats. We learned not to buy first class tickets because there is a better than even chance we'll never get to the right seats. Flying has its own challenges, but in the future we'll fly if practicable.

We spent an overnight in Copenhagen. Throughout the trip we treated ouselves to good hotels, but in Copenhagen they are crazy expensive- 300 to 500 euros for 3-star places that would cost 100-150 elsewhere.  So we were at bare-bones but centrally located Hotel Loeven. The next morning was free so we spent it at Tivoli Garden, the old and famous garden/amusement park in the center of the city. Very low key and enjoyable. People stroll the gardens and relax at cafes more than rush to the rides. Some of the rides are scary to see from the ground, especially knowing that some of them are old.

In the afternoon we picked up a rental car only a block from the hotel and drove to Sweden in the rain over a long causeway. Three hours of driving got us to a B&B.

The next morning was spent at Karlskrona, which has been a Swedish navy base and town since the 17th century. They still build submarines and warships there. We spent a long while at the excellent maritime museum featuring ship models as much as 400 years old, a 70's-era submarine powered by Stirling engines (somehow they operate without the need for air), a fleet of 30' open sailing/rowing longboats which we saw getting underway, and a shed which the navy used for winter storage of ships' boats since the 1700's. They have a collection of longboats, gigs, sloop-boats and dinghies built 1820-1900. There's more there, but we ran out of time.

In 1981 Karlskrona had its 15 minutes of fame when a Russian submarine, probing Swedish defense capability, ran aground and was stuck. The Swedes wouldn't let them go and I remember it as a top news story. In the end they settled it at the highest diplomatic level.

Two hours of driving got us to the island of Oland for our week-long tandem bike rally.  At the previous two international rallies we'd shared houses or cabins with our Canadian and American friends, Rob and Nancy, and Graham and Edie. This time we were late signing up so we had a small, small, cabin to ourselves. I reassembled the bike and got ready to ride.

This was our third International Tandem Rally, so we knew to expect a loosely organized event put on by and mainly for the Tandem Club in England. No set starting times for rides, so you either find someone to ride with or ride alone. This time they outdid themselves with lack of organization: no ride maps. We do have a Garmin GPS and they sent out .gpx files for various routes, but not until we were touring in Europe with no way to download them. In short, we came 6000 miles to ride at an event without no guidance  when or where or with whom to ride. Riding alone wasn't an option even if we wanted to, which we didn't. Luckily, we were able to tag along with Rob and Graham et uxoribus or with our Aussie friends John and Rosemarie Gilpin, and rode all six days of the rally. Despite the rally's shortcomings we managed to have fun, and it was very good to see old friends again.

The dry summer and the heat wave are in the past. For the rally week it was in the 50's and 60's, more cloudy than not. Rain was forecast for two of the days, but not enough fell to keep us from riding.

Oland is a long, narrow, flat island with a bridge to the mainland. A few patches of forest, spots of tillable land, but otherwise pastures and barren land. Miles and miles of stone walls, about half of which are skillfully built dry walls of dressed stone and the other half ancient loose walls of stones and boulders dragged out of fields. They represent a lot of work over many centuries. The island has been inhabited for over 1000 years. We saw a runestone with what we were told is a bardic poem carved on it. At another place there was a Viking graveyard with stones arranged in the shape of a ship. Oland is sparsely populated and on most of the island there is no place to stop and get food or drink. In the late 1800's half the population emigrated to America. There are hundreds of small windmills. A couple of small fishing villages, but there aren't many fish in the Baltic.

On one of the rally days we took a ferry across to the mainland town of Kalmar to do a ride in that area. While there we had the tourist info office book us what we thought was going to be a B&B for the Saturday night after the rally ended. Turned out to be a youth hostel. They were proud to offer us their primo room: even had its own bathroom. But it was even smaller than our little cabin on Oland and had bunk beds. We survived.

We spent that Saturday afternoon at Kalmar, seeing their castle which saw plenty of action in the many wars between Denmark and Sweden in the 17th and 18th centuries. We also went to a museum with an abundance artifacts from a Swedish warship which sank in the 1600's and still lies on the bottom, near Oland. The wreck wasn't located until the 1970's and archaeologists are still diving and recovering artifacts every summer.

In general, Swedes do not go to church, and those who do are not Catholic. But we found a small Catholic church in Kalmar with a lively congregation which packed the small building. The priest read the gospel in English as well as Swedish. They had good music, too, led by a young lady on a violin. All told we found churches on 9 of the 10 Sundays on the trip. We try to do that when we travel. Besides the usual reasons for going to church, it gives us a peek at the local people and culture.

After church on Sunday, we drove most of the way back to Copenhagen, staying at a farm B&B outside the town of Ystad. I've been reading a Swedish murder mystery- in translation of course- set in Ystad. In the book the detective takes his would-be sweetie out to see the sights including a medieval castle and a Viking graveyard. So Monday that's what we did, too. Both of them are very interesting places. The detective did not win the girl's heart, but luckily I won my girl's, some time ago.

Monday afternoon in Copenhagen we turned in the rental car. Tuesday we took a city tour. Yes, we saw the Little Mermaid, and the famous/notorious Christiana commune. We were to see the changing of the guards at the Queen's palace; it coincided with the arrival of French Pres. Macron on a state visit, and the crowd was immense, so we didn't see much of that except a line of horses in special regalia. After the tour we visited the national art museum. A few wonderful pieces and a fair quantity of pretty good stuff. Tuesday we planned to take an afternoon cruise on a sailing ship, but found out their season was over two weeks ago. Instead, we sent the morning at the 17th-century King's Palace. Overwhelming collection of royal trinkets of jewels, gold and silver, as well as magnificent pieces of bronze, wood, amber and ivory. More impressive than any treasury we've seen, including the Hapsburg palace in Vienna, the Tower of London, or the Chinese royal palace collection in Taipei. How do kings get so overwhelmingly wealthy in societies where most everyone else is poor? Could say the same for church weath, too. A marvel what people put up with, sometimes. We also visited the Queen's palace, a boring museum of recent royal family doings. Finally, we took an excellent one-hour boat ride around the harbor and canals.

Copenhagen is an appealing city. The core  is small and a large proportion of the people are on bikes. Not as much a bicycle city as Amsterdam, but close. Even so, the traffic is heavy. The combination of bike lanes everywhere and a compact city center make cycling practical (maybe not in winter, I don't know). In the U.S. the attraction of bicycles and even mass transit is limited by the way cities have grown: all spread out.

So now we're flying home. Nine countries, ten weeks. Many miles on our bike, maybe 2000, in nearly every imaginable conditions. The bike served us well- no major mechanical problems, and few minor ones. We saw and did so much that was new, interesting and fun that it all jumbles together in memory. We talk about incidents and can't recall where they happened. Glad I kept the blog. Our bodies held up pretty well. It will be good to get home, but we'll miss the travelling. And the desserts.

P.S.: The trip home was almost as demanding as any of the cycling. We flew from Copenhagen and changed planes in Brussels with just enough time to make the connection on a run. Then at Chicago we had one hour to walk about a mile, clear immigration, claim our checked bags (the two bike cases), go through customs, recheck the bags, take a shuttle bus several miles to another terminal, go through security, and hike to our gate. We made it just as they were closing the plane's door. I offered to bet Sandy our bags weren't on board, but she correctly declined. The bike cases were delivered to the house the next morning. Note to self- arriving in U.S. with a connecting flight home, insist on three hours connection time.

Wed. 8-15 to Bramsche

The last day of this bike tour- half day, really. Bramsche is a good short ride and it has a train station so we can go to Copenhagen tomorrow.

Before leaving, we met an interesting man from Cameroon, now living in Munster. He and his German wife are finishing a 4-day bike tour with their 10- and 12-year old kids. Nice kids with excellent English.

The day started cloudy and in the low 60's; we wore arm warmers for the whole ride. Our route was almost entirely rural, with rolling hills and woodland.

Saw one curious thing today: two wind-power turbines facing the opposite direction, both turning. The wind was light. Never seen that before.

In the town of Bramsche we checked out the train station and schedule and rode to our hotel, 1 km away.  Almost walking distance with our rolling suitcases, but not quite. We'll take a taxi in the morning. A simple but good hotel room on the ground floor with a terrace I used to disassemble the bike and pack it for travelling.

It's a funny feeling after two months on the road to be done with the bike tour. This has been a very good tour. We both have the sense we can't do this forever, but weren't physically challenged. We got a good feel for parts of Germany, Austria and Hungary, with bits of other countries. Lots of good food. Between that and beer, Germans tend to roundness, for good reason.

On to the next adventure, a tandem bike rally in Sweden next week. I don't expect much bloggable news before we fly home 8-31, but if I'm wrong I'll post it.

Tue. 8-14 to Tecklenburg

Rained hard while we ate breakfast, but only dripping as we rode out of Munster. Very cool and damp. Again on a Google-prescribed route, we rode for a long way along a canal. The path was smooth gravel but muddy, so we and the bike got splattered generously. Around noon we started to get a misty drizzle but we avoided it at a conveniently located gasthof where we lunched on one more pork schnitzel. This one was different, with pears and cheese. After a few more km we reached the outskirts of Tecklenburg and got a reminder of what "burg" means: castle. They didn't build castles on the low spots. Not a mountaintop, actually, just a medium sized steep hill. We struggled to the top to a surprise- our hotel is in a quaint old tourist-popular small town built beside the site of the old castle, now a large manor house. An interesting spot and a good hotel, marred only by an extra slow internet connection. Tomorrow will have a fast downhill start!

Tecklenburg pic

One of the more crooked half-timbered 16th century buildings in Tecklenburg.

Monday, 8-13 to Munster

In a light rain, we rode into town to breakfast at a cafe. By the time we were finished it was chilly enough to wear rain jackets, but no rain.

Today we tried something new. Instead of following the convoluted EuroVelo route, we just plugged in our destination on Google Maps for a cycling route and followed that. We all have our stories about crazy directions from Google, but I think they are getting better, and today's directions were fine. It put us on bike paths alongside secondary highways, country lanes, and pedestrian/bike streets in the towns. A very pleasant three hour ride, with no further rain, and the distance was just what Google said. Munster is a good sized working city, with more bikes than anywhere we've seen except the Netherlands (and China in the 90's), but we didn't see much of it because the weather worsened, and we stayed close to our hotel.

A word about highway advertising signs in the European countries we've ridden through on this trip: none. Makes for a different landscape.

Sunday 8-12 to Offen

Our plan for the day was a 4 hour ride to the town of Olfen. For the first time ever, we booked an Air B&B: right place, right price.

Our chief initial concern was we might be too early for a 2 p.m. check-in time, but after a short distance we got our first flat tire: one of the trailer tires was so worn it was punctured by some small thing we never did find. So I replaced both trailer tires with the new ones we've been carrying. Mounting the 12" tires, it is difficult because to stretch the little things to get them onto the rims. I mounted the first one OK, but managed to put a hole in the tube of the second one, and had to start over. The whole process took nearly an hour, so we weren't so worried about being too early.

We had a good lunch stop at a big and popular biergarten, but as we continued it became obvious I'd underestimated the day's distance. Following the EuroVelo route there is no way to accurately measure the distance prospectively, and the designers of the route were more concerned about keeping us away from busy roads- any roads, actually- than about getting us to point B. And at one point we had to disassemble our rig andd haul it up a short but steep dirt slope to get back on the right route. After five hours we still had a good way to go. Then with only 8 km to go we ran into a bridge out. On the bike we can get around a lot of construction blockages, but there was no arguing with this one. As we were scratching our heads for a workaround, we met up with a scruffy man on foot who led us back to a signboard with a local map. His English was nil but he made a great effort to show us what roads to take to another bridge. After it finally dawned on me what he was suggesting, we thanked him and went on our way.

An hour later we were finally at our destination, but the day's challenges weren't over. It seems I'd booked the Air B&B room for next Sunday. But the hosts took pity on us and let us stay. A very nice apartment, actually. And a lot better than our fallback, which was none. Don't know where we'd have laid our heads. We always joke about sleeping under a bridge, but never have come so close.

We rode the bike a short distance into the center of town and were enjoying a pizza when who should come by but the man who helped us back at the bridge. We bought him a drink and a pizza. Turns out he is homeless, but my German wasn't good enough to understand much more than that. Didn't even find out how he got to Olfen himself. It was good to be able to repay him something for his kindness.

Not our favorite day. We don't really have a destination now. We're just heading NE until after Wednesday. Wherever we are, we'll take a train from there. We're determined to make the last few days on the road easy ones.

Saturday, 8-11 to Schermbeck

A cool day. Never above about 70F, and S even wore arm warmers all morning.

Milestone: we crossed the Rhine for the last time (at least this trip) and struck out to the east on a new Eurovelo route.

Unlike yesterday, our ride was mostly in the country, and a lot of it was on small country roads instead of bike paths. We hope that continues. Pleasureable riding and we make a bit better time.

The only significant towns we passed through are ones you never heard of: Rhineburg, Wesel, and the one where we're staying, Schermbeck. We rolled in here about 2 p.m., had lunch in a local bakery/cafe which made us good sandwiches, and found that our little hotel was locked and dark. We killed time by going down to the parish church to see what their Mass schedule was, and by the time we returned the hotel was open for the afternoon. After our regular routine of shower, wash out bike clothes, and a nap, we walked down to the church for their vigil service and then back to our hotel/restaurant for dinner. The specialty of the place is potatoes, but don't laugh. We had a fine dinner of calves liver, mushroom cream sauce, salad, and 4 kinds of potatoes. Life is good.

Early on I was worried about the degree of wear on the trailer's tires, at least until I found and bought a couple of spares to hold in reserve. The tires have lasted this far but the left one is finally showing fabric through the tread. Don't know if they will last these final few days, but if not we'll be glad we've hauled the spares all along.

Fri., 8-10 to Kamp-Lintfort

We crossed the Rhine back and forth Friday, and until we crossed to the west side for the final time the ride was all urban. Dusseldorf is a big city, and it blends into Duisburg. We've gotten pretty good at riding in cities. For one thing, all the main streets have bike lanes or bike paths. Small streets are easy riding. There are few stop signs in the cities, but lots of stop lights, including lights for bikes. German cyclists almost all wait for green lights, even when it is obviously safe to proceed. We do the same, out of respect for their compliant custom, but it makes for slow going. And our tandem has a lot of momentum to overcome every time we make a fresh start. So be it.

Friday's ride had every imaginable road condition. City bike lane, gravel dike, cinder track alongside railroad (unrideable), an overgrown bike path 6" wide, country road with no lane, rural path beside a highway, and our favorite: road with painted bike lane.

Our hotel is a 3-star in the pretty modern town of Kamp-Lintfort, quite a way off our route, but the only place available at the right distance. Actually, I'd underestimated the distance today, as usual. We were aiming for four hours on the bike but actually did five.

If I did not have the app which shows our position and a GPS track of the route, there is no chance we could have done today's ride with just the text directions in our guidebook for the Rhine route. We'd have been constantly lost. As it was, we got off-route several times, but were able to quickly correct.

We are getting down to it: next Thursday we need to take a train to Copenhagen. Meanwhile, we'll continue our leisurely tour in that direction.

The weather has changed dramatically. Instead of mid-90's, today was in the 70's. S even wore arm warmers until noon.

Thur. 8-9 to Dusseldorf

Been lax on the blog; not very much to report, but I did make notes.

We're moving into northern Germany, past the romantic Rhine scene with all the castles. We're now in the region which explains our negative balance of trade.

I told S we were approaching the industrial center of Leverkusen. She made a face, so henceforth we have replaced the word industrial with cultural. Nevertheless, we later passed a sign for an industriekultur area. Can't win.

Thursday's route was mostly urban, through the industrial areas of Cologne/Koln, Leverkusen, and Dusseldorf. Just one cornfield that day. Riding on the east side of the Rhine. Few touring cyclists. Just for once, we reached our destination, a fine boutique hotel in a not-so-fine area of the big city of Dusseldorf, sooner than I'd estimated. After a shower and rest, we went out to find that there'd been a surprise rain shower. But it was only still dripping rain and we walked a couple of blocks to buy S a replacement for her lost sunglasses. Then on to a bike shop which had neither of the items on our wish list: black handlebar tape, and maybe cycling shoes for D. Dinner at a nearby brewery/restaurant. I made the mistake of asking the waiter for his recommendation for a beer, assuming they have many creations like American brew pubs do. Turns out, they have one beer, unchanged since 1838. Good, too.

Dutch boat?

Wed. 8-8 at Cologne

Our hotel is about 800 meters from the center of the old town, so we rode the bike to our first destination, Cologne's fine art museum. Not too large, but an excellent collection of European art. In particular, they have some great items from the late middle ages. After lunch and a bit longer at that museum we rode a few blocks to another of Cologne's landmarks, the Gross St. Martin church, built before 1200 and therefore a different style from most medieval cathedrals. We were there only a half hour, but that was long enough for someone to steal from the bike the bracket to hold my cell phone while riding. Not an expensive item, but I depend heavily on the phone for navigating on our route and it would be a pain in the neck to have to carry the phone in my pocket. Fortunately, I was able to find a bike shop which referred me to a more distant bike shop which did have one such bracket in stock. A happy ending to a sad story. I had stripped everything else off the bike. Never occurred to me someone would know what the phone bracket was, much less want to take it. Sadder but wiser now.

Another thing we learned today is to wear bike shorts even for short outings.

There was rain early this morning and it never got hot today. I hope the heat wave has broken.

Monday 8-6 to Porz

Today's route finally took us across the the east side of the Rhine in order to bypass the urban area of Bonn. An uneventful but enjoyable ride before the heat of the day, mostly along the riverside. We've moved beyond the most picturesque part of the Rhine into the more densely settled and more industrial north. Still pleasant, though. At one point when we stopped to double check our route an aggressively helpful German man  insisted that we continue along the river when our directions clearly indicated we needed to turn inland. Following our sister-in-law Sarah's dictum "Just say yes", we thanked him for his help and took a water break until he was out of sight, then continued on our correct way.

We stopped in a suburb of Cologne; could have continued to the city center but it would have been an extra hour of riding, and we aren't in a hurry to get anywhere. Our hotel is fine except no A/C and no fans. i.e., not so fine. We survived, and had a good dinner in a Biergarten.

The general scene all along the Rhine has been people getting out and enjoying themselves. Each town has a promenade along the river and a dock for the many small tour boats. There are many campgrounds with people in small travel trailers seemingly installed for the summer. Lots of cafes and gelato. Eating out means eating outdoors.

There is much more marine traffic on the Rhine than on the Danube. Big motorized barges carrying bulk cargo or sometimes oil are almost always in sight. They are mostly manned by families. On one we saw an above-ground pool on the after deck. There seems to be a protocol that sometimes the ships pass starboard-to-starboard; I haven't figured it out. The river is currently low, but even so it flows fast.

Tuesday 8-7 to Cologne

It was forecast to be the hottest day in several years, perhaps 97F. We responded by making it a very short ride into the city of Cologne and checking into an air conditioned hotel, even if it was an unromantic Marriott.

We took a guided tour of the Cologne Cathedral, which we thoroughly enjoyed. There is a lot to see we wouldn't have noticed without the guide. The church is named after St.Peter but the theme throughout is the Three Magi Kings. They have a large golden shrine with relics brought back from the Holy Land by crusaders representing the three kings. Particularly emphasized by the Holy Roman Emperors to associate themselves with Christianity. The church was begun in the 1200's, uncompleted in the 1500's when $ ran out. In the 19th century, after German unification, the Kaiser sponsored its completion as a matter of national pride, using the rediscovered original plans on parchment. For a time it was the world's tallest building.

I must mention the bees. Ever since we arrived in Europe we've been pestered by bees in great numbers while we ate outdoors, which means about always. It was alarming at first, but they were more interested in our food and drink than in us, and we gradually got used to them and brushed them away as we would flies. But today I drank one. I spit it out, along with a mouthful of lemonade, causing quite a stir. And at dinner this evening, while chatting about Donald Trump with a German sharing our table, he was stung on the arm. He said that the bees are a new thing this summer. We are being more vigilant about them now, and avoid insulting them.

Sunday, 8-5 to Remagen

Before starting up (north) further on the Rhine this morning, we backtracked a couple of miles to the town of St. Sebastian, which has a small old parish church of the same name. St. Sebastian is always pictured as a failed martyr, having been pierced non fatally by many arrows. Later he did succeed in attaining martyrdom, but the paintings and statues (including one in this church) are always of the arrows. Anyway, we went to Mass there. Before church we walked around the churchyard and saw a memorial to the town's war dead from the two world wars, including one man killed on D-day. It occurred to me that if someone you love is killed in a war, what side doesn't matter; it is an equal heartbreak.  The church service was a delight. The priest was very upbeat, sang the hymns with gusto, and greeted each attendee individually at the kiss of peace. The route today was again almost all right on the riverside. A clear sky and temperature max around 80. There was a stiff north wind, but that was a fair exchange for the mild temperature. We reached the town of Remagan, which was a famous site near the end of WW2. The Germans tried but failed to destroy the bridge as they retreated from advancing allied forces in March of 1945. It was the only bridge remaining across the Rhine, and allied (U.S. in this case) troops were able to cross the Rhine there for the first time, which shortened the war. Hitler personally ordered four officers shot who had failed to destroy the bridge. A week later the Germans targeted the bridge with one of their own V-2 rockets and the bridge finally collapsed. The picture shows the remnant of the west side of the bridge and the abutments on the other side of the river. There is a museum on the west side, where we were. A few more km and we reached our hotel. Unexpectedly it sits a few hundred feet up a hillside, but once there we had a great view (see pic. ) The other picture shows a spot on the trail with unrideable switchbacks ever 50'. The variations in the route are all you can imagine, and more.

8-4 to Kaltenegers

i.e. nowhere.

From Boppard our path followed right beside the Rhine past small towns, riverside houses and farms, with vineyards on the hillsides above. A few castles, but not as many as the stretch of the river we travelled yesterday. It was a short ride so we didn't start early, but the recent heat wave has let up a bit so the riding was enjoyable. We made our way into the city of Koblenz and after a good riverside lunch we went looking for a drugstore on a quest for remedies for aches and pains. That took us offroute and through the busy city, but there are enough pedestrian streets and bike lanes that navigating was easy. Note- Europe has a completely different set of drugs. A few miles further we reached our hotel. Explanation: we'd read up on the town of Aldernach, which sounds interesting and was the right distance for today's ride. But all our hotel inquiries came up negative- fully booked. So we opted for a few km shorter at this place. Turns out Aldernach is hosting the annual heavy metal festival billed as Death Fest. So sorry we missed that. Anyway, our hotel here overlooks the Rhine and is comfortable- and air conditioned. The restaurant portion of the hotel is closed for the day because of a wedding party, so I importunned them to make us a couple of sandwiches for this evening. Meanwhile, I rode to a grocery store and picked up some wine and a dessert. So we had a fine dinner on the balcony of our room, watching the wedding goings-on below. A good day.

8-2 to Boppard

Another hot day in the forecast, so we opted for a trip upriver (northward) on an excursion boat for 75 km to Boppard. The boat started just outside our hotel, and stopped many towns along the river. I called ahead for clearance to take our tandem on board, so we didn't have to disassemble it. We grabbed a shaded spot on the top deck and enjoyed the cruise past many castles, vineyards, and old towns. We passed the Lorelei rock and statue, honoring the legendary siren luring sailors to their death. There's even a required song for when you pass the spot (ck youtube). At Boppard, a pretty and small riverside town, our hotel was just across the street from the landing. But by then it was hot enough that we hunkered down in the weakly air-conditioned hotel and didn't see much of the town.

Castle on the Rhine

14th-century Marksburg castle up on the ridge in the background, supposedly has on display weapons, torture devices, and chastity belts. But as it was on the far side of the river, we did without.

8-1 to Mainz

Thanks to a morning shower and a cloudy day, the heat was much less of a problem. A varied route to ride: leaving Worms we followed the Rhine through the port area for a few km, then past many modest houses overlooking the river. Reputedly, these neighborhoods are favored for river ship captains to buy for retirement. Could do worse. Then we rode atop dikes and through fields. After a nasty 2 km stretch of rough and rutted rocky trail on one dike we reached Oppenheim (wonder if Robt. Oppenheimer's family came from there?), a pretty town where we stopped for coffee and chatted with a solo bike tourist from Brittany. Turns out he lives near Guarec, where we spent a week four years ago at an International Tandem Rally. Small world. The route turned away from the river for a while through beautiful vineyards. I took a postcard-scene pic for the blog but lost it somehow. Then back down to the river and a several km of good scenery but rough rocky path until the outskirts of Mainz. We reached an impasse on the trail (from construction and also some unspecified emergency on the river), but just then a German woman came to guide us along an alternative path around the problem. She winters near our home, on Anna Maria Island. Entering Mainz, we rode along the riverside promenade to our hotel. Quite a contrast to go in a few minutes from a hot, dusty, rocky trail to a 4-star hotel.
Before dinner we visited the Mainz Cathedral. Older than and very different from all the other cathedrals we've visited. Before they figured out how to support exterior walls from bulging out, buildings could be only so tall and windows had to be small. As a result, Romanesque churches like the Mainz Dom are dark and gloomy. If you go to visit one, take a flashlight. What we could see, we did enjoy.

We stayed two nights in Mainz, a city we actually did visit many years ago with Melissa and her family when Greg was stationed in Wiesbaden.

Thursday, Aug. 2. My mother's birthday. She'd have been 101:
After a fine breakfast at the hotel, we walked to the Gutenberg Museum. His invention was not moveable type or the printing press, though he improved on both, but the antimony alloy for quickly casting type which wouldn't fracture under the pressure of the press. He printed about 200 bibles, which sold for the equivalent of today's $300,000 each. But all of his ideas were stolen and he died poor. There are 131 Gutenberg Bibles still unaccounted for, not including the ones stolen by the USSR after WW2. We took a tram tour of Mainz and got off at St. Stephen's Church, on a hill above the city. What's special about it is the stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. I took pictures, but better you Google them. From the church we made our way to the Ancient Ships Museum. In the 1980's the excavation for a hotel (our hotel, as it happens) turned up the remains of five Roman ships which they could date from tree ring patterns to the years around 300 AD. The museum has their remains plus many models in the 10' range and two full-sized Roman ship replicas. Fascinating. Then as today, they used molds over and over to build similar ships.
Back to our hotel for a rest, and then downstairs to a supper of potato chips and wine by the riverside promenade. Getting on the hotel elevator a Frenchman learned we're from Florida and said earnestly that we have to change the Stand Your Ground law. Startling, but couldn't agree more.

Mainz cathedral and Roman ship