2013-07-10: On the bikes, Day Five. Melk to Traismauer.

Today was an exceptionally beautiful route.  Definitely the prettiest yet!  The itinerary was to have us leaving Melk, going about 20 km to Spitz, and then stopping for wine tasting and snacks.  The first 20 km went really quickly - we were passing tons of people again, so that's always fun :)  Spitz was a sweet little town, turns out to get to the vineyard you actually have to bike up hill through cobbles and a castle (there are a lot of them in this area) and THEN you get to the vineyard.  So cool.

Scenes like this all day long.

My darling.

sweet! 

This was part of the castle on the way down the hill.

Up at the vineyard...

After that, we hopped back on the bikes and continued towards Duernstein Castle, where Richard the Lionhearted was imprisoned in 1192.  Duerstein was another gorgeous town...

Looks cool to us now, but probably not to King Richard I in 1192...

Oh, this old thing?  It's just an archway from 1630. 

Amy and I checked out a little room/temple (I don't know if you can see it, but there's also a crucifix somewhere in this picture).  Remember what I said?  They are EVERYWHERE.

The room was a little creepy - doesn't look like it had been used in quite a while.

So upon leaving Duernstein, we continued on our merry way towards Traismauer.  Only problem is that there's been a LOT of detours in the way from the floods.  Sometimes it's easy to determine where you are on the map, sometimes it's REALLY not.

So we got lost.

Signs like this were evidently of no use to us.

Neither was praying for help at this roadside temple.

Leaving one of the stages of grieving - Angern.

You know what's fun to do when you're lost?  Take more pictures of castles.

We eventually made it to a roundabout outside town with no idea where we were on the map.  Luckily for us, Speedo-Man saved the day!  There was a farm worker in a tractor that helped us out, and when he got off the tractor, he had nothing on, with the exception of what appeared to be about 20 square inches of speedo.  Super nice guy, gave us directions for either the flatter more complicated way that we'd probably get re-lost on, the faster, hillier way that was hard and lots of traffic.  But then he remembered that there was a third option - he had a field to work in the next town, why don't we just follow him!  So at that point Speedo Man hopped back in his tractor, and we had a little bit of a tractor parade through the small feeder roads that went to town.  The leader was a guy with [almost] no clothes on, the followers were 4 cyclists with [almost] no dignity left - really getting hot and tired at this point.  Dude was awesome, and we seriously owe him a couple beers and/or some clothes.

Speedo MAN!

Long (!) story short, we ended up doing about 10 km longer than expected, got somewhat lost another couple times (it was a complicated route) but FINALLY found our new digs in Traismauer.  Turns out our innkeeper was a fifth-generation owner of the place, and super-nice.

I'm sure I was in trouble for being too awesome.

Some people see a squiggly cracker.  I see a mustache!  My donning of aforementioned starch-stache MAY have been distracting to the other less interesting adults that don't like fun and tend to frown and mutter a lot.

Whimper of sadness.

Happiness abounded!

Almdudler - funny name, tasty drink.

Our cook was a well-known chef in the area, and it showed.

Amy either hacking into NORAD or responding to emails.  I can never tell which.

Tomorrow, we have our last leg to Vienna!  Longest day of the ride...  We have all had a fantastic time on the ride, but pretty excited to move on to the next portion sans bikes :)