We’d prefer that the hotels serve breakfast before 8am as that results in us getting on the road far too late in the day. Never mind it is what it is, we still got to Dresden before the rain arrived so that was handy. After a bigger breakfast than the day before we left about 8:45am and it wasn’t long before we were on a nice off-road cycle-way. That was pretty much the case all day.
Crossed over the border into Germany about 30 minutes into the ride, however you wouldn’t know it as there were no signs, barricades or checkpoints. What alerted us was the local little train station suddenly became a Bahnhof. When we consulted Google Maps we could see we were in Germany and there were subtle differences in the houses, a little more solid/substantial and some were much older with medieval architecture.
Just to kill some time we took a detour into Bad Schandau on the opposite side of river we were riding on. Although the name sounded interesting, the town wasn’t quite as flash. At least it gave us a change of scenery and a pleasant enough place in the town square to drink our brews.
The ride itself today was pretty much straight forward with no issues with detours or roadworks. Mostly on a nice smooth bike path fairly close to the river. Went through some dark (black) forests, where the moss grows thick on the rocks and tree trunks. Strange for us, you don’t hear many birds calling in the forests here. We didn’t really have to but we caught a ferry across the river to Konigstein, because we could. For us and the bikes it was €6/$12. As there were great cycle paths on both sides of the river (typical German efficiency) we could cross over and back as we liked, but we didn’t.
We battled to find a place for lunch and ended up at a bit of a tourist trap at Oberrathen. Known for its sandstone/bastei mountains, a nearby lake and national park, it attracts a lot of visitors. We ended up with a feed but it wasn’t too healthy, sausage and chips, from a takeaway run by an Indian bloke.
There wasn’t much to stop for after that, except at Pirna which had a nice rest area overlooking the river. From then onwards we basically put our heads down and peddled. By this time the headwind had picked up a few notches and was a bit annoying, but nothing that upping the assistance level on the bike couldn’t fix!
We arrived at our hotel for the next three nights INNSiDE by Meliá about 2:30pm. Not long after getting to our room, #331, the rain came down in buckets. Good timing!
After settling in and having a cuppa in the room, we decided to brave the rain and go for a wander. It wasn’t long before we realised that it was very ordinary outside and we should retreat to a nice dry room. Picked up some rations at Aldi and made a hasty return to the hotel.
