After our grand trip to Vietnam and surroundings last winter, we spent the spring getting up to date with medical appointments, taxes, and other annoying stuff. Matthias had a minor surgery (with major recovery) on his nose, and we waited for that to heal before setting off on our next bike tour. In the meantime, it RAINED like crazy, and downtown Passau experienced its worst flood since 2013 (but we remained high and dry.) Despite the flooding, Matt found his way to Passau and and we had a wonderful visit! We checked out Passau's glass museum, went over to Austria, and drank a good bit of RadlerMaß! We then went to Munich together (Matt was there on a work trip) and we did a beer hall crawl of sorts (Hofbrauhaus!) and rounded that out with a side trip to the Dachau concentration camp.
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| Hofbrauhaus! |
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| Stiftskeller restaurant in Passau |
Matthias and I were finally ready for our bike tour in mid-June, so we packed up the bikes and started toward the Allgaü, one of our favorite regions in the foothills of the Alps. The trip began wonderfully. The weather was fine, and we had a nice ride to our first campsite in Marktl (one we have frequented) and then rode on to a new campsite in Bergen (near Traunstein), which we liked a lot. We spent the third and fourth nights in Bad Feilnbach and from there we rode up to visit some Alms in the area (of course!) The trouble started the next day. We had a lovely ride westward with views of the Alps on our left. When we arrived at the next campsite at Bad Tölz, we were in pissy moods (the campsite was overpriced and it was threatening rain) so we ended up opting for a schlaffaß (wooden barrel hut.) Tragically, Matthias awoke in the middle of the night besieged by BEDBUGS. It's a long story, and anyone reading this has heard it from me ad nauseum, but we left the campsite with an infestation (of course they crawled into our sleeping bags and who knows where else!) So the rest of the trip was spent washing clothes and gear at every opportunity, purchasing and applying bedbug killer to all our stuff, and praying that we wouldn't end up bringing them home. (So far, it seems we haven't.) But somehow, we were able to squeeze a good bit of fun out of the journey. The next campsite at Staffelsee was lovely, was near a town and had a handy washing machine. We stayed there two nights to begin our dis-infestation process. After that, we entered the Allgau region, where we were charmed by the rolling hills, cows with cowbells (Cows!), and the Alps. We spent three nights in Sonthofen, where we washed clothes and gear (again) and rode up into the mountains to the Alms!
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| The fateful bedbug home |
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| Cows!!! |
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| Up at the Alms! |
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| In the mountains |
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| Bread and butter! And scenery! |
From Sonthofen we made our way back home through the Allgaü, with a stopover at a quiet campsite near a pond called Elbsee. The next stop was Landsberg am Leck (on the Leck river.) Beautiful town, crappy campsite. After that we rode to a lovely campground on a lake where we washed everything (again), I cooled off in the lake and later that night, watched the German team compete in the Euro Cup soccer tournament (taking place in Germany.) Luckily, the nice hosts at the campsite's restaurant stayed open late for the four camping guests who wanted to watch. Actually, we were able to watch (or listen) to a bunch of matches throughout our trip on my phone at the campsites that had wifi, which was also fun. We stopped at two more campsites on the way home, throwing away our well-washed sleeping bags at the last one, and arrived home with a plan to wash and/or freeze every bit of equipment we could.
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| Nice campsite on the way home |
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| I took this to mean everything was going to turn out okay! |
We spent July in and around Passau, taking a nice bike tour on Matthias' birthday that hit all of his favorite haunts, and then some. And then it was time for me to get ready for THE BIG TRIP with mom, Laurene, Jen and Brenda: A three-week cruise from Amsterdam to Scotland, Iceland and Greenland!! It was a fabulous experience, and quite the change from camping with bedbugs! Lux accommodations, hydrotherapy spa, great food and drinks, fun family and friends, and spectacular scenery! But that's going to have to be its own blog post. Coming soon!
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| Our fabulous group and itinerary! |
