Danube Bike Tour Day 23: Spitz to Zwentendorf
Posted by Cassie, November 27th, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Distance: 41km
Today, the morning started out with promise with a clear and sunny sky. However, soon the sky clouded over, and it was cold and gray the rest of the day. We walked to the Red Gate in Spitz in the morning. We entered the Wachau wine-growing valley yesterday, so Spitz was in the middle of the vineyards. We had a great view of the vineyards, Spitz, and the river from the Red Gate.
View from Spitz Red Gate
We also got groceries in the morning in Spitz. As we were walking to the grocery store, a maniac driver leaving the gas station drove straight towards us before turning away at the last minute. He had a smile on his face the whole time, so he thought it was funny. I did not like Austrian drivers at all, and in my opinion, they were as bad as the Belgian drivers. Sometimes, the bike route went along roads that were supposed to be low traffic, but there were actually quite a few cars. The cars did not slow down or move over for bike riders. On one stretch of road, we moved over the side of the road every time a car went by because we were afraid of getting run over.
Fortunately, the ride today was along bike paths and quiet roads, so we didn’t have to deal with cars so much. It was really pretty riding to the Wachau valley vineyards. We pulled over and tried a few of the grapes, and they were really tasty. It was also neat to see the people picking the grapes in the vineyards.
Riding through vineyards
We left the Wachau valley when we reached the city of Krems. When we checked the Internet in Krems, both PrintWhatYouLike and GrinnellGallery were down, so we had to spend time getting them running again. PrintWhatYouLike ran out of space on the server, and MySQL crashed on GrinnellGallery. Fortunately, we were able to get both sites up again. However, we were forced to do this at the most expensive Internet place. It was 10 cents per minute to use the Internet on a old computer still running IE6. It cost us 6 euros for an hour of Internet, but it was important to get everything up and running again.
Riding through Wessenkirchen
It was late by the time we left Krems, so we had to crank out the miles. We stopped in Zwentendorf, and we stayed at another nice pension.
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