Danube Bike Tour Day 24: Zwentendorf to Vienna
Posted by Cassie, November 27th, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Distance: 50km
Today was another cold gray day. It was colder than yesterday, and it rained on us for most of the morning. We stopped in Tulln because it was supposed to have a neat city center. It seemed like a neat place, but the entire city center was a big construction site. It was not the picturesque detour we were expecting. However, it finally stopped raining past Tulln, and that was a welcome change. We were able to stop along the path and cook lunch for ourselves for the first time in days.
Riding into Vienna was an adventure! I knew Vienna was a big city, but it was bigger than I imagined. Vienna was full of fancy building! The Habsburgs had a lot of money, and it showed in the seat of the empire. Fortunately, there was a bike path along the Ringstrasse that goes around the center of the city, so that was easiest way to bike into the city. We went to the tourist information center and got a city map, and we were able to find our way to the hostel. We found the hostel without much trouble at all. The hostel actually had a double room available for three nights for us! While we were registering for the room, we had a scare with the bikes. We left our bikes leaned up against the wall of the hostel since we could watch them from inside the hostel. A man walked by and stopped to take a look at the bikes. He looked like he was seriously considering stealing the bikes. Since Jonathan was registering, I was responsible for watching the bikes. I went outside to stand by the bikes, and the man hurried away. Fortunately, the hostel had a safe place for us to park the bikes, so we didn’t have to worry about them getting stolen. The hostel staff was really nice, and the place was more welcoming and less institutional than the Hostelling International hostels where we had stayed in Germany and Austria. The hostel had a kitchen where guests could cook, and they also had computers available for checking Internet. The computer were also running Ubuntu Linux! We were excited to be staying the same place for three nights. Bike touring was a lot of fun, but it wore me out to constantly be on the move and stay at different place every night.
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