Discovering a whole new way of Travel

Over the last few weeks we worked hard to get in shape. Our plan was taking the bicycles on a multi day trip sans previous experience. We've been leisure day trippers alright, but never actually traveled together by bike before.

Train ride to Konstanz

With a long weekend ahead and the promise of fair weather we packed (light), jumped on the bicycles and headed for the nearest train station. The state Baden-Württemberg has a very efficient and reliable German Railway (Deutsche Bahn) grid, and riding at the right schedule it's really cheap, too (yes, of course there is an app for this). Besides, the fastest way to travel to Konstanz at the Swabian Sea is actually via train.

EV15 Bike Route

Two hours later we got off the train, and made a beeline for the river Rhine, which actually flows through Obersee (Upper Lake), Lake Constance and Untersee (Lower Lake). Our plan was to follow a section of the EuroVelo route EV15, which is a long-distance bicycle route running over 1200km along the Rhine from its headwaters in Andermatt, Switzerland to Hoek van Holland in the Netherlands, from the Alps to the North Sea.

Distance: 40kms

We were simply waved through at the Swiss-German border, actually it wouldn't be the last time we crossed the invisible line between the neighbouring countries.

The wind was still a bit nippy, but it continued to warm up later the day. We were dressed in layers, which we peeled off during the ride. The bike path was mostly paved with some easy gravel sections, and well used, also by locals, because of the holiday.

At lunch time we lost a portion of the funny money that are Swiss Francs. Oh boy, it's expensive here!

Since we didn't need the gas money, we invested into good food in order to refuel ourselves, and there were a variety of culinary options (vege and other) offered along the way.

One would think that the bike trail would actually follow along the lake but every so often we had to climb a hill. After a while we got used to it, and settled into a comfortable travel speed.

We were thinking about staying in the picturesque village of Stein am Rhein with its well preserved medieval city center.

However, we felt it was too crowded, and so moved on to Diessenhofen, where we found a neat little hotel for the night, right across a castle. Although it was a little outdated, the room was spick and span (it's Switzerland after all...).

Before dinner we went for a little walk around town, and found out it was medieval, too only with much less people, and also had a covered wooden bridge to boot.

The ride wasn't too strenuous but this being our first day on the bikes, in the fresh air, using only muscle power to move forward plus an excellent dinner finally took its toll. And so, shortly after dinner we were ready to call it a day.