Bike Tour Day 3: The Tour of Silence

Our ride on day 3 was to be our most hilly portion on our way to Bautzen.  The route sheet listed the elevation in meters, so it wasn't really a useful gauge for us on the amount of climbing to be done over the day. We were ready to go even before the Sherpas showed up, which is unusual for this trip.

The ride itself was nice, cutting through the valleys and farmland of eastern Germany.  Often we would be riding along small one lane roads that are actually for two way traffic.  We would see so few cars, trucks, buses, and other cyclists that we could just ride beside each other.

This also turned into our most difficult ride day yet. Once we started, we could not find a place to eat, purchase drinks, a beer garden, or even a WC to use the entire day. Mixed with the sun, which finally came out to join us in this vacation, we were struggling along. We did stop and see a castle turned into a museum.  The castle was not very remarkable, the museum was mostly poster boards (last name in the guest book was from May), but they did have a WC and water.  We decided it was worth the cost of entry after that discovery.  Thankfully we both brought a power bar and rationed that off as we rode.  Once those were gone we moved or search for food up in priority.  We ran low on water until we finally we broke down and asked a local working on her yard for some. Connie was more than happy to help and chat with Heather for a bit about our trip, the weather, her recent cycling to Berlin, and telling us most people get the route wrong in front of her house. She also confirmed that the street signs have a second language on them, but it is not Polish as we guessed. It is Sorbien.

We did make it into town. Dan began to salivate at the first food place we found, a McDonalds. Heather convinced him to wait and found a cake shop instead which tasted much better.  We found the hotel, despite the cobblestone streets, with ease. It's a family run restored 13th century building. They even welcomed us with two cold beers, left for us by our sherpa team.

The town of Bautzen is really nice, with an old section that we explored as the sun set.  It has many towers surrounding it from the former city wall. We did not get to check out the Stasi prison museum that we were told is worth stopping in (got to town too late). All said it gives us another reason to go back to Bautzen.