Sun:
Our challenge with bike touring is moving all the bikes, luggage, and kids. When we did this 2 years ago (kids aged 2 and 4), I brought my parents because I just didn't see how we could get this work. Like last time, we left our bike bags at the airbnb and booked the return night for when we came back from Munich.
We caught the s-bahn at the Isartor train station - there was only an escalator and stairs and no bikes were allowed on the escalator. Charles walked down the long stairway with bikes while the kids and I took the escalator. We had two reserved bike spots for our bikes but the train conductor didn't seem to really believe we had the right tickets (our tour company bought them). The actual reserved seats that we had were pretty far from the bike car but the restaurant car was close to it so we parked ourselves there for the entire ride and ate lunch as well. We lucked out that this entire journey was direct with no transfers. Phew.
Brenner:
Off the train we went and we found Blue Marble our tour company. This was a family friendly trip and a lot of the families had already arrived - we were one of the last to get there at noon. This was also Day 1 of our cycle tour so yes we were dressed to cycle. The meeting point was across the street from the train station in a parking lot. It took us quite a while to get ready. Remember, we had to repack some luggage, assemble a trailer and tagalong etc. We did a lot of introductions here too with the other families but it was all a blur.
By the time we were ready, a lot of families had left already and it was also surprisingly cold. It had just been raining the week before. Nicolas our tour guide suggested we grab lunch in Brenner but we were just anxious to get started.
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| Christopher passed out |
This was a mostly downhill ride which was amazing and the bike paths were glorious. There was one particular long downhill that worried me since it was so steep and long that I was afraid of making a wrong turn and having to backtrack. It was actually on this stretch that we ran into another family on the tour going uphill toward us. I told them that I thought they were going the wrong way and they turned around to follow us. Luckily, I was correct. Phew. This trip was also different from previous Blue Marble trips since I actually had data and maps which I could use to double check the general direction.
So we skipped lunch but then had gelato and crepes at sterzing where we saw a bunch of the other families. The kids weren't going to complain about getting gelato for lunch.
In fortezza, we caught the local train to Brunico. An old Italian man saw me staring at the ticket machine and pushed the right buttons for me while speaking to me in Italian. So helpful! We had to walk to the Brunico hotel from the train station which was not as close as we thought it would be. We couldn't bike it either since we had dropped off the trailer and tagalong in Fortezza. Once we got to our hotel, we were pleasantly surprised to see how big our room was. The kids were in their own room nearby. They don't really have adjoining rooms in Europe but it worked out fine.
We tried meeting up with the group for dinner but we were tired and the kids were hungry so we ate by ourselves earlier inside the hotel and missed the long group dinner the first night.
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