Donau Radweg: the final installment!

We took advantage of a beautiful weekend to finish the last section of the Donau Radweg (Danube Bike trail) that we had not completed of the Germany and Austria sections. We took the train down to Sigmaringen on Saturday morning and started downriver. One of our first stops was the "Nudel Haus", a Swabian noodle factory and store. Couldn't resist checking it out.

We ended up getting caught in an afternoon downpour after lunch, but as Joe put it, that was the sky vomiting up what didn't agree, because the rest of the day was beautiful, and not too hot! We found this cool bike fountain that was balanced such that it could spin both ways. We make a little video of that.

It turns out this section of river is famous for its many storks. So the towns have larger-than-life stork statues painted or decorated differently. We also encountered storks several times in the field. I think that all of these stork sightings are sending us a message. Wonder if we might find out what that message is before the year is up?!?

This part of our region is also famous for its Baroque churches. We passed many, but took a pilgramage up a drainage to see our favorite - and what must certainly be the most impressive in the area - the münster in the town of Zwiefalten. It's completely over the top (which makes sense, since it's actually Rococco), but with the sun streaming in it is absolutely gorgeous to be completely overwhelmed by the interior.

We spent the night in the little town of Obermarchtal, which has a gigantic Cloister with its own Baroque church. There was a lot of infrastructure, so we didn't have trouble renting one of their hundred rooms for the night. It had recently been renovated in what I can only describe as "papal fashion": bright red curtains and other red details, complete with the pillows fluffed into pointy pope hats. We got the corner room overlooking the münster in one direction and the river and dam in the other. We walked around town, and crossed a little creek to the hill opposite of where our cloister stood. There was once a second cloister there, but it is green space now. Like a phantom twin, it seems to have disappeared into the shadow of the town's main cloister.

We made it to Ulm in mid-afternoon on Sunday, goal achieved. I boarded a train headed for home, and Joe turned around and rode the 100 km toward home over the Swabian Alb. I beat him by 3 hours. Might be our last big bike trip for awhile! But, our neighbors are loaning us their old tandem, so if we get it fixed up we will post some pictures of our day trips.