There were some spectacular sceneries today. I climbed up to the Croation coast magistrala after the ferry ride and it was not as bad as I expected. There was just a little bit of traffic and very pretty views. Looks like island Pag is very dry. I went to the old Pag city, it is very interesting the streets are very very narrow you can see that on some of the pictures.
Taverna, B+B – 30EUR
I cheated a little today with the ferry ride. 🙂
Private room, 20 EUR
This was a short biking day but it was not without events. The day started with running into my good old childhood friend in Rijeka in a coffee shop. What a surprise. Leaving Rijeka was a little painful because of the hilly streets and lot of traffic. As I was leaving town my planner took me on a little road which eventually ended up in some bushes. As I was trying to figure out where to go and looking at my iPhone a big black dog ran to me barking, this of course scared me. The dog turned out to be a friendly dog, what a relief. I had to walk the bike down the steep hill for a little bit and then I got on the road. From now on everything was picture perfect the scenery of the Adriatic is spectacular. On top of that I met some nice people from Germany in the camp – Thomas and Stephanie and we had dinner together.
I was motivated to see the sea. All went well with the exception of about a 20 km high traffic section. On the other hand I also had a few very low traffic sections.
I got a very nice private hostel room right in the center of Rijeka. I walked around the pretty town and enjoyed a good seafood dinner.
Hostel 1W, private B – 44EUR
This was a long day. I felt good after resting in Maribor, I had a cleaned and lubed chain, some tail wind and the last ~40km were mostly downhill. I did some climbing throughout the day but I was pleasantly surprised with the long descend to Ljubljana.
I cruised around the town center and quickly found a hostel about 2km from downtown. It feels like the real non tourist Slovenia here around the hostel.
They moved a tv to my room so I could watch the woman’s US Open final but we could not make it work – sad; I wanted to see the hopefully Czech victory in NYC.
Hostel Simple, B 21 EUR
This was the last day on the well marked portion of the Eurovelo 9 trail. The rest of it past Maribor is in planning or in implementation but not finished. There were a lot of day cyclists riding around on the last section on the southern border between Austria and Slovenia. I also saw a few touring cyclists but I did not talk to any of them because they were going in the opposite direction.
The highlight of the day was the pretty little village St. Anna am Aigen. I stopped there for coffee and ice cream.
I arrived in Maribor, Slovenia a little past six and I was pretty tired. I think the climbing yesterday took its toll. I don’t feel like a mountain goat with my heavy bicycle. I plan to stay in Maribor all day tomorrow, relax and explore.
Hostel UNI, B+B 34 EUR
I did a lot of climbing today and some of the views were just gorgeous it was worth it.
I ended up in the campsite today it is only about half full and everything is very clean and nice; so far I like it.
Camp, 13EUR
Day five of the tour was a rain day.
I spent it at this beautiful place eating delicious food and I set up this website which I hope will get better with time.
Getting out of the Vienna was a little tricky I missed one turn and had to return, there were a lot of road/trail crossings and the roads were wet. It rained for about one hour during the day. I spent most of the day riding along an artificial channel that was also crossing some rivers so it was pretty interesting to see the channel on a bridge over the river.
I was a little worried about finding lodging at the end of the day it was getting dark and the rain was close. I spent some time asking about lodging in one village but nobody could help. At the end of the day when it was almost getting dark I was lucky and a lady at the ATM pointed me to very nice lodging operated by nuns.
Pension Herminenhaus, B+B 34EUR, B+B+L+D 46EUR
I followed Eurovelo 9 for most of the day. It was a nice scenic route, low traffic but a little longer than necessary.
Meininger Hotel Downtown Sissi, B 40EUR, BR 8EUR
This is the second day of the tour.
All went well and I even stopped at the pub where I spent a lot of my military service time in the late 80s in the village Mutěnice.
Hotel Imos, B+B+D – 570CZK
This was the first day of the tour. I did the route planning using mapy.cz .
This app works perfectly however I heard that only in the Czech republic. I was chased by a storm for a couple hours but I managed to escape.
Kroměříž is one of the towns that everyone should see it is very very pretty.
Ubytovna Smetanka, B – 300CZK
