Day 5: Into Germany..

Day 5: 61km / current location: LINK

It was raining when we got up this morning, so we took our time getting our stuff ready. Had a wonderful breakfast thanks to Annick with a fresh hard boiled egg each, compliments of the chickens in the back yard. The rain stopped and the sky was looking lighter outside, so we quickly got our stuff packed before we changed out minds and stayed another day.. I know it must not be easy running a B&B, but it sure is fun to stay at them.

We were faced with our first real hill right outside the gate of the B&B farmhouse. Not exactly the best way to warm up sore legs this early in the morning. It was about 2 miles long, but at least didn't make us use our granny gears on the bikes (yet). Today was a day of stopping lots of time to put on jackets and take them off as we went up and down lots of hills and had both a good share of sun and rain. We both are wearing Road Holland jerseys which really help deal with all these variations of weather. They are part merino wool and are the brainchild of our friend Jonathan Schneider who does a brilliant job producing and marketing these fine garments. They are perfect for our tour as they were last year as well.

We rode over the only hills in Holland, but I will say they have a bite to them. We stopped in the last Dutch town before the German border to visit an Apoteek (real drug store) to get some more drugs to help us fight off our colds. We both are not getting all the sleep we need to keep pedaling all day. You have to describe your symptoms to the person behind the counter before she prescribes the remedy. I was doing this in Dutch for both of us so who knows what drugs they ended up giving us. We'll see in the morning when we wake up (I sure hope we do)..

It was interesting to see the differences in bicycle infrastructure once we crossed the border into Germany. They had bike paths, but in many cases they were not in the best shape or you had to jump a curb to get on and off. We had gotten spoiled in Holland again, just as we did last year when we went to France afterwards. Oh well, we just need to appreciate the differences and look for the positives. Once we crossed the border we immediately were in the outskirts of the large town of Aachen which has a lovely Christmas fair (see, that was positive).

Anyway, we went into the center of Aachen looking for a Telecom store to buy another SIM card for our Ipad so we could access the Internet when we didn't have access to Wifi. BTW, the europeans pronounce it "weeefffeeee" which we find very silly... Anyway, we finally found a T-Mobile store and figured they would be a dominant Telco carrier here since they are a German company. Well...., after almost 2 hours of discussing why I didn't have a German address, bank account, drivers license, or mobile phone number we finally completed the transaction. My German is good for ordering beer, schnitzel, and bratwurst, not getting a pre-paid Data SIM for my Ipad mini. I really think it would be quicker to drop in a local BMW dealer and buy a car than doing this.. It was so easy doing the same thing in Holland...(there I go again..). The good part is that we found a nice Starbucks and enjoyed two latte's in the square outside. Kate, we charged it to your corporate Starbucks account..

The ride the rest of the day was tough through hills, rain, and muddy trails, so we decided to make a shorter day of it. Found a nice little hotel in the town of Schevenhutte and are now winding down. Our quads are definitely talking to us, but we haven't told them to "shut up" yet. Enough yakking, here are some pics...