#4: Spittal an der Drau, Austria

Refreshed after a good night's sleep at the Bellevue, we hit the road early the next morning. The sky was blue...

And the snow melt was cascading down the mountainside...

But after biking just a few kilometers, we hit a slight obstacle...

This was the proverbial "end of the road" for cyclists...and for everyone else. Apparently the Austrian department of transportation called it a day--for good--when they got to this peak.

So at the teeny-tiny "town" of Bockstein, where the road ends, everyone has to hop in a train.

The train tunnels through the mountain and takes about 20 minutes.

It runs every hour or so, every day of the year, from about 7 am to 11 pm.

In the off-season, it was not a problem just to show up, buy a ticket, and climb on board.

So we loaded our bikes...

And others loaded their cars...
... and all sat back enjoyed the short ride to Mallnitz, Austria, the teeny-tiny "town" on the other side of the tunnel.

From Mallnitz, it was all downhill, for about 10 kilometers on a windy road.

It was tempting to let go of the brakes and fly down. But, after catapulting over my bike handlebars and shattering my collarbone a few years back, I "gave pause."

Then Markus pointed out a "Danger" road sign that had an icon of a cyclist hitting a bump in the road and crashing to the pavement. 😓  So, like the two older-but-wiser goats we are, we proceeded down the slope with caution, rather than abandon.

After the long downhill, the cycling route follows the Drau river, more or less--but mostly less. This section of the route is poorly signed, and often the signage didn't match our cycling map.

The route zigzags into farmland, returns to the river, follows a highway, goes up into foothills...as if it had been charted by someone doing shots of schnapps. We took some wrong turns and had to backtrack several times. After that, to prevent going in circles, we had to stop at almost every juncture, scratch our heads, and deliberate. Right? Left? Straight?

It was exhausting and time-consuming. Thank goodness for GPS. Not ours, but that of two other German cyclists in bright blue jerseys who were uber-prepared for their trip. Every once in awhile we'd spot them further ahead on the road and simply take the same route.

So by hook and by crook, and by piggy-backing off those bright blue jerseys, we finally arrived at Spitall an der Drau.

Spitall is not a pretty town. Kind of run down and rough. But we were tired, a thunderstorm was brewing, and most everything was closed due to a national holiday (the Ascension of Christ).

So we decided to find a place to stay. The best we could do was "Hotel Ertl", which has as much grace and charm as its name. It was dark and dated and overpriced, and located right next to the train station. It had a weird combo theme of Austrian country inn and Mexican cantina.

We're used to small hotel rooms in Europe, but this one was a claustrophobic's nightmare. It must have been designed by the maker of Satellite portable toilets.

It began raining heavily and we were trapped inside, literally breathing down each others' necks. We laid on the beds anxious, tired, and wide awake, in painful reminiscence of our large, luxurious room at the Bellevue Hotel in Bad Gastein the night before--which had cost about the same amount!

"You're riding high in April
 Shot down in May"

That's travel!