(written by Nancy)

We had a successful day today in Villach.  With the help of the great folks that work at the youth hostel I found a dentist who could see me today to try to get my tooth fixed.  The receptionist at the hostel rang her dentist and arranged everything for me, so all I had to do was show up and open my mouth.  The dentist slapped on some more bonding and we were good to go.  It feels a bit weird still – have to get used to a new shape in my mouth – but it is good to have it fixed so quickly and easily.  A bit of a knock on the budget, but what can you do?

This morning before the dentist appointment we spent some time mapping out our route up to Sweden.  We have our general route down now, and will be following the Eurovelo Route 7 – called the Middle Europe Route – once we get over the Grossglockner High Alpine Road.  I can’t remember if we’ve mentioned this yet, but that is the next big challenge.  This road takes you over the highest pass in Austria and tops out at 2572 meters (gulp!).  It’s such a famous road that it has its own website – http://www.grossglockner.at/en/.  It is about 25k of climbing to the top from the side we are climbing – for those bike geeks see the profile here – http://www.climbbybike.com/profile.asp?Climbprofile=Grossglockner—Edelweissspitze&MountainID=1374.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate to allow us to get over it – if it looks too bad we have some other options to get around it.  The weather pattern today seems to be the same as yesterday – hot during the day but with clouds rolling in in the afternoon with some thundershowers.  We have two days of riding before we reach Heligenblut, where we will start the climb at some ungodly early hour in the morning.

The Eurovelo route takes us up through Salzburg (home of Mozart) and then up through the Czech Republic before heading into Germany and then finally to Swinoujscie Poland, where we catch a ferry to the south of Sweden.  We’ve calculated it to be 16 days of riding so we have enough spare time to allow for some bad weather days and rest days along the way.

Other than the dentist and the planning we have had a quiet day, with a nice lunch in town and then a nap.  Hopefully that will mean we are well rested for the next leg.  Off tomorrow to the town of Obervellach, about 70k away.  Let’s hope the weather holds out for us.

In our wanders today, Dave took quite a few photos of Villach town flowers – boy, I’d sure like to have the geranium supply contract for these parts and the petunia version wouldn’t be bad either.  Enjoy the pictures.

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