I awoke at 3 AM to a hot, humid room. It's pretty easy to overwhelm the limited AC provided in German hotels. I opened the window to let some fresh air in the room (yes you can open the windows!) only to hear a lot of activity coming from the area where are tandems were stored. I got dressed and went to check on the tandems. Luckily I could just open the window at the end of the hall and pear down over the area. As it turns out, there was a number of delivery trucks dropping off food for breakfast. Wow fresh food for breakfast, what a concept. Tandems were safe so I could fall back asleep.
I awoke at 7 AM to start the bicycling maintenance. At quarter after eight, I was finished and really dirty. The kids were coming down for breakfast just as I was going up to get cleaned up. We had a nice breakfast as a continued my frantic search for accommodations. I was able to find a hotel that looked very nice but was rather expensive and a youth hostel that was a bit out of the way. I decided to book both.
After loading up the bikes we realized that we really should replace the tube that we had blown the previous day. We once again stopped at the unfriendly bike store for a couple of items. By the time we started it was close to 10:30 AM. We rolled along through down town Köln. It was beautiful until my front tire went flat. Not sure what caused the flat but I'm suspecting that it was improper installation of the tube. It was the last tire that I changed and I was in a hurry.
We replace the tube with a spare one and continued on our way. About 10 minutes later, I got another flat on the same tire. I think this was a bad tube, since I was very careful to install it correctly the last time (only 20 minutes ago). We had one spare left and no patch kit. By this time we were in down town Köln right by the cathedral. Riding without spares or a patch kit is inviting a long walk to the next bike store. We decided to head into down town Köln to find a couple of spare tubes and a patch kit. After wandering around a bit, we found a sports store and purchased the replacements.
By the time we got back on the path, it was after noon and we still had almost all of our ride ahead of us. Luckily we had accommodations and we didn't have to search for them when we arrived. We pushed on and arrived at our accommodations at about 5:30 PM.
We had booked ourselves into a hotel in Remagen and we all had visions of luxury accommodations. Unfortunately that was not the case. While not bad accommodations, the price was higher than other places and it was not as nice as other places. It seems places charge by how difficult it is to book them. This hotel was very easy to book on-line while most of the B&Bs don't have on-line booking.
After showering and having a quick dinner, we wandered around town a bit. We had some ice cream and found the bank and a small grocery store. Occasionally we have had lunch at a restaurant, but it is much nicer to have food and stop when you feel like it.
Today we left the loud noises of the city and moved into the Rhine valley. Navigation has been very easy and we barely need a map now. The bike path follows the Rhine except when there is a harbor or a plant. These detours are usually short and the are well mapped.
Talk to you tomorrow
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