As we Saw it (with a lot less detail)

Oh my god. So much time has elapsed since my last post. 

I’m happy to report that after my initial huge mistake at the start of our travels, which I outlined weeks ago in my last blog, all has gone well. 

We made it to Prague, and I don’t think I had to buy that third ticket because of the name misspelling. The TSA guy in Medford was totally distracted as we went through with our passports and tickets. I don’t think he would have caught the typo. And I could have had the spelling corrected in Seattle. Ah well, hindsight. 

We had three days in Prague, not nearly enough time for this awesome city, before we met up with our Backroads tour group. We generally travel on our own and do the planning ourselves, but when we started thinking of hiking in Germany and Austria, it seemed easier to go with an outfit that knew where to go. One could research such things, but neither Ed nor I were up to it. We ended up choosing the Czech Republic & Austria hike. 

We haven’t done many group trips, being the introverts that we are, but we had done a couple river trips. There’s always some anxiety on our part about group dynamics, but we had fun groups on the rivers (okay, there was one couple that was a problem, but we got around it), and the people on this tour were funny, smart and damn good hikers. 

We met in Prague and ended our trip in Salzburg. Definitely appealing to us since we had never been to either city or to any place in between. 

Broadly outlined, we stayed two nights in the medieval town of Česky Krumlov, Czech Republic, at a former monastery and university (I had a haunting the first night...got up to go to the bathroom, and access was blocked by a heavy wooden door with metal gratings and handle...returned with iPhone light and poof! Bathroom accessible.); one night in Hallstatt, Austria, and two nights in Fuschl, Austria—in one of the most luxurious hotels we’ve ever stayed in. 

Česky Krumlov river view

The locations and accommodations were amazing, and we had awesome hikes, of varying difficulty and lengths, either near our accommodations or en route to them. 

Glacier in Austria

Without revisiting every single thing we did (some of you have seen my FB posts and have an idea of where we’ve been), here are other highlights of going with Backroads and additional activities that we never would have experienced:

• A beer tasting with a local beer aficionado and a Q&A with a local historian, both from Česny Krumlov, and very direct about life under communism and life after 
• Lunch at a hospoda, country pub, at the edge of a nature preserve
• Czech music at the Eggenberg Brewery, brewing since 1560
• Dinner at a totally out-of-the-way restaurant near Fuschl, Austria, where we were treated to a Schuhplattler dance
• No toting of luggage—except to put it outside our hotel doors in the mornings, where it disappeared and landed in our rooms at the next location. 
• Delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners—in fact, way too much food!!

And then there are the guides. This is after all a guided tour. Kayla and Paige were terrific. Unlike our river guides, they weren’t making meals for us, but they were shepherding us everywhere and making sure we weren’t getting lost on forest and mountain trails. We weren’t going to go overboard, but there could have been other mishaps. 

Kayla taking photo, and Paige, second from left. 

There were none, however, and they were also super helpful, providing Ed with vitamin C and other items to help him through his cold, and offering me state-of-the-art bandages (French) for my blisters. The two were a good glue to pull the group together, and we did enjoy one another’s company. When it was time to say goodbye, it was emotional. 

And then Ed and I realized that we were on our own again. It’s a strange thing to be taken care of so completely, and then be turned loose. 

We managed in Salzburg and Munich, but it was a surprising transition to be on our own after all the care and feeding provided by our two young guides. Here we were lugging our own bags, figuring out transportation, and creating our own entertainment. Boohoo!!

Then we spent about a week in Nancy, Dijon, Beaune—the Burgundian wine country. I would highly recommend Dijon and Beaune (sounds like bone). We were particularly taken with Beaune as it offers biking, hiking, culture, history, dining and excellent wines. Ed and I agreed that of all the places we’ve been to, we’d return to that region for further exploration. 

We continued on to Limoges where we met up with our friends, Penny Colvin and Curtis Hayden, to do a self-guided walking tour in the Dordogne region of France. The Detours in France company booked our accommodations, ferried our luggage to each lodging, and provided transfers, all breakfasts and a couple dinners.

It was another great way to see a number of small cities and villages that we never would have seen if we’d booked our own trip, and the Dordogne river valley is stunning, with 12th century churches, castles, and 18,000 year-old cave paintings. 

Another list of awesome sights:

• Lascaux IV, even though it’s a copy of the original cave, it’s awesome and meticulous. 18,000-year-old cave paintings. Breathtaking. 
• Cabanes. Traditional stone structures. Amazing architecture and stone work. 
• Chateau des Milandes, built in 1489 and home to Josephine Baker from the 1930s to 1968
• 12th-century Chateau de Castlenaud and two miles away 12th-century castle Beynac, where Richard the Lionhearted lived in 1197 ( this area in the thick of the Hundred Years War)
• Domme and Rocamadour, amazing villages built into rock

Entrance to real Lascaux caves Found in 1946.

Cabanes de Breuil. Date from 1800s and is now an active farm. 

Les Milandes. Built 1489. 

Chateau de Castlenaud.  

Beynac Castle in distance. 

Ed thinks we might have been able to do this tour on our own, but I’m not so sure with all the transportation we needed, and we’re not talking Uber country here. It would have been difficult to arrange. As it was with the Detours, we ended up taking some cabs towards the end of our walks when we found ourselves on busy roads going into towns or we didn’t want to walk the 8-9 miles that day.

It wasn’t easy getting a cab. One day we ended up at a small shop having a beer and the owner of the store made a call for us. One day a butcher told us where we could find the number for a cab company. Another day the owner of the Basque restaurant in Castlenaud made the call.

Waiting for cab 

And waiting for a cab with Beynac in background

Comparing our self-guided walking tour and the guided tour, Backroads was able to offer more choices for lengths of hikes, which made it easier, but the self-guided tour allowed us to pace ourselves. It just took us a week to figure out how to do that!

All in all, Ed and I feel really good that we managed all our flights, trains and buses, finding our accommodations, and managing the changes. We do know that we won’t use third party companies for booking flights, and we favor hotels over VRBOs and AirBNBs. Sometimes hotels.com works, and sometimes it’s better to book directly with a hotel. They often give breaks for longer stays. We’re learning. Guess we need to keep traveling.