Biking the Bodensee, Part 1

We started our bike trip around Lake Constance (the Bodensee in German) in Konstanz (Constance) at the Hotel Halm. The hotel restaurant where we had breakfast had a Moroccan theme with incredibly ornate decoration. How long did it take to create this?!?

Our route is shown below. Our first day took us to the small island of Reichenau, by ferry back to the mainland, then we biked along the Rhine to our next hotel in Schaffhausen.

The weather wasn’t the best. Kindly, the rain held off until we got on the ferry, but we definitely got damp as we biked along the Rhine. That was easy to forget, however, when we got to the town of Stein am Rhein. Even in the rain, the buildings were amazing. We definitely got carried away with the pictures…

The border here is convoluted – we passed back and forth between Germany and Switzerland. The Rhine seemed like the obvious border, but it wasn’t. Presumably centuries of invasions back and forth led to the current state of affairs. In Stein am Rhein, we were in Switzerland. Then back to Germany. In this town, the border really was the Rhine:

We went through the bridge to enjoy its all-wood construction. Then we headed off, following the signs to Schaffhausen. As we biked through a forest, all alone, I vaguely remembered a line in our biking instructions for the day – stay on the right side of the Rhine. Oops. We did eventually make it to our destination, then continued on a little further to see the Rheinfall:

Yes, those really are people on top of that rock. A narrow boat brings them out, noses into the back side of the rock, and they climb up, hoping it will be able to make it back to pick them up.