Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Austria and tomorrow we will be in Germany. Its amazing what you can do on a bicycle. Not a particularly exciting rest day. The first priority is always laundry. It is great when our hotel offers laundry service but that has only happened once so far. This morning I went searching for a laundry which would do my clothes today with no luck. They all wanted several days and, of course, that doesn’t work. So, to the laundromat. This one was much better than the one I used in Split so I was able to get in an out in about one hour. Also it had a nice coffee shop next door.
I spent some time walking around and snapping some random shots of the city for the rest of the morning. While I was out I ran into Geoff. His arm is bandaged from his wrist to his elbow but he was in good sprits and I expect he will be riding again soon if not tomorrow. The amazing thing about Innsbruck is that at the end of each street are the gigantic mountains with pockets of snow still on the peaks. They are really amazing.
I am still having a good deal of pain in my back and chest from my accident. Yesterday afternoon I decided that it might help to do a sauna and get some heat on the muscles. Spas, which are also called wellness centers and are also called saunas are fairly prevalent in Austria and Germany. They are most frequently visited in the winter months but some are available year round. The first two I stopped at were both closed for the summer. They said for renovations. The third one was open for the “traditional” side. All these spas used to be commonly used by both sexes in the nude but because of all the visitors from the US and Britain who are bashful about their bodies they now often offer a “textile” side where swimsuits are worn. Anyway the traditional side was open so I went for my sauna. It was a small place on the sixth floor of a hotel. It was very nice nonetheless. The entry lobby was also where the lockers were so you undressed there and then went into the area where they had the saunas. There were three saunas, a solarium, an outdoor lounge area, and an indoor lounge area plus a shower room. The three saunas were one with moderate heat, a typical Finnish sauna and what they called an aroma sauna. The Finnish sauna was mostly dry heat but they had three buckets there with water that you can dip on the heating stones and each bucket of water had a different fragrance. The aroma sauna had continuous water spraying on the stones so it was really a steam room.
I spent about 90 minutes in the Finnish and aroma saunas and then a short time outside on the lounges to cool down. When I left I had no pain in my back but unfortunately it didn’t last so by the time I went to bed the pain was back.
So, here are some random shots of Innsbruck as I walked around.
