2010 Trip: Konstanz Day 2

28th May 2010

As I mentioned yesterday, Konstanz is a fantastic city for biking, so today Angela and I (borrowing Lukas' bike) set of for the first of two trips. First, we headed through town and across the border into Switzerland. Fairly close to the city is a rather good chocolate factory, we biked up and bought lots at the sufficiently cheap factory shop. Unfortunately, the factory doesn’t offer tours around it, but it did smell pretty fantastic.

After this, we returned home and set off in another direction, this time we headed north along the Rhein and finally to the island of Reichenau. A tree lined causeway extends out to the island. We spent a few hours biking around the island (a major source of local produce as it sits in a rather nice microclimate), stopping at two of the three churches on the island, admiring the pretty view across the late.

The communal village atmosphere was very attractive. We walked around a monastery that was (maybe not so much these days) the centre of life on the island, with a rather interesting herb garden, its own winery (monastic life had its perks), and a rather cool set of large sundials. We stopped at the village bakery towards the end of our ride and enjoyed an ice cream (they do proper gelato in this neck of the woods), a radler from a local brewery (the Rathaus), and a delicious pastry.

After this, we rode back to town. Angela had work that evening, but after downing some leftovers, Lukas and I headed to a beer garden on the water front. We sampled some of the local beers, which was fun but neither of us are particularly keen beer drinkers.

After this we headed to local institution - a cafe owned by an eccentric philosopher. He attends carefully to each of his guests and provides very good hot chocolates in a wide variety of types - I had an exciting marzipan number. We were joined by Angela and another friend of Lukas'. Later, we tried to watch a sailing regatta that was going on that night on the lake, but we couldn’t see anything, so we headed back for bed.