Day 12- Mulhouse to Basel - 44.5 kms

8 Jun

After a great night of conversation with Stefan last night we enjoyed a good nights restful sleep and awke at about 7.00am... Stefan had left at 6.00 am for work in Germany by train so Chris and I thought we might have breakfast at a local cafe before heading to a nearby Internet cafe to try to download the Europe maps on my Garmin

We had a good breakfast of coffee and croissants and headed off to the Internet cafe when it opened at 9

We made some good headway by ourselves but we had the good fortune of gaining useful advice from Julian a German who was in the Internet cafe preparing job applications

The whole process was more complicated by much of the instructions being in French so Julian who spoke French was a godsend

We finally thought we had the matter solved when the downloading started and finished over a one and a half hour process only to find it had downloaded USA maps and not European maps. To say we were annoyed would be an understatement.....

Where to next when the Garmin process fails miserably

I have sent an email to Garmin Australia to get them to advise me what I do next!!!!

After dusting ourselves off with the latest Garmin episode we then had a baguette lunch and made our way back to Stefan’s apartment to dress and pack for the ride to Basel

Well if things didn’t get worse from there...

As we retrieved our bikes Chris locked his helmet in the bike storage room only realising this when the apartment keys were locked in the apartment mailbox

He agreed that the only way to resolve the problem was to buy a new helmet which we did enroute to Basel

At the bike/sports store I noticed that Chris did not have his water bottle.... this had been left st Stefan’s apartment

Chris then purchased a new water bottle and it was on to Basel

The bike track we followed was alongside a canal which is part of the Rhone- Rhine canal system

The travel was easy and relatively flat and we enjoyed trying to engage in hello and bonjour with the cyclists along the path .... all good fun

We reached the end of the canal at the Rhine river.... what a sight it was .... so wide and the water flowing so fast!

Shortly after we located a cafe on German soil where we had an ice cream.... then we made our way across the Rhine again in to Switzerland thereby completing travel into 3 countries inside about half an hour

Basel at first looked very industrial but along the way through the city it became more pretty with cafes alongside the river and people enjoying the good weather of the afternoon

We located our youth hostel which is an excellent place to stay the night and very comfortable

We get free transportation in to the city by tram as part of the accommodation costs

In summary today was a frusuone in many respects but we reconciled this with the pure enjoyment of our travel in a wonderful part of the world

No for the photos....

Julian and Chris at the Internet cafe .... Garmin solving??