Across the Alps to the SeaCez Alpy k moru

The second stage of our very first bike trip begins just past the Austrian town of Linz, by the local Stargate statue. We've finally left the Danube behind and are pedaling southwest toward Salzburg. The first day of this stage is beautiful right from the start, sunny, with amazing scenery around Austria's Lake Attersee. It has a gorgeous blue color and is full of sailboats, almost like being at the sea.

We spend the first night on the lake shore at a small rest stop. In the morning we're woken by a commotion, it's local divers heading out for a dive in the lake. We quickly pack up the tent so we don't run into any trouble, and continue on toward Salzburg, passing by another local lake, Mondsee. We arrive in the city in the early evening and get to witness, on the main square, either a summer celebration or a Satanic mass, we're honestly not sure. Finding a spot to pitch a tent in the city proves difficult, so we keep going and eventually fall asleep under a highway bridge.

Even though it didn't rain under the bridge, nobody warned us that goats would come to check us out in the morning, which was a lot of fun. And since Salzburg is the gateway to the Alps, we really do wake up to gorgeous scenery, and the terrain is no longer flat like it's been so far. Instead we're greeted by mountains, forests, and meadows, which we cross through tunnels and over bridges. We climb toward the main Alpine ridge through the picturesque village of Bad Gastein, dominated by the waterfall that runs through it. Just below the ridge, we take a train for about 10 km, which carries us over to the other side of the mountain to the village of Angermann.

From Angermann, our first real descent awaits. Up until now we'd been riding either on flat ground or uphill, but for the next 10 kilometers we head downhill to the village of Obervellach.

Believe me, there is no more terrifying feeling than bombing full speed down a hill on a fully loaded 44 kg bike that you built yourself.

Did I tighten those bolts properly? Is a wheel about to come loose? Does that fork actually hold?

These and similar questions run through your head, and you just hope everything turns out fine and that you don't end up somewhere at the bottom of a mountain ravine.

Of course, everything turned out fine, and since going downhill is easy going, we end the day on our sleeping mats on a bench right next to Lake Millstätter See, and the next morning we arrive in Villach, where our friend Florian welcomes us. He showed us his favorite spot by the famous Wörthersee and took us hiking up a local hill. Visibility was so good that we could see all the way to the Grossglockner, Austria's highest mountain, almost 100 km away.

We were sad to say goodbye to Florian and kick our bikes onward toward Italy, but the road calls. It's right here, just past Villach, that the most beautiful stretch of the Alpe Adria begins, the very reason we made such a long journey to get here. In this section, the route follows the old railway line that's been converted into a bike path. Thanks to that, you can ride over 100 km downhill, through gorgeous Alpine scenery, through at least a hundred tunnels and bridges. And all of it completely free of cars, following the original railway route. Absolutely amazing.

Along this route we swam in waterfalls, laughed next to an old train station, tasted a lovely Italian breakfast, and topped it all off with pizza in the Italian city of Udine. We then closed out the official Alpe Adria section with a swim in the seaside town of Grado.