and baroque buildings,
and experienced the classical music, at an organ concert at St. Peter's church, and a violin piano duo in the atrium of the House of Music,
but what I hadn't imagined was that Vienna was also a giant beach party town. As soon as we reached the city's outskirts the parks started.
The Danube Insel (island) stretches for miles down the middle of the Danube and from our path along it we could see people swimming across the Danube to the banks on either side. After spotting one particularly active beach we crossed the bridge to stop and jump in the famous river. The heatwave we have been experiencing in Europe means we take every chance we can to have a dip to cool off. Continuing along the path into Vienna proper we passed countless picnics, nightclubs and cafes,
and stopped to watch waterskiiers jump off ramps,
while wakeboarders nearby were attached to automated lines that zigzagged them across the water at high speed.
We stayed our first night at an extremely busy campground where partigoers put on makeup and miniskirts before venturing into town for the nightlife. In the morning we cycled through a cool tunnel bridge
to our rental apartment, two minutes away from Belvedere Palace.
A short cycle ride away was Schonbrunn palace, whose magnificent interior we glimpsed through the windows but skipped touring due to the 90 minute wait. 
We opted instead to see the garden and navigate the mazes built for the amusement of the Hapsburg royalty and their guests.
In between bouts of sightseeing the kids cooled off in one of the city's many fountains.
For our evening entertainment we looked up outdoor movie listings and found that Guardians of the Galaxy was playing at a rooftop cinema. We figured it would be in English since it was part of a summer film festival that screened movies in their original versions. We went early to the venue to make sure we could get seats and discovered a bar and a charming little restaurant, where Paul and I quaffed beer and kir royale and we dined on schnitzel, quinoa salad and gnocchi.
Instead of a fourth wall the building had a set of steps all the way down to the street below,
so from our table we could watch as patrons materialized head first on their climb up to the roof.
The film turned out to be dubbed in German to the initial chagrin of the kids, but we decided to stay and watch anyways. Fortunately a Marvel superhero movie needs no translation - the action said it all - and we all had a terrific time -the staff even brought us free popcorn. The kids quoted their favourite lines in German ("Ich bin Groot") for the next few days. Paul and I ventured out on our own the next night (the kids stayed home in Jacob's charge - he emailed us from the ipad to keep in touch) to catch a few minutes of another outdoor festival - this one a Frank Sinatra film shown on a giant screen at the Rathaus, with hundreds of people in attendance - and then sampled Sachertorte on a nearby patio. Cycling home we passed through the courtyard of the Museum Quartier where hipsters played bocce ball and lounged on some dual purpose sculptures/street furniture. Such a great scene, and no money required!
We were able to extend our time in the city by an additional night thanks to an offer from Tim, a friend of Hajar and Michael's (the warmshowers hosts who we had stayed with in Wasserburg). Tim, who had previously travelled by bike from Turkey to Vienna with zero money in his pocket (his choice, with only a credit card for emergencies), took us on an amazing cycle tour around the city. He met us at the Prater amusement park, where we had gone for a spin on the hundred year old ferris wheel,
then took us through the rest of the beautiful green Prater park. Vienna seems to be a highly liveable city, packed with parks, playgrounds, and beautiful pools. There is even a "badenschiff" - a boat with a swimming pool and a bar on board - which we passed during our tour, along with countless cafes, a giant old bunker (one of several in the city from WWII that had been kept as a historical monument), and riverside scenery, both urban
and natural. Jacob scared me with his foray right to the edge
(I yelled at him right after I took this photo).
Tim finished off our Vienna experience by cooking us delectable marillonknodels - a kind of sweet dumpling - that his girlfriend had made from scratch using apricots she had picked a few days earlier, then gave us the keys to his apartment for the night while he stayed at his girlfriend's house. Another example of the wonderful hospitality people have shown us.
It was hard not to fall in love with the amazing contrasts of Vienna - the great public life, the classical beauty, the graffiti that transformed concrete underpinnings into works of graphic art (every pillar had a different massive painting on it),
the playful design touches,
and the terrific bicycle paths. We had our own freeway bridge taking us reluctantly out of town the next morning,
away from the vibrant city and straight into quiet countryside.
The next part of our route followed the Czech Greenway, an official cycle route that we knew almost nothing about, save that it went from Vienna to Prague.
Armed with a map and one page of difficult to pronounce Czech phrases, we headed off, and discovered that cycling in the Czech Republic was quite different than our prior easy trails.
For one thing, there were actual hills - up until that point we had mostly been cycling through flat terrain and river valleys, but on our second day in Czech we had some serious climbs, up dirth path and rocky terrain that forced us to walk our bikes.
The ups and downs continued for the next several days, though the thrilling descents made up for the punishing ascents.
Our first two days through gorgeous fields of wheat
and sunflowers
were accompanied by the last of the July heatwave with hot heavy weather, sometimes blazing sun and sometimes humid and cloudy,
so still that at times the ubiquitous windmills had completely stopped. I took a picture to show it then realized that windmills are always stopped in pictures, doh!
After that the weather changed, and we were forced to contend with some headwinds along with the hills, particularly challenging for Kyra,
but also a trial for Paul, whose imprecations to Tom to please pedal to lessen the burden of the tandem bike fell on deaf ears much of the time.
Unlike the super busy Danube trail, there were very few touring cyclists on the route. Those that we did see were generally racing cyclists or people out for a short ride just outside of the small towns. We were often alone on the roads, whose surfaces ran the gamut from cobblestone and heavily degraded farm tracks (more pothole than road),
to somewhat
or barely maintained dirt track,
to completely smooth highways where we travelled with very few cars.
The Czech Republic must be undertaking a serious infrastructure program, because besides excellently paved but little used roads we regularly came across sections of road that were closed for improvements, unfortunately at key points in our path. We stopped paying attention to the closures and just rode on through,
only once confronting actual steamrollers at work (not these ones though, they were sitting vacant),
who we bypassed by cutting through the field next to the road. The kids were appalled at our lawlessness but most of the closures were for small sections of track, with detours, if they were posted at all, that would have required backtracking and too many additional unwanted kilometres.
We had been told that signage in the country left much to be desired, but were pleasantly surprised by how good it actually was, directing us easily between
and through towns.
of what sort or importance we have no idea - all we knew was that it was loud and fervent - possibly warning villagers to avoid the crazy Canadian cyclists?
Camping in the Czech republic was another new experience. People in the small towns knew very little English (though more than we knew Czech) so we communicated in our laughable German. We had trouble finding campsites, ending up at a soccer field one night in Sedlec-Prcice. An ancient looking sign for a sports field also had a tent symbol on it, but when we ventured to the site there was no sign of campers, just a football match. The owner grudgingly gave us permission to camp there (for free), and when I bought him a beer from the little stall for spectators (no matter how small the field or few the spectators there are always drinks to be had) he cheered up and told us he'd leave the bar bathrooms open for us all night. Once the match was over we had the field to ourselves
though not the main soccer pitch, which like other soccer pitches we came across was lovingly tended and bright green.
Another night we travelled along a tiny path to a spot where our map promised a campground,
but it failed to materialize. We set off again without knowing exactly where we'd go next,
and were stopped by a man in a truck who asked us where we were going and where we were from. He ended up giving us directions to a campground a few km away, then invited us into his wine cellar just down our path.
After a couple of glasses of wine and a tour of his cellar - behind the wooden doors - we went on our way with a bottle of white he insisted on giving us for the road.
Most of the campgrounds we had to ourselves,
but that solitude was entirely absent at in Vlanasky Plaz, a lakeside resort campground crammed in all directions with tents and camper vans, as well as restaurants, bars and mini food stalls.
Our neighbours were a bunch of partiers with their own beer fridge, though they politely turned the music down at around midnight. It wasn't our favourite campground, but we had fun following the steps of the dance leader at the afternoon beach party (play Where's Waldo but with Tom).
We loved the beautiful Czech countryside,
the hayfields,
the small villages with houses in various stages of decrepitude,
and larger towns like Jindrichuv Hradec
and Tabor, with a 24 hour clock 
(google liked my photo and decided to stylize it for me). We did our food shopping in the larger towns, after discovering that small places had either nothing open (the stores in one town opened at 5 am and closed at 2) or just a tiny coop store with a few battered tomatoes and not much else, making for pretty poor picnics.
We travelled through many forests, one in a national park with scenic views and a long bridge that I crossed separately reading an ominous warning about the maximum capacity of the bridge that with our luggage I felt sure we were exceeding.
We were astounded at the fruit trees that were planted along almost every road and highway. We couldn't find good fruit in the stores, but there were apples and delicious ripe plums everywhere,
and though most of the cherry trees were finished for the season, we came across one full of lusciously ripe red cherries
that I stayed behind to pick and would probably still be there now if an extremely territorial wasp hadn't come out to send me on my way. One day's cycle even had a Canadian feel to it, through woods thick with blueberry bushes (no bears though!) that we picked with delight.
As in the rest of Europe we didn't see much wildlife (since there isn't much), but were initially attracted then slightly repulsed by a family of mammalian river creatures at one of our campsites, who we nicknamed the beaver rat
because of its cute beaverlike face and body but ratlike tail which we spotted when it turned around. We googled it and found out it was a nutria, an invasive species that is native to South America (explaining its resemblance to the capybara) but is a scourge of wetlands in Europe and North America where it was introduced years ago and has since become a rampant pest.
Our approach to Prague was remarkable - we'd been dreading cycling with the traffic we assumed would come as we got closer to the city. Instead, once we were about 30 km away the greenway signs directed us to completely separated bicycle paths that went through the outskirts and into the forest.
When we emerged, passing first through a hillside tunnel,
it was into the full glory of Prague's beauty, along the Vltava (Moldau) river.
Even the kids, who normally aren't as enthusiastic as we are on arriving in a new city, were awestruck and charmed, uncomplaining despite the long journey and bumpy cobblestone path underfoot,
though what they were most excited about was seeing Marty, Ben and Sam, who arrived just in time for dinner.
Always wanted to go to Prague - the photos are amazing. The kids are doing so great with all the cycling!
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