One more day of riding left, and nearly all of it would be in Switzerland, on the south shore of the lake, riding west. I decided that since I'd definitely consumed enough beer over the last three days, I would go completely alcohol-free on Monday. I suited up again, this time in a bike jersey from Ride Away Bicycles, the bike shop in San Antonio where I'd always gone for any bike-related needs back when I lived there.
So after we checked out of the Hotel Graf Zeppelin, we rode that morning through downtown Konstanz and to a German-Swiss border checkpoint.
I had my passport with me, but I didn't need it. We never needed to stop or got asked for papers or anything, we just rode right through it. Switzerland may be committed to staying out of foreign entanglements, but I'm glad they got themselves entangled in the Schengen Agreement!
Having ridden over the international border, we were now in a town called Kreuzlingen, in the canton of Thurgau. At this point we started riding west on isolated rural roads, not on dedicated bike paths like in Germany. Most of the ride through Thurgau was pretty uneventful, with not much to see other than the fields and farmland we passed by. Every now and then we got to see a train go by.
At one point during the morning we made a rest stop at a town called Steckborn. I just had some water.
After zipping through a few small towns we rode over the canton line into Canton Schaffhausen and our final riding destination, the town of Stein am Rhein ("Stone on the Rhine").
To enter the town, we first had to ride north over the river Rhine, which at this point was not part of the wonky border. From outside, Stein am Rhein looked like any other town on the Bodensee. But then we rode into the historic downtown...
...and I'm like, WOW. They've kept this historic medieval square perfectly preserved with all these eye-catching frescoes all over the walls. It seemed like something out of a theme park, but much more real and centuries older. Out of all the towns on the lake we visited, Stein am Rhein was easily the most memorable, and certainly the most essential I'd recommend to anyone planning to spend a day or two around the lake.
We ate lunch in Stein am Rhein at a restuarant I can't remember the name of, which I don't want to mention anyway because it was the only thing about this trip that disappointed me. I ordered a "Wurstsalat" for lunch. As expected, it was a salad with chopped up sausage on it, but not as expected, the wurst was not hot and juicy. Instead, it was cold and raw. It tasted like raw hot dogs. Bleh. I don't think I even finished it.
This was our route on the last day, 27km from Konstanz to Stein am Rhein. Notice that yesterday we crossed the Rhine going south while staying in Germany, while today we crossed the Rhine going north while staying in Switzerland. I told you the border was wonky...
At this point we were done with all the bike riding, so after lunch everyone brought their bikes back to the bus where the driver hung them all up in the trailer for the last time. But this was not the end of our trip; there was one last coda to cap it off. Further downriver (west) from Stein am Rhein, a little bit further west of the canton capital, Schaffhausen, lies a majestic waterfall known as the Rheinfall. This was our final stop, where we arrived after a short bus ride.
Not exactly Niagara, but what is? At this place you can actually pay to ride a boat that takes you close to the falls and across the river where you can get an even closer view. We had some time to kill so I took one of these rides. They also have the usual souvenir kiosks, snack stands and a restaurant, and plenty of multilingual informational signs and such displaying statistics about the falls and what kind of fish can be found in this part of the river. It's a nice diversion and I'd even call it an essential stop, but certainly not something you can spend a whole day at.
Above you see the full extent of this ride, covering about 100km or 60 miles (43, 30, and 27km on the first, second, and third days), though for me it was 123km because I did the Friedrichshafen-Lindau portion twice. It would've been nice to have gone through the Austrian portion of the lake shore as well, but what we did do was still quite an experience.
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