Monasteries and Spaghetti Bolognese, February 16th

Rest Day!! A group of us had coffee and toast at the hotel, then I joined Scott and we went down the road for eggs and coffee. We had a few jobs to do – mainly trying to get on the internet – to be ready to take a boat ride out to the monasteries. We were supposed to be going with Bastiaan, Pete and Len – so we followed them down towards the boats, found the boats, lost the group! Went back to the hotel and found Liam who had organised a boat. After all this fafffing around we decided to head off with Len and Francis as well. It was a tiny boat – and really slow – took about an hour to get across the lake – the monastery was quite interesting – fairly small with some amazing graphics on the walls which looked more like modern caricatures than the 16th century art work out we were told. The 10 commandments were portrayed inside the building – it was all a lot smaller than I had expected. We then got back in the boat to go to the next island’s monastery – this time inhabited by present day monks – women were not allowed to visit. We were taken up to a museum and shown various bible texts written by monks over the years – in big books made out of goat skin – very colourful – pretty cool. We took a wander around – it was larger than the previous one but of the same design apart from the fact that it had a corrugated roof. The first one had a thatched roof – more authentic but not lived in of course!
The return trip home on the boat took forever – in fact it was about a 4 hour outing with three of those hours spent on the boat. Some people had gone to visit the waterfall about 20 k away but there was no way we would have had time!! We then found a restaurant where we thought we had ordered our meal – but the lady got confused and so after about an hour it seemed we ordered again! Had a good spaghetti Bolognese. Then we wandered into town for cake and biscuits, went on the internet again quickly and bought some snacks for tomorrow’s ride. We also checked out the info for the ride – 162 km with 40 km of climbing – it was going to be a hard day!

Then back to the hotel for another spaghetti bolognese!! And some pancakes and now I’m off to bed. I am feeling fairly organized and legs not too bad!

Am planning to get up early as the restaurant opens at 6am – I am going to have eggs for breakfast – and not bother with the TDA breakfast of porridge if a bad day or weetabix if good along with that peanut butter jelly sandwich!! Though hopefully they might have some bananas, which will be good for the ride! Mando Day plans – just try to follow Paul and Horst and see what happens!