Preparing to bike through Austria

It's been on my bucket list for a long time⁠—taking a long distance bike ride. I love biking, and particularly love biking on safe, scenic trails, away from cars.

My parents are from Austria, and I visited relatives there many times when I was younger. I remember one trip I took in the Danube area, with my aunt and uncle. While we were there, I saw the Danube bike trail⁠—one of the oldest bike trails around—and was immedietely enthralled by the idea of doing a long distance ride on that trail.

Fast forward to today. My younger son Peter loves the idea of a long distance bike trip, my older son Kenny has a job as a summer counselor, and my husband Eric is staying home with him.

So, Peter and I are taking a month to bike through Austria! We're planning on doing the Innradweg (the bike trail along the river Inn), starting in Innsbruck, Austria. We'll be on that until we hit the Braunau/Passau area, at which point we'll switch to the Römerradweg (the Roman bike trail, which goes through the province of Upper Austria, where my parents are from). We'll be on the Römerradweg until we arrive in the Linz area, at which point we'll head to Vienna along the Donauradweg (Danube bike trail). 

This much is planned, but almost everything else is not planned. The Römerradweg is actually optional—if we run short on time, we'll skip it. Aside from the first few nights in Innsbruck, I don't have hotels planned. From what I've gathered from reading trip accounts online, we should be okay finding accomodations on the day of our stay. I my try to plan a day or two in advance, though—we'll see how it goes. I'll have my phone, with local service (I plan on buying a sim card) so I should be able to to the research along the way. 

And the actual bikes are still in question. I've been communicating with a few bike shops about the possibility of renting a bike, but the main difficulty is returning the bike to them, since we'll be in Vienna at the end. So I'm leaning towards just buying some used bikes. 

I was talking to a friend recently, who did a 2 month bike ride from Canada to Alaska last summer. My first reaction, when she told me about this, was, "What an incredible trip!" But she told me it was actually very, very difficult. They were carrying all their food, had no support vehicles, and were tenting every night. It was physically very tough. 

Well, our trip will be nothing like that. We'll be in hotels or guest rooms every night. Nothing fancy, but we won't be camping. And if we get tired of biking, we'll take a day off. Austria is very tourist centered, and there's services everywhere. 

So—let the journey begin!