Güstrow to Wilkendorf

This morning after breakfast we went for a walk. The weather was windy and cool but very pleasant.

Lake Inselsee
This bridge swings out of the way to let boats through

We have been surprised how few people speak English in the places we have been the last few nights. Google translate is awesome. You just take a picture of the German you want to translate and it instantly gives you the translation in English.

This sign was on a tree outside our hotel this morning.
Here is the translation

After our walk we drove southeast to a small town not too far from Berlin. Oktoberfest is going on in Berlin right now so rooms there were scarce and expensive.

For dinner we drove to a nearby town, Strausberg and had dinner in a restaurant built in an old train station. So far in Germany all our meals have been in tourist areas. Tonight Gasthof Strausberg Nord where we ate felt very authentic and local. The first page of the menu was all horse meat. It’s interesting how our cultural prejudices make us react to foods. We ordered one of the horse meat dishes and a fish called Zander. They were both delicious.

The horse meat dishes. Note the source comment at the bottom
Horse
Zander

Another cultural thing is serving lard as a spread for bread. It is also very good.

We had to look up the lard bread spread
Bread and lard spread
The restaurant where we ate

Ostseebad Sellin to Güstrow

Today we left the Baltic coast and drove inland.

Breakfasts at Hotel Bernstein were great. Almost all our breakfast buffets have had pickled herring and salmon. The fish section on this morning’s buffet was especially good. I liked the look of the fish wrapped around a pickle but I didn’t try it. I did have some of the sour cream pickled herring.

The fish options on the breakfast buffet.

After breakfast we went for a walk along the cliffs in the opposite direction from town.

Duke and I on our hike
The view back towards the hotel and the pier

We stopped for groceries about an hour into our drive. Soon after that it started to rain and it has rained the rest of the day.

On our drive

Hotel am Inselsee where we are tonight is on a lake. Hopefully the weather will cooperate in the morning and we can check it out. Our room has the bedroom upstairs!

Our room at Hotel am Inselsee

We ate dinner at the hotel.

Duke pork had red cabbage and cherries and dumplings
My wild boar schnitzel

Ostseebad Sellin day 2

We were very lucky to have another beautiful day on the Baltic coast today. It’s kind of fun to look at the weather where we have been recently. Three weeks ago we were in Kiruna, Sweden. Today it is snowing there.

Apple weather report for current weather in Kiruna

And four weeks ago we were sailing up the Norwegian coast. We belong to Facebook groups for the two companies that do that route. they have been having very bad weather the past week. Here is a Facebook post about it.

Facebook post about storms.

The two breakfasts buffets we have had in Germany have both had very good bread and they offer a basket for your bread. Very nice!

Bread and bread baskets

Today we did a lovely hike along the coast of the Nordperd Cape which is the easternmost point on the island of Rügen where we are staying. It was only about a 4 mile drive to get to where we started.

On our hike
The cliffs are chalky and we saw warnings to stay back from the cliff edge
The views were magnificent

For dinner we walked down to the main street that ends in the pier and randomly picked a restaurant. We ended up at Gran Café Italia and had an excellent meal.

My pork
Duke’s rump steak

Kölpinsee to Ostseebad Sellin

I thought it might be fun to share interesting, and unusual to us breakfast offerings. Sunday morning, at Strandhotel Seerose I couldn’t figure out what the flat round disks in the right bottom corner of the picture were. So I tried one. I’m still not sure. Duke suggested turnip and I think that’s the best guess.

??? On the breakfast buffet

After breakfast we went for a walk. This lady was renting beach chairs. You pay and get a key to your chair.

The lanyards on the right have the keys
A locked beach chair
An unlocked beach chair

We checked out at about eleven and headed towards the island of Rügen. We had quite a bit of traffic leaving the island at the draw bridge. I think it had just been up and that’s what caused the backup.

A picture of the drawbridge taken out the car window

Along our drive we saw this windmill and stopped to check it out. the first documentation of a windmill here was in the 1300s. It collapsed in 1972 and was rebuilt and became operable again in the 1990s.

Rebuilt windmill

We are staying on the eastern end of the island of Rügen at the Hotel Bernstein. We have been very lucky with the weather this last week. After checking in we went for a walk out to the end of the pier.

Checking in at hotel Bernstein with a champagne welcome drink
The pier

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant.

My halibut
Our beer

Mielno, Poland to Kolpinsee, Germany

Breakfast buffets are one of the most interesting cultural experiences of traveling. The buffet at Baltivia Resort this morning was a perfect example. There were lots of foods we didn’t recognize like the scoops of what looked like maybe potatoes salad and others we don’t normally see at breakfast, like the big pickles. I tried some kind of liver sausage and onions which was very good.

The breakfast buffet

Our drive today would have taken just over 2 hours if we had taken the freeway but we took the backroads and it took about 4 hours. The picture below is a rest area we stopped at.

Rest area

Near the end of the drive we entered Germany. German road signs are much easier to guess the meaning of than Polish road signs.

Welcome sign

Tonight we are at another wonderful resort on the Baltic coast. The hotel is called Strandhotel Seerose. Seerose translates to water lily.

Our hotel

After we checked in we went for a walk on the beach.

Walking on the beach

Opposite the beach is a lovely lagoon.

The lagoon opposite the beach

We had an excellent dinner in the hotel restaurant.

My weinerschnitzl
Duke’s mixed fish grill