Warnemunde

Yesterday we went to the beach. But it wasn't all peaches and cream.

The weather has taken a turn for the better, so we now have sunny blue skies and very warm temps. Perfect for an outing to the beach. The three of us headed into downtown Gustrow to buy train tickets to Warnemude, and that's when the fun started.

The short story is that Mrs. Ref's travel card -- you know, the one that has all our money -- was declined and the bank said that $0.00 funds were available. This is generally not a good thing when traveling overseas.

We headed home and made a phone call. Turns out that it had been flagged for possible fraud after we bought the train tickets from Amsterdam to Rostock. But we got it all figured out. So we headed back down to the train station and caught an early afternoon train to Warnemunde.

It turned out to be a great day. Perfect beach weather. The water in the Baltic seemed to be to be about the same temp as the water of the northern Pacific (Oregon/Washington coasts) that I'm used to. And, since it was a Wednesday, not too crowded.

After touring through some of the shops (yes, there are tourist shops there because it's a big port city -- one of the Disney cruise ships was docked in harbor), I've decided that my third career as the owner of a tourist/souvenir shop will have to happen in Schwerin; much less competition there. So we did a little shopping, hung out on the beach, then had a great dinner at a local restaurant.

We caught the last train home, had some eis in Gustrow (of course), and walked in the door around 8:30. Not a bad vacation day.

And now we are off to Hamburg.