Madrid - end of bike trip

Sunday 9/16:  Biked about 65 miles from Lerma to Valladolid, which is a significant-sized city that has direct train service to Madrid in case I was ready to give up ... which didn't happen...  Many stores and restaurants are closed on Sunday, so dining options were limited.

Hamburguesería Gigantes - the name says it all.

So... on Monday I rode to the small village of Coca where I had a lovely B&B overlooking the main town square.  Not much to do in Coca.
Tuesday I headed out for Segovia, a major tourist stop.   I stopped for breakfast in Nava de la Asunción... and yet again encountered a parade.  It was a festive but short affair, after which many of the band members dropped into the bar I was having breakfast at .

Apparently this was just one event in some major affair, as the main road was totally cordoned off to through traffic, and I had to push the bicycle and myself through the fence to continue (detours were not well marked).

Typical Municipal fountain

These are common in Spanish villages, and allowed me to survive while only carrying one 750ml bottle

Arrived in Segovia ... tourists are everywhere.  The top 2 attractions are:
Segovia Cathedral

They build their cathedrals BIG in Segovia. 

 and, the Romans, being great builders, built a huge aqueduct that runs through Segovia.

So... on Wed. morning, I headed out for my last riding day... which was to San Rafael, about 40km from Madrid, where I took a regional train to Madrid and settled into my hotel a vender mi bicicleta y la espera de la llegada de Alexandra,   who is returning from a month in the Philippines.
Total bike trip stats:  1200 Miles, 36,000 ft total vertical.

Entering España

Sun 09/09:  Stayed an extra day (Sunday night) in Arachon, since it was raining.  This afforded a nice opportunity to ride up to the waterfront to sample the local seafood.

Excellent Mussels and Frites at Le Routioutiou in Gujan-Mestras

Decide to take train to Bayonne on Monday, which involved a 12 mile bike ride back to Biganos.  While waiting for the train, I got myself a haircut... I´m noticing there´s less and less hair to cut these days.

The French town, Bayonne, bears no resemblance whatsoever to its New Jersey namesake.

On Tuesday (9/11) rode into Spain.  Noticed the difference right away.  The towns were a little more hard-scrabble in Spain, but the larger cities (like San Sebastian) were very much on par with similar-sized French cities.

My hotel (Parma) was directly across from a huge public beach and right next to the main bar-restaurant area.  Like similar towns in France, much of the ¨Old City¨ was pedestrian only.   Lively bar scene.  Lots of young'uns.

Wednesday´s ride was to Segura, a very small 1-hotel town.   
On Thursday, I rode out of Segura, which started with a long climb

 then a little descent close to the town of Olazagutía. Google Maps then directed me into a dirt road (it does that sometimes) While trying to find a way out of that one, I kept hearing what I thought were gunshots. I headed into town, and discovered the sound was firecrackers. I asked the lady at the bakery what was going on. She said ¨festival¨

I asked what the festival was about... she said ¨eating and drinking¨  My Spanish was insufficient for a follow-up question... so I left it at that.

I am now in Vitoria-Gasteiz where I had a nice dinner of Tapas and beer . Most dinners here are at bars that serve little sandwiches and skewers etc. They eat late too... kitchens don´t typically open until 8:30 PM.

Along the west coast of France

Tuesday 9/4
After leaving Vannes, I headed east to Nantes, a sizable city with a good network of bicycle lanes, nice restaurants, etc. 

Canard

Strawberry Tart

 On Wed. I headed south to stay in La Roche-sur-Yon, then Rochefort on Thursday night.  Nice towns, but nothing particularly memorable.  I mostly enjoyed the fine fud,

Profiteroles

 From Rochefort, on Friday morning, I biked to Royan to take the ferry to Soulac sur Mer.  See:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1k95mH1pxwBwWcjgyZKuaKurpby4YTQV8&usp=sharing
From there it's been bike path all the way.  My lodging was an AirBnb in the small lakeside town of Hourtin in one of about 6 motel-like rooms that Nathan, an interesting chap from Wales, built.  It's about 50m from the bike path that runs all the way from Soulac to Arcachon, which is where I am now.

All Bike Path (paved) all day

It's raining this morning,,, and the Best Western here has provided me with a laptop which has enabled me to update the blog.  Allegedly it will clear up a little after noon, so I can make it to my next stop. 

Through Belgium back into France

It's coming on Fall.  My last night in Luxembourg was in the charming town of Clervaux.  It was below 50 on Sunday morning, so I bought me a bright yellow running jacket and proceeded to ride to Liege, Belgium.

The next day was rainy, so I took the train from Liege to Belgium, and had a decidedly unhealthy 

lunch of fries at Fryland

Belgian Fries for lunch at "Fryland" in  Brussels

The central square in Brussels is very impressive...  see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Place#Buildings_around_the_square

For dinner, the rabbit was tough, but the profiterole was sweet.

Profiterol 

Then, on to Amiens.  They too have a Notre Dame cathedral, which also has a light show at 10... but unlike Strasbourg, they project the show directly onto the face of the cathedral, ending with a recreation of the original colors, which have faded over the centuries.

Notre Dame in Amiens

.

Rouen was the next stop.  Again, very impressive Notre Dame cathedral, said to be the inspiration for the cathedral Notre Dame in Paris.  It's huge, and, as in the other towns with huge Notre Dame cathedrals, the light show starts at 10.

Passed by this on my way back from dinner.  Inspired me to look up Mathilde, one of my favorite AFS students from last year, who lives in Brittany.

Rouen Cathedral Notre Dame

it's so big, can't get it all in one shot

From Rouen, rode to Deauville (Fri. 8/31), then onward to the Normandy beaches where D-Day marked the beginning of the end for Nazi occupation of France and other Western European countries.  My main stop was Arromanches-les-Bains.  The Nazis had correctly determined that if the Allies were going to try to drive them out, they would need to bring equipment and supplies from England into France, and would need to control a port, so they occupied and heavily fortified all existing ports along the French coastline, and would blow up these ports rather than have allied forces control them.  They Allies determined that they only way around this was to construct their own port quickly after the initial landings, which they did by pre-fabricating much of the port in England, then towing it across the channel, and installing it in Arromanches-les-Bains.  It's known as the "Mulberry Port"  see:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Mulberry
It was a remarkable feat of engineering, including a floating roadway where ships could unload in deeper water, and drive tanks, trucks etc. onto the beach to supply the invading forces.

Section of floating roadway.

Caisson which was used to block the waves.

Excellent profiteroles in Bayeux for lunch.

Bayeux Cathedral

Caught a train from Bayeux to Vannes late Sunday afternoon..  On Monday rode out to visit Mathilde, who lives in the countryside about 15km from Vannes. Her dad, Thierry, has an amazing machine shope in the garage, where he rebuilds custom wheels, among other things.   He also built major portions of their house.  From her place, we biked around the countryside, doing a 35km loop which included a lunch of buckwheat galettes (a local Brittany specialty) for both the main course and dessert.
I rode back to Vannes, and about an hour after getting back Mathilde, Thierry, and Valerie (mom) drove into the city to take me out for Mussels in the Vannes harbor area.

Huge fish at Vannes harbor

Harbor in Vannes

L to R: Thierry, Valierie, yours truly, and Mathilde

Add caption

I updated the bike tour map this morning.

Munich to Luxembourg via Strasbourg

Sat. 8/18:  Left Turkenfeld (suburb of Munich), where Alexandra's sister lives.   About 4 hours later, had my first flat, which looked like a pinch flat (occurs when you hit a bump with an Under-inflated tire).  The leak was on some ridges on the tube, so, the patch was destined to leak. 
All bike shops are closed on Sunday, so getting a new tire or tube was not an option. 
Within 3 hours of heading out from Gunzburg, it was leaking again.  I was about 1/3 of the way to Stuttgart when I decided to head South to Ulm to catch the train.   By the time I got there, the tire was really flat. 
The earliest open bike shop in town opened at 11, precluding any full day of riding, so I hopped another train with the new tire, and spent Monday night in Freudenstadt as scheduled and had some decent German food for dinner. 



a light German dinner in


  Canal de la Marne au Rhin

  

On Tuesday, arrived in Strasbourg, France...  a country that is serious about fine food.

Great to be back in France!!

There are 3 light shows that run nightly in Strasbourg.  The video below is from the one at Notre Dame cathedral.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Strasbourg, France

Carousel in the square a few blocks from the Cathedral

 with some excellent "dirty dancing"

Along the Marne–Rhine Canal biking from Strasbourg to Sarrebourg

Thursday in Sarrebourg, awoke to rain.  Since the forecast was sketchy for the afternoon, and the rain didn't stop til about 10, I decided to take the 11:30 train to |Metz, and do laundry in the afternoon.

Friday (8/24) arrived in Luxembourg city.  The city festival / fair is going on right across the street from my hotel.  It's huge!

Glad my hotel (Best Western) has a computer that's not "locked down" with that hideous kiosk software, so I could write this blog using Remote Desktop via my computer in Palo Alto.  French keyboards have Q where A is, M where ; is, W where Z is, A where Q is, and the @ sign is accessed by an ALT key +0.  the period and all numbers require shift.  It turns out that when you use remote desktop, the keyboard functions like a US keyboard.  Makes typing the blog much less painful.
It's unlikely I'll find a computer that's this open any time soon, so this may be the last entry for a while.

Getting Ready to Ride

I am in Munich in the lobby of the Hotel Metropol which is a few blocks from Munich Hauptbahnhof.
I just bought a used Giant bicycle.  Finding a used bicycle with a suitable small frame is a challenge in this country of Aryan giants.  Most of the bicycles for sale are 58cm frame size or larger.  My inseam translates into 50cm of smaller.  Fortunately, there was a bike on the German EBAY site I found a few weeks ago.  Since there don't seem to be any short bicyclists, the thing was still there at Haveabike. 
Alexandra and I both went schlepping around to the 2 used bike shops.  I found a suitable rack for the panniers, and a pump at another shop, and assumed I would take it back on Wednesday.   Unfortunately my assumption was incorrect, because Wed. was "assumption day" here in Bavaria (the Catholic part of Germany), so almost all shops were closed.

Long story short, I now have the bike.  The rack's on it, and I'll be ready to roll on Sunday morning.

Click link below for the route plan;

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1k95mH1pxwBwWcjgyZKuaKurpby4YTQV8&usp=sharing

I don't plan to post very often during the bike trip, as composing on the phone is a royal pain.... so check back in a month if you're interested.

My vehicle for the next month

Kandersteg, Oeschinensee, Bonn, Vevey and back to Zurich

Monday 8/6/2018:
A drive from Emmetten to Interlaken, stop for lunch, and to load up on Laderach (best chocolate ever), and we arrived at our lovely hotel in Kandersteg, a bucolic Swiss Alps town in a valley surrounded by mountains.  On our first full day in town, we took the cable car up to Oeschinen Lake, a beautiful Alpine lake surrounded by cliffs and waterfalls.

And lots of cows with bells

We rented a rowboat and did a grand tour of the waterfalls.

Ducks on a log

The next day, another cable car and more magnificent views at Sunbiel ...

Herd of white goats, with full udders, on the top of Sunbiel

The next day, (Thurs 8/9) we headed over to Bonn.  Actually we stayed in Fribourg, which is about 1/2 hr. commuter train from Bonn.  A lot cheaper.. but has its drawbacks.  The first of which most of the restaurants there were closed for summer vacation (from last week of July to last week of August).
The good news is that the heat wave had broken by the time we got down from Kandersteg, so our non-A/C room was just fine.   This hotel tends to be booked by Chinese tour busses, which arrive in the afternoon, and depart in the morning.  The main issue there is their Internet service can't handle the peak load, and it crashes and burns... so I was off-grid for most of the time we stayed there.
So... we schmeid around Bonn for a day, then did a day-trip to Vevey, which is a lovely town on Lake Geneva.  Then next day, we went back to Zurich to

1. resupply the Chocolate (Laderach) 
2. Catch our train back to Munich

Lake Lucerne, and Pilatus mountain

On Friday 8/3 we drove through Lucerne to our hotel in Emmetten, a small town overlooking Lake Lucerne. 

Sunset from our hotel restaurant overlooking Lake Lucerne

The hotel, like most in Switzerland, has no A/C, so our room is sweltering as daytime temps top 90°.  The only ventilation is the balcony door.  No screens.. .so the mosquitos come in.   A less than ideal situation.  There are essentially 2 things to do here :

1. Take a cable car up one of the mountains that overlook the lake
2. Go jump in the lake to cool off

We did some of each.  The high point (literally) of our stay here was the excursion to Mount Pilatus on Saturday.
There are 2 ways (other than hiking) to ascend to the top:

1. Cog Railway up the eastern face.  It's was built in 1890, and is still the steepest cog railway in the world, with a peak gradient of 48°.  It still uses the original track, although the cars were upgraded in the 1930's when the line was electrified.   This is how we went up and down.
2. A cable car from near Lucern ascends the North face.

In the cog railway ascending to the top of Pilatus

The views from the top of the mountain are nothing less than spectacular.  There are lots of hiking trails and even playgrounds for children.  We did what we do best... walked around and then had an excellent lunch at Hotel Pilatus-Kulm. 

Cog railway base station

It was nice and cool up top, with some breeze, but stinking hot at the base... so we found an area along Lake Lucern that we could swim from (with very slippery concrete at the water's edge), and spent the rest of the day there.
On Sunday morning, we took the gondola from Emmetten to Stockhütte.  At first we were going to go up to Niederbauen, where the hang gliders launch from, but the line was too long, so we went for the less youthful option.  The hang gliders land about 300m from our hotel:

After lunch and a short hike around the top of the mountain, we returned to the swimming hole we had found the day before, and spent the rest of the day there.

Zurich - Hot Chocolate and Cool Water

Monday   7/30
The bad news:
Europe has been in the grips of a record-setting heat wave... both in length ( began around 6/25 and is still going as of 8/5), and severity.  Parts of Spain have hit 45°C (113°F).  Here in Switzerland, very few buildings have A/C, since summers are typically mild.  Enter Global Warming... Highs were above 90°F every day since we arrived in Switzerland.  That's the bad news. 

The good news:
Zurich has many public beaches.  Some are free, some have a nominal fee... so most of our days in Zurich were spent swimming in cool water.   Also, there were several Laderach chocolate stores a short walk from our apartment... that's the chocolate part.

This past school year I was the AFS liaison for Alessandra from the Zurich area.  She attended Woodside High in Redwood City,  joined the cheerleaders, and had a fabulous time in the Bay Area.  She arrived back home in late June, and starts school next week... so I invited her to come into town (they live about 20 min away by train) to join us for a beach day at Strandbad Mythenquai on Tuesday.   We spent pretty much the whole day there relaxing, cooling off in the water and talking... then, after all that swimming, we went to old town for a very late lunch / early dinner.

Wed, Aug 1 is Swiss National day and is typically celebrated similarly to July 4 in the US.   We were invited to spend the day with Alessandra's family in Lenzburg.  Lunch was served under a lovely arbor in the back yard covered in grape vines.   Alessandra's extendedfamily was there, including 2 cousins, her aunt, and grandmother. 

Alessandra in the back yard arbor

Alessandra's dad presses the grapes and they make a strong liquor from it, which we, of course, sampled.  Before leaving, Roland, Alessandra's dad gave us some recommendations of what regions in Switzerland to visit... which is largely what we based the rest of our time in Switzerland on.

Aug 1 was also our 25th wedding anniversary.  You could say we did nothing special.. although I would argue that everything we did that day was special.

On Thur we tried Flussbad Au-Höngg, another swimming hole, which is up the  Limmat river, which flows north from Zurichsee.  River.    The park / bathing area is just downstream from a dam.  There's a grassy area with shade trees, changing rooms, showers.  And it's free, and a short trolley ride from downtown.