The last stop on our trip was Rome (Roma in Italian). We took a fast train from Venice to Rome on Saturday the 2nd of May, which arrived in the early afternoon, and our flight out was scheduled for Thursday the 7th. This gave us four and a half days to explore the city. Saturday, …
Venice and the Veneto area
On Monday the 27th of April, we packed up our bags in Florence, and took a train up to Venice. The first thing that happens when you arrive there by train is that you go out the front of the station, and instead of being on a busy street with tram and bus connections, you’re …
Barcelona!
We’re in Europe again! This winter, I applied for (and received) travel funding to attend a Drupal conference in Montpellier France, and since it takes so long to get to Europe, I decided to expand the trip a bit, and of course Zach wanted to come too. So, last Sunday we embarked on an 18-hour, …
Back Home
The train ride to Frankfurt was relatively uneventful. We arrived just after 4AM, and after some coffee and pastries we had a smooth ride in the dark to our hotel. Luckily they let us check in very early, at about 6AM. Jennifer had her bike packed very soon, so we went out to look for …
Berlin: Lessons in Recent History
After arriving in Leipzig, we counted up the number of days we had left before our flight home, the number of days it would take to bicycle to our next destination, and the couple of days we needed to get to Frankfurt, pack up our bikes, and catch the flight home. The conclusion: more long-distance …
Budapest and Prague
We have spent the last few days exploring Budapest and Prague. My impression of Budapest: pretty and gritty. There are many pretty buildings, monuments, etc., and at the same time the city has a kind of an edgy feel to it, and many of the buildings are greyed with soot, probably from an earlier, more …
Baths, Mud, and Goulash
For the final leg of our Danube trip we rode mostly in Slovakia, but ended up spending our nights on the Hungarian side of the river. The road conditions are somewhat dicey. We encountered various grades of gravel – some mixed with grass, and mud; more about that later –, small roads of varying quality, …
Vienna
Vienna is the biggest city we’ve been in so far, so I was a bit overwhelmed by all the crowds and the transit system. Nevertheless, the first night we made it in plenty of time to figure out how to get to the opulent Musikverein concert hall for a performance by the Wiener Mozart Orchester …
More Austrian Danube
The last few days, we continued riding down the Austrian Danube, again switching from one bank to the other of the river in search of the best route, the most interesting sights, etc. Unlike the previous German section of the Danube, we were almost always riding on paved surfaces, either bicycle trails or very lightly-traveled …
Exhausted but here!
We had a rather long first day of the trip. After the 4:45 AM cab ride to SeaTac Airport, we flew to JFK airport in New York, and from there to Zurich, arriving at around 8:30 AM the next morning, which was about 11:30 PM Seattle time. Neither of us managed more than a few …