July 2012: The Amsterdam-Munich Express
This year's summer tour started in
| July 2012: The Amsterdam-Munich Express This year's summer tour started in |
|
| May 2012: Cycle Tour in the Po Valley Italy, Italy, why Italy? We live in Munich and Italy is close and yet foreign. It's easy to get there by train with our bikes and its culture will never cease to lure us - its food, language, architecture, flair. We chose this stretch along the Po for its abundance of beautiful towns and cities and May is a perfect time to open the cycling season.
|
|
| May - July 2011: From Bavaria to the Baltic Sea and Back We wanted to take a long door-to-door trip and, hurrah, we made it. We cycled back to our front door where we started. Travelling through different parts of Germany and a bit of the Czech Republic, we saw many different landscapes, people, architecture. In relatively densely populated Europe things are close together and there were seldom long stretches with nothing of interest.
|
|
| April 2011: Cycling the Danube from Passau to Vienna The first tour of the season - and it was something special. Janos and I decided to get e-bikes. Read my journal to see how we felt about admitting to the limitations our age is imposing and what touring is like with a little help. We chose the choicest morsel of the Danube for our maiden voyage and were lucky with the weather. |
|
| September 2010: Cycling the Etsch Bike Path The last tour of the season - that is if the weather cooperates. The plan is as simple as it is elegant. We take the train from Munich to Landeck in Austria. From there it is a short bus ride to Nauders near the top of the Reschen Pass and the border to Italy. That saves riding in unpleasant traffic, not to mention a hefty climb! From Reschen in South Tyrol it's downhill (almost) all the way. |
|
|
June - July 2010: Summer Tour in France An all-day train ride takes us from Munich to Morlaix in Brittany via Paris. The train from Paris to Morlaix doesn't take bicycles and we are again happy to have folders. Our tour starts with an abundance of rain and hills as we follow Brittany's spectacular southern coast to the Loire. From here we cycle the popular - and flat - Loire Valley Bike Path into Burgundy where the scenery gets more interesting as we ride along the Canal du Centre and Saone River. After having covered approximately 1,500 km we take the train from Dijon back to Munich. |
|
| We're back! It's the Main Bike Path once more. We again find time for a few days cycling along the Main, this time from Würzburg to Aschaffenburg. The weather couldn't be better for this scenic ride with picturesque towns between the mountain ranges of Spessart and Odenwald. |
|
|
April 2010: Spring Tour in Bavaria - Part 2 Beautiful spring weather and we find time for a second mini-tour. Picking up where we left off, we cycle from Bamberg to Karlstadt along the Main River and watch it expand from the original trickle to a river of respectable size. This section of the Main will take us from beer-brewing Franconia to wine-growing Franconia. |
|
| April 2010: Spring Tour in Bavaria - Part 1 It's that time of year again. We are itching to get on our bikes and see nature come to life after the long winter. For our little four-day tour we choose the bike path along the Main River. We have a leisurely ride on perfect bicycle paths and country roads to Bayreuth, Kulmbach and finish in Bamberg. To reach our official starting point, we take the train from Munich to Creussen and from there pedal to the source of the Roter Main. |
|
| Janos and I have cycled in Thailand before. The people are friendly, there are a variety of landscapes, the busier roads almost always have a wide shoulder, hotels and guest houses are inexpensive, the food is great. And so to escape the cold winter at home, we embark on our third adventure in Thailand. We get more hot weather than we bargained for ... |
|
| June 2009: To France the Long Way The shortest way to France from Munich would be about 300 kilometers. We reached the French border after pedaling 2,300 kilometers. On a round-about route we cycled north to Berlin, west to Hamburg and Groningen in the Netherlands and south as far as Rouen in France. By then we had enough headwinds and rain. Our Bike Fridays, folding bikes, made it possible to continue by train to southern France and finally back to Munich two months later. |
|
|
April/May 2009: Touring in Tuscany A leisurely tour in Tuscany, just two weeks but time enough for a flirt with its hills without getting too involved. We have fun cycling the streets of Florence, Pisa and Lucca, take our time visiting Medici villas and Renaissance gardens and get lovely views of the Tuscan countryside in the spring. |
|
| April 2009: An Easter Tour in Franconia, Germany Our first tour of the season takes us to Franconia. Franconia? Sounds like a place from a Marx Brothers film. Remember "Duck Soup" and the land of Freedonia? On the German map it's called Franken and is a wonderful place to cycle in the pre-Easter season, if the weather is right. And it was. The countryside was just turning green and the villages were decorated with beautifully crafted, traditional Easter wreaths. We cycled from Nuremberg to Rothenburg and then followed the Altmühl Bike Path to Kelheim. |
|
|
August 2008: France Again - A short tour in Burgundy Burgundy is a great place for cycling: whether your tour is to be short or long, flat or hilly, with emphasis on nature or architecture - you can take your choice or have it all. For part of our short visit we followed bike paths following the Canal de Bourgogne and Canal du Nirvenais, otherwise we cycled on small roads with almost no traffic through pleasant, but hilly, countryside. We visited Auxerre, Tonnerre, Avallon, Pontigny, Semur-en-Auxois ... |
|
| June 2008: Munich - Paris, door to door This is our first tour of the season and we have new bikes. In the Internet we read about a new bike route connecting Prag and Paris and decide to follow the French section. After cycling from here to the Rhine, we cycle through Alsace-Lorraine, the Champagne Region and enter Paris along the Canal de l'Ourcq. We follow river valleys and canals, but still are in for a lot of climbs before we reach our goal. |
|
|
December 2007: Three months in Thailand, Cambodia and China Janos and I planned an adventurous program: We wanted to explore Cambodia and the famous temples at Angkor, get to know more of northern Thailand and then go on to southern China. If the distances got to be too much for us or the going too rough, we hoped to be able to use public transportation, otherwise do as much as possible by bike. |
|
| August 2007: Goin' with the Wind, a Tour in Southern France For our two-week tour we choose the little corner of France tucked in between the Pyrenées Orientales and the Mediterranean: wine growing country, rich in history, near the Spanish border. Having just recovered from a knee injury in early summer, I can now put my knee to the test with hills and a loaded bike. |
|
|
Mai 2007: From the European Union to the Habsburg Empire: Off to a good start Our new neighbors in the European Union and musings over history and the downfall of the Habsburg Empire led us to plan a trip through the countries involved: Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Romania, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Italy and Serbia. Here you can read about the trip as planned and how far we got. |
|
| December 2006: Cycling in Thailand Our route along the Mekong and to Sukhothai was an excellent choice for a bike trip in Thailand - villages, beautiful scenery, good roads and little traffic. We also spent some time in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Ayuthaya. This was our first cycling experience in Asia, but not the last. It was much too short. |
|
|
July 2006: From Munich to the Mediterranean and More This time we cycle from our front door in Munich, our goal is my sister's house in southern France, near Toulouse. We ride to Lake Constance and on through Switzerland, then in France we follow the Valley of the Rhone to the Mediterranean. From here we can ride on parts of the Canal du Midi to where my sister spends her summers in the little town of Durfort. After our visit we have enough time to continue on to the Atlantic. We started out as so-called credit-card cyclists and ended up buying a tent along the way and camping whenever we got the chance. |
|
| May 2006: Spring in Apulia, Italy After the long German winter, we are impatient to get started with
the cycling season. Looking for a land of early spring sunshine and mild temperatures,
we decide on Apulia, southern Italy, the
heel of the boot. |
|
|
September
2005: Vom Bayerischen Wald nach München |
|
|
August 2005: Vom Bodensee zur Nordsee am Rhein entlang Diese Strecke von ungefähr 1400 Kilometern bietet reichliche Abwechslung. Der Rheinradweg bleibt keineswegs am Fluss. Wir fuhren mal am Bodenseeufer, mal am Rhein, mal am Rhein-Rhone-Kanal, durch französische Weindörfer, auf den Rheinterassen, wir waren in Strassburg, Düsseldorf, Rotterdam, um nur einige der Städte zu nennen, wir besuchten die Kaiserdome von Speyer, Mainz und Worms, und zum Schluss tauchten wir kurz in das holländische Fahrradambiente ein. Wir sahen kaum Touristen auf diesen sehr gut ausgebauten und ausgeschilderten Radwegen. |
|
|
Die deutsche Donau Der Donauradweg ist einer der beliebtesten Fahrradstrecken in Deutschland. Wir erwarteten die Menschenmassen auf zwei Rädern. Weit gefehlt. Die Strecke Passau - Wien ist bestimmt in der Hochsaison überfüllt, aber wir hatten zwischen Donaueschingen und Passau die Wege beinah für uns allein. An Übernachtungsmöglichkeiten und Verpflegung mangelt es unterwegs nicht, und die Strecke an der geschichtsträchtigen Donau bietet eine Fülle von Kultur- und historischen Denkmälern. |
|
|
Mai 2005: Ein bisschen Bretagne Die erste Tour der Saison sollte in Frankreich als Camping-Tour mit Sternfahrten mit dem Rad von ausgewählten Orten in der Bretagne über mehrere Wochen stattfinden. Wir wissen von vorigen Reisen, dass Frankreichs dichtes Netz an Campingplätzen sich für diese Art von Touren optimal anbietet. Wir freuen uns auf die wenig befahrenen Landstraßen in Frankreich, die Fahrradwege überflüssig macht. Unsere Tour ist kürzer ausgefallen als geplant, aber sie bietet doch einen kleinen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten des Radreisens in Frankreich. |
|
|
Mai
2003: Zu den schönen Städten und Villen im Veneto |
|
