Categoria / Category Europe

In Europe, Ireland[s] and Scotland On  23/12/2018  No comments

We woke up early, the day was cloudy and cold in Belfast. We were at the point marked to wait for the bus that came from Dublin with more tourists. There was a slight delay due to a road accident, but soon we boarded the bus and after about an hour we arrived at our first destination, Carrick-A-Rede and Larrybane, an arid beach with many cliffs and an unusual attraction: Rope Brigde, a rope bridge linking a small hill in the sea to the cliffs. The crossing is very exciting, few don’t have the courage to do it. The bridge shakes a little because of the wind...

In Europe, Ireland[s] and Scotland On  02/12/2018  No comments

To know a litle more of Highlands we decided to do the Rabbie’s 1 day tour departing from Glasgow. After 50 minutes, we reach the destination. The castle was perched on a hill, imposing, great walls and well preserved. From its towers and walls we could see the Highland Mountains and the valley through which Glasgow’s motorway exits passed. There were many enclosures, courtyards, a chapel and actors staging the day-to-day life of the court. However, the castle lacked the refinement, luxury and sophistication that exists in other castles in Europe. Despite this, my impression was the best I could, after all, I was meeting my first real castle.

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Then we headed towards our next stop, Loch Lomond, but rather a break for lunch i...

In Europe, Ireland[s] and Scotland On  21/11/2018  No comments

I am not very adept at traveling in Europe on vacation. I was fortunate to live twice in the continent, and I also travel a lot to work there. Holidays for me must be in an exotic place and warm place. If it has sea, better still. But trips are not always for me, in 2016, I made a vacation my my father and we made Holland on a bicycle. Now it was Marcelo’s turn to choose the vacation spot, he chose Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. And since we had holidays in February/March, it would be in the cold and in the snow. Well, it was not my ideal, but out of love, anything goes. We started the trip in Barcelona and ended in Berlin because it was the two cities of Europe where I had lived and wanted to show Marcelo a little of life there. Barcelona was also, to buy winter clothes since living in Salvador, Marcelo had nothing.

• Dublin

Dublin would be our first vacation stop, but we only stayed one day in the city...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016, Europe On  15/07/2016  No comments

Route of the 6th day: Uithoorn – region near Amsterdam airport – Amsterdam
Total km/day: 32.48 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel near the airport

• It was our last day of the cycling trip. Well, my father’s last day, I would still have many days of cycling through the Netherlands and Germany until I arrived in Strasbourg, France.
• The road was calm. It was Sunday morning and the road not crowed with cyclists going to work or school. We passed by training cyclists, with race bikes.
• We stopped at the airport hotel to leave our bags, check in and headed for the city center. There, we returned my father’s rental bike and left mine in a public parking lot. It gave me a little pain in the belly to leave her there alone in the crowd of bicycles for a week…
• Our bike trip ended well, we had no accidents, nor did the bikes got damaged, no flat tire, everything went really well. Relief.

Do hotel onde estávamos em Uithoorn, podia-se ver (e ouvir) a passagens dos aviões chegando no aeroporto de A...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016, Europe On  14/07/2016  No comments

Route of the 5th day: Gouda – Uithoorn
Total km/day: 46.04 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel by the Zijdelmeer lake

• We had a good part of the trip on the countryside, we just stopped to eat some nuts and drink water in a park.
• This time I peed on the road. Since it didn’t stop coming people from all directions, I made a “v” with the bikes and asked my father to stand closing the triangle.
• We got a bit lost again because they changed the number 90 of the routes… It was visible the change, they just pasted a new number on the sign. We went on and it was wrong. As I mistrusted the way and checked the GPS. So we were able to get back on track with no major laps.
• After that, part of the course was on the edge of the Kromme Mijdrecht river and Amstel river. Beautiful and peaceful. There were not as many people on the bike path as in previous days.
• The arrival was super relaxing, the hotel was on the edge of Lake Zijdelmeer. It was a beautiful late afternoon.

No dia seguinte, estávamos...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016, Europe On  13/07/2016  No comments

Route of 4th day: Delft – Zoetermeer – Gouda
Total km/day: 41.56 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hotel

• We got lost at Zoetermeer’s exit, there was no or we didn’t see one of the signs at a road junction. I really wanted to go to the bathroom but there was no toilets around. I even knocked on a house and asked if there was a bathroom nearby, they told me to go to the train station. When he got there, there was nothing, no attendant, no bathroom. As it was all very populated and without an open filed, only beautiful houses with perfect patios, I had nowhere to pee … It was stressful, simple things of life can be stressful. The relief was when we arrived in a village that did have a bar with a bathroom. Before I had stopped at a bakery and said that the bathroom was only for employees …
• I got scared at one of the junctions on the road, I almost got hit by a car. I stopped on a traffic light and had no angle to see the green or red. My father, who was behind me, said to go and I went but a c...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016, Europe On  12/07/2016  No comments

Route of the 3rd day : Leiden – dunes – sea – Hague – Delft
Total km/day: 38.19 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: private room at Hélène’s (Vrienden op de Fiets) place
Link to trip map: http://u.osmfr.org/m/93840/

• Our third day of cycling began being driven by Ap (host in Leiden) to leave the city. He kindly guided us to the first point of the route.
• As I love the sea, I took the advice of our hosts and rode through the dunes to the North Sea and from there we went to The Hague.
• In Delft, we stayed right on the historic center. In market in the central square I ate my first herring of the trip. As always, I loved it. My father did not even tried.
• One of the peculiarities of Delft are the crooked buildings, falling to one side. The most impressive is one of the great central churches, it is visibly fallen to the side. We did a boat tour and the guide explained to us that the main church has already begun to fall in the construction phase. Many of these buildings have several supporting str...

In Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016 On  11/07/2016  No comments

Route of the 2nd day: Haarlem – Heemstede – Hillegom – Lisse – Leiden
Total km/day: 40.33 km – (gpx)
Accommodation:  Private room at  Berna Zwinkels (Vrienden op de Fiets) place
Link to trip map: http://u.osmfr.org/m/93840/

Our second day:

• As usual, we did not leave early. We left about ten o’clock and soon the rain started, I was worried about my father because his jacket did not seem to be reliable.
• Around noon, we stopped to buy dry socks and drink a coffee.
• We passed several flower fields, but we arrived two weeks late, all of which had already been picked. In the middle of the green, you could see one or another lost flower.
• I wanted to get to know Keukenhof Park, but my father was already tired of the rain and preferred to move on, not go to the park. We did not know if there were flowers there, so we continued our trip to Leiden.
• Shortly before arriving in Leiden, we stopped at a bench on the way to eat nuts and watch the cyclists passing by. We should only get to our a...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Euro bike 2016 On  10/07/2016  No comments

Route of the 1st day: Amsterdam – Badhoevedorp – Zwanenburg – Haarlem
Total of the day : 25 km – (gpx)
Accommodation: hostel private room

• In Amsterdam, I chose a hotel close to the airport because it was easy to get out the bike bag since it had an airport transfer. And it would also be much easier for my father to go cycling straight on the road and not having the city’s bicycle traffic. This was his first bike ride, better off on a quiet road.
• For the first two days, we strolled around the city, rented a bike for my father, and set mine up. I dismounted almost all of it to have the least risk of damaging the flight.
• My bike got damaged, the frame tightened on the flight and did not enter the wheel. I called a mechanic I found on the internet, instead of tidying up, it spoiled more. As th...

In Cycling tour, Cycling in Germany On  27/10/2014  No comments

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