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15/05/2019: Lisbon

Km travelled today/sum: 313km / 4080km
Sun shine, 28 degrees, mostly highway/city-traffic jam
Today we were going to travel to Lisbon, but first we had some sport to do. We decided on the 15 min routine to strengthen our core. As well after the excess of yesterday it was time again for a diet day.
We still managed to get away quite early, around 9:30. It was a bit foggy. Along the way we had to fill up and just to make the day a bit more adventurous Sigrid dropped her bike. People helped to pick it up again too quick though, so I didn’t even have time for a photo.

And apart from bruised ego there was luckily no injuries! So on we went, all the way to the Australian embassy in Lisbon. Big town – big traffic jam…. and a GPS with Alzheimer’s. Oh, and rising temperatures. As you can imagine, we were both in a suitably great mood… Not.
On our first way past the embassy we missed a motorcycle parking spot, so we got to go around the place a second time. Not the short way, mind you. No, the long way around of course! Eventually we got there and Bjoern parked his bike in the motorbike park, only to find that there wasn’t enough room for Sigrids bike.


We decided to park Sigrid’s bike on the footpath. The curb was a bit higher, so Bjoern, being the gentleman he is even when in a not-totally-perfect mood, offered to park it for her. However he misjudged the angle a tiny bit and Sigrid’s bike was down for the second time today – even on the same site! Sigrid wanted to take a photo, but the camera was in her bike, so she helped him pick the bike up instead. Again apart from bruised ego, this time man-sized, there were no serious injuries. The bike didn’t take much damage either just showing a bit more of the rubber seal from the box. This photo is from straight after 😁


Sweaty as we were after spending 20 mins in 34 degree heated traffic, we did what we came for: We went voting in the Australian election!


Then we were off to the camp ground we had selected for our stay here.

Did I mention that our GPS has Alzheimer’s? We ended up somewhere completely different. Luckily there was a coffee shop and relaxing there Bjoern sorted the directional dilemma with Google’s help, meaning we eventually got where we wanted to go.

After some discussion about an additional fees to park 2 bikes next to the tent, we finally booked in for 3 days, selected our tent site amongst the gum trees and put up the tent.

Dinner was salmon with lettuce, carrots and mushrooms.

Just to make sure the day kept being annoying, the showers were cold. Exhausted we crawled into our sleeping bags ready to sleep, but the noise from the motorway made that hard. Eventually we remembered our earplugs and using them we finally fell asleep…  What a day! 

16/05/2019: Lisbon camping

Surprisingly we slept ok. Now that the diet day was done we were looking forward to a nice breakfast. First we went to the office and to our surprise we had Mail from Freya! Since it was before 11:30 it must’ve been there yesterday already… oh well…

The breakfast was nice and we really enjoyed it – did I mention we had a diet day yesterday?

WiFi was good as well, so Bjoern attempted to get Sigrid’s bike an appointment to have the new chain fitted and new tyre organised, but without success..

The shops did not want to just fit the chain, they wanted to get more money by selling us the chain and sprocket set at quite a high price. Eventually Bjoern wrote to the horizon unlimited website asking for suggestions.

Meanwhile Sigrid fought through the paperwork required for the European Parliament vote. When she finally finished her postal vote, everything was put into the different required envelopes. Next she had to try out the most important facilities at the campground: namely the pool. Verdict? Nice but still quite cool. No pictures though…

During the afternoon the wind picked up and managed to dislodge a small branch from the eucalyptus trees we were camping under. We come from Australia, so we really should’ve known better! Eucalypt trees just drop branches sometimes!

Oh well. The shade was what we wanted, the branch is what we got. It tore a triangle into the vestibule of our tent. We fixed that with gaffa tape. At night we walked to the nearest shopping centre getting some supplies, dropping off the voting papers and Bjoern organised some surprises for Sigrid for tomorrow.

Back at the campground, we went to the restaurant, had dinner, beer and red wine.

Bjoern got 4 mails from the Lisbon HU community with some suggestions where to get the chain fixed and new tires…light at the end of the tunnel!

17/05/2019


Today was Sigrid’s Birthday.

Bjoern printed a picture yesterday and made it into a birthday card. He had organized candles, chocolate and sweets and made a cute birthday table on one of the camping chairs

The gift however was a couple massage he had organised for the day!

The day started with WhatsApp messages and well-wishes from Australia and Germany and was followed by a nice breakfast in the campground restaurant.. after some more web surfing Bjorn finally found a shop that had our sort of tyres.

 

One happy Birthday Lady!

Then we were off to the massage, which was very nice. Similar to our favourite Endota spa in Australia.

Sigrid after the massage under a jacaranda tree

A special excursion to a nice garden followed

and the day was topped by a visit to a garden restaurant for an early dinner.

Back at the campground Bjoern fixed that luggage box that had lost its rubber due to the two times it was dropped on the same side…see earlier blogs 😉

After the first night where we had trouble sleeping due to the traffic noise we decided that this was enough camping and looked for cheap accommodation in Lisbon.

We found a Airbnb place where we will move to tomorrow.

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06-07/05/2019: Bilbao
Km travelled today/sum: 423 km / 3273 km
Sun shine, 20 degrees, highway

The temperature this morning was back into the single digits (9 degrees). During the day it got warmer and warmer. The ride to Bilbao was mostly on highways, but the highway in Spain was really enjoyable. There were nice curves and with the beginning of the Pyrenees, the landscape just looked awesome. When we arrived in Bilbao, we had 20 degrees…. summer after all!

We had booked an Airbnb and found it…. after some trials and tribulations.

After we settled in our accommodation, we decided to have a short stroll through the area close by. We found that there were fancy new buildings side by side to really old ones

 

In the pedestrian zone we found an old water fountain and, to our surprise, it was still functional!

The next day we went to the Guggenheim Museum. The building itself is very impressive, and I don’t think I can do justice on a picture.

Before entering the museum, there was plenty of art at the outside. I liked the huge spider, just in front.

 

At the balcony there were some colourful methal Tulips, which looked really nice.

It was fun to try to take pictures with the reflection of ourselves in it.

The balcony was surrounded by water, and every hour fog was generated all around.

I tried to capture the interior in some pictures, but that didn’t work out too well. It is hard to capture it, since there is no regularity in the shape or forms of the walls.

 

Anyway, there was an exhibition which had shaped huge pieces of iron into walkways, with the height and curves ever changing. It made me feel weird walking along these walls. The art was explained a bit later with a model, and on a model it was easier to understand what the artist was trying to achieve with it and why it felt so weird!

 

Anyway, most of the exhibitions were not my kettle of fish, but it is interesting to see with what type of ideas people can come up with.

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03/05/2019: Carnac
Km travelled today/sum: 168km / 2261km
Cloudy/Sun shine, nice twisty country roads

As we packed up in the morning, we realised that it is getting warmer. We saw our first two digit temperature reading in the morning since quite a while: 11 degrees! Today would be only a short ride and we would decide if we stay or not once we arrived in Carnac. When we arrived, the sun was shining, just in time for a nice lunch next to the tourist office.

The ‘Menhirs’ were not very far from here, so we hopped on the bikes and got there in no time. There are plenty of these megaliths (around 3000) spread over a vast area. These stones are around 5000 years old!

 

It seems that there are different areas with different pattern of the meaglith, but nobody really knows what the purpose of them was. For us they looked like “Hinkelsteine” from Asterix and Obelix. So we walked around, took a couple of pictures and then had a look for an abode for the night.

We booked something reasonable cheap, and as luck would have it when we arrived they gave us an upgrade to a different hotel! The hotel was just in front of the ‘Le Tumulus Saint-Michel’. We read about it in the museum and now stumbled over it in front of our hotel. The ‘Le Tumulus Saint-Michel’ is Europes largest megalithic grave mound. Unfortunately the door into the mound was closed.

From here we walked back to the town center to the coffee shop we noticed when we went to the tourist office. The had very nice cake and even a bear made out of marzipan – one of Bjoerns favourite sweets.

On our way home we used google maps to show us the way. Something went wrong and we ended up crawling through scrubs and walking through muddy ground. Unfortunately no pictures of this adventurous excursion. Eventually we turned around and opted for the longer way, which brought us back to the hotel much better. The sunset out of our window looked fantastic.

Tomorrow we will have a long day in front of us, we’ll try to make it to the Dune du Pilat, which is ~ 600km from here.

04-05/05/2019: Dune du Pilate
Km travelled today/sum: 519 km / 2780 km
Cloudy/drizzle, mostly highway

It was cold again; we used our heated gear and our rain gear. The ride itself was cold, rainy but otherwise uneventful, mostly highway. On our last petrol stop, we booked a cabin on a camp ground right at a dune. The cabin was a bit small, but the location was awesome. The ‘Dune du Pilat’ is Europe tallest sand dune, and it is moving, swallowing trees and roads on its way.

After we’d arrived we were exhausted, but we couldn’t resist, so we briefly climbed the dune in the evening and watched a spectacular sunset from there.

The next day we walked on top of the dune to the two highest points.

 

And after a fun way down, he needed something to gain our strength back, we had Oysters J

 

Later that day we had a look at our planed to ride through the Pyrenes. We discovered that the night temperature there would be around -2 degree, so we decided to give that a miss and now plan to ride through the Pyrenees after Morocco instead.

This meant that our next stop would be Bilbao, where the weather seems to be more enticing.

As for our noble steeds, they are travelling fine, apart from Sigrid’s chain. I had to tighten it again; it’s nearly a daily job now. It’s slowly reaching the stage where I can hardly tighten it more, so a loose link in the chain is flipping like mad. That means that, in the not too distant future, we’ll have to change the chain.

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01-02/05/2019: La Gougeonnais
Km travelled today/sum: 340 km / 2261km
Cloudy, twisty and straight country roads, highway

I probably got your attention with that title, right? It may actually be a good idea to have Camembert and Oysters prepared together, but we opted to have them separately.

 

As you can imagine, Diddle, our road-companion-mouse was extremely excited. So we set off together and walked to a small museum which shows the history of the production of Camembert cheese, as well as the differences between different camemberts and an overview over the different labels from this region.

 

 

 

At the end of the museums tour there was a free tasting of three different types of Camembert. Having them side by side showed us the differents in taste quite clearly. Meanwhile, Diddle was just sitting there overwhelmed, unable to make a decision on which to taste first.

Diddle also felt quite at home in the gift shop, and was trying to convince us to leave him here.

After having fun, all be it a bit cheesy, in Camembert, we hopped onto our bikes and continued to Cancale. On the way our credit card was rejected at a couple of petrol stations, which was annoying as today was a public holiday, so all petrol stations with personell were closed. Only the ones which accept credit cards were open. After the 3rd petrol station rejected our credit card and we were down to 200km remaining, I started to get a bit concerned. In the end we picked a petrol station away from the main road and, to our relief, the card worked. 😅

Not much later we arrived in Cancale and were parking the bikes at the harbour where the oysters were sold. We couldn’t believe it, a dozen Oysters for 6 Euro.

 

So we opted for 2 dozen and, since we had to ride, we skipped the Champagne and had some Cider instead 😁

Well, we didn’t have any accommodation yet, so we organized some close by.

The next day we mostly blogged and planned, but at night we went back to the super cheap Oyster place and bought 3 dozen this time, still closed. Our host showed us how to open them without injuring ourselves. At the end of the 3 dozen, Sigrid and I got it going. We gave one dozen to Pascal, our host, since he was so nice to show us how to chuck oysters, gave us the chucking knife, had organized fresh croissants for us in the morning and even let us have his home-made marmalade.

It was a really nice two days. By writing this blog, I realise that next time we will try have to try Oysters with Camembert after all 😋. Tomorrow we will continue to Carnac, to have a look at Obelix’s Menhirs.

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29-30/04/2019: Caen
Km travelled today/sum: 55429- 1921km / 400 km
Sunny, twisty country roads, highway

It was a bit chilly and foggy this morning. The temperature was around +5 degrees (Celsius) and the fog was hanging over the highway. We were really happy that we had our heated vests! Around lunchtime the fog disappeared. Not long after, we arrived at the ‘Pont de Normandy’, a huge bridge at Le Havre. It took seven years to compete the bridge. As usual, it is not possible to capture the sheer size of the bridge.

 

From here we took some nice backroads along the ocean. In some villages we passed over tiny cobble stone roads which was much more enjoyable than following the highway.

The next day we visited the ‘the Caen Memorial Museum’, an exhibition about peace and war in this region. It was built on top of ‘General Richter’s headquarter’. On our way we found something which we first saw in Cape town, a hand gun with a knot in the barrel as a symbol for peace.

After entering the museum we had a look at the bunker, which was used as a headquarter during the Allied Invasion.

 

From here we went through the museum, which showed everything prior to WWI all the way to the Cold war. It was a lot to take in, so we decided to call it quits after a couple of hours. On the way out we were looking through the cold war section and found plenty of material about Berlin, showing places the we knew quite well. The museum ticket also ent, itled us to entry into the 360 degree cinema, which was nice but nothing to write home about. We did hear that ‘Pont Du Hoc’ would be nice to visit, so we hopped onto our bike and rode there. Pont Du Hoc is the highest point on the cost and the German army stationed some cannons there to control the coast. Parts of the bunker and casemate (armoured buildings surrounding the artillery) were still standing.

Ignoring the wartime paraphernalia, it was actually a nice seaside where you could hear and see the calming waves of the Atlantic ocean. It has been a long day, and tomorrow we’ll have a look at Camembert and will see if we can score some nice oysters in Cancale.  😋

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26-27/04/2019: Rheims
Km travelled today/sum: 331km / 999km
Weather: Cloudy, 18 degrees, country road, highway

We arrived in Reims without any problems. On arrival there was supposed to be a key safe on the door… at least, that what google translate made out of our hosts comment… Well… there was definitely no key box on the door of this address. Based on previous experience, we ensured that we were at the right address (suburb, street and house number) and from the AirBnB message, we were. Strange!
After walking around I noticed there was a key safe next door… I entered the provided number and it opened. Yay! 😁

Later on we noticed that this was a side entrance used by the garbologists removing the waste bins. After we settled into the tiny apartment, we had a look at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rheims. I thought that the only Cathédrale Notre-Dame existed in Paris, but I was wrong. A clear indication was the fully intact roof on this one 😭.

It is impossible to show the real size on a picture, but here’s some pictures of the cathedral anyway.

The most impressive was the norther side with all of its intricate details:

Insided the cathedral there were beautiful led glass windows.

Anyway, this was enough culture for the moment.

The next day we went to Mumm, for a guided tour.

It was interesting to see where and how Champagne is produced and how it is stored. The cellar below the visitor centeres is huge, they had even a bicycle race down here. Apparently the track is 400m long (not sure how they stop at the end…?). Left and right from this passage, there are chambers full of Champaign bottles. On the picture on the right, there are bottles from 1895 (second shelf on the right).

During the tour we got some explanation how the riddling (changing the tilt angle) of the bottles works. The hole in the wooden rack has an odd shape, and so the angle of the bottle changes depending on how far the bottle neck is in the hole.

Okay, and at the end, there was finally a tasting!

I must admit, I liked the taste 😁

I also found a unique location for having another glass of champagne, a tree bar (Perching Bar) 😊. The bar is only accessible by appointment. After talking to the owner, it was clear why. The bar is located at a tree climbing facility and these guys do the maintenance of the climbing facility as well as the bar. So depending how busy they are, the bar might be closed. Anyway, we got an appointment and went there. The view was just stunning and the bar itself as well. This time we took Diddle, he had some champagne as well… Lucky Mouse! 😉

The next day, after some delicious cake

we had a look at the ‘Porte de Mars’, a roman triumphal arch. Unfortunately the area around is currently being remodelled so we couldn’t get close to the gate. Imagine it though, this gate is around 2000 years old… isn’t that amazing?!? Some of the carvings are still visible.

On our way back we found a variety of interesting buildings.

That concluded our stay in Rheims; the next stop would be Caen, where we’d take a look at the D-Day beaches.

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Date: 22/4/2019
Location: Magdeburg
Km travelled today/sum: 156km / 156km
Weather: Sun shine, 25 degrees, city/highway

For the first time, we packed our noble steeds with everything we needed. It took a while to sort things out, but at the end it worked out quite nicely. We said goodbye to Freya and headed off!

Our first stop was the Brandenburg Gate. We wanted to take some pictures of us skipping in front of the gate.

The idea behind that you may remember, dear reader, from the previous blog

Anne, our lovely gym instructor at the EFM gym back in Adelaide, organised a travel exercise regime for us. This regime included two T-shirts with the EFM club logo, to take along on our trip. We thought we could at least send some pictures of us doing some exercise wearing the shirts.

The initial idea was to just do it in front of the pyramids in Egypt, but Sigrid thought why not do it in front of different land marks? Since we are in Berlin, the Brandenburg gate qualifies. This idea came to us recently, so today was the first time we would try it J. Here we are in front of the Brandenburg gate, skipping

Next we had arranged with Bodo, Sigrids Brother, to meet at their Garden “Laube”, which is a nice garden with a small house on it. We arrived a bit before the agreed time and woke everybody from a siesta, whoops! Everyone got up and coffee was brewed. Linda had made some black forest cake, which was super yummy! Simon and Manja arrived soon after us to join the group. They brought some nice leftover easter cake., so we plenty of cake for all of us!

 

.Not long after the cake was finished we left on a sugar high J.

Since we had planned to travel some distance today we couldn’t stay longer. The weather was sunny, still a bit on the cold side, but with our heated gear on it was comfortable. Around 18:00 we arrived in Magdeburg and had a look for a hotel. When we arrived, the hotel Lion was locked but a phone number was on the door. We called, but the lady said, ‘Well, I was there until 17:00 and I don’t want to leave the house now, so I won’t rent out a room tonight.”  I’ve heard the German expression that Germany is a  ‘Service waste land’, now I know what it means J.

Anyway, Magdeburg is a large city, so there are plenty of other accommodation options around. We opted for an even cheaper option, Lara, close by which even had a Restaurant in the house.

23-25/4/2019: Laubach , Waldfeucht
Km travelled today/sum: 290km / 475km
Sun shine, 25 degrees, road/highway

Over the next couple of days we slowly made our way to the most western point of Germany. It was on our way to Reims anyway, so we thought why not take a picture there. After we left Magdeburg, we travelled through some nice Harz backroads, which was extremely enjoyable riding a motorbike.

Overnight we stayed in Laubach.

View from our room

 

Eventually we ended up in ‘Waldfeucht’ (literally “Moist forest”), which was not particular wet. But from here it was not far to the most western point of Germany. And here it is, the most western point:

As nice as it was there, we were looking forward to our next stop, Reims, a town with a fantastic cathedral and… I nearly forgot… the major town where they produce Champagne J

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Date: 13/4 Saturday

Km ridden: 280

Location: Lübeck

It’s an unfortunate truth that even a great time must eventually to come to an end. On Saturday we packed up and prepared to leave the island, but this time using a different route. But first, breakfast! Unfortunately our breakfast plans at the nearby bakery were foiled because all the seats were taken, so we went for breakfast at Nielson which is a great coffee shop with a view over the Wattenmeer (ocean).

Then we took a ferry to the Danish island of Romo.

A long bridge joins Romo island to the mainland.

We followed Matthias, our faithful guide, over that bridge and then from Denmark back to Germany – without a notable border.

Our destination was the Nolde museum.

This famous expressionist has very colourful art and benefited from his reputation that he refused to work under the Nazi regime. Even though that’s correct it turns out that he was actually supportive of the Nazies, only withdrawing his support after they rejected and banned his art!

Seeing this garden…

…one can imagine where he got his inspiration for his colourfulness from

Shortly after that our path separated. Matthias and Gaby had to return to Berlin, while we were heading in the direction of Rügen (another German island) to visit Reni.

As it turned out, the trip would have been too long for today unless we were willing to ride in the dark, which is something we really try and avoid… aaaand it was quite cold (6 degrees!!! 🥶) bearable with our heated jackets but not much fun.

So we stopped in Lubeck for the night. We had found this hotel on the internet:

On the picture you can see the main hotel, however the offer was for a building to the side, a few hundred meters away. Our room there was cheap, warm and comfortable enough, but no hot water cooker or coffee making facilities. That seems to be normal in German hotels – darn 😩 . We had no camping equipment to help us out here, but a supermarket nearby helped us out with all we needed. Another bug bear was that internet was only available in ‘common spaces’ – meaning the common places in the main hotel which shut shop after 8:00 pm – meaning no internet for us….

 

Date: 14 April 2019

Km ridden: 263

Location: Ruegen

The next morning was still cold, but after a good breakfast at the hotel, which did well to negate our negative feelings from the night before, we were off.

We had a short look at the gate of Lubeck

For fun we did some of our exercises in front of the gate to send to our fitness club friends

 

It started to drizzle, but luckily not too badly, so we reached Renie’s Esperanca Feriendomizil a bit after lunch.

We were excitedly greeted by her and her dog JK

We unpacked, and for dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant. Back at Renie’s place we had some wine

and talked till the wee hours of the morning.

The first day we went sightseeing the colossus of Prora , a building complex started by the Nazies, then used during GDR times for the police, now being rebuild for modern times and sold as investment flats.

Later we found a Gosh fish shop in Binz, yummy! And we noticed the 700 year sign on the Binz peer.

Turns out this little village really exists for at least 700 years… coming to prominence only after sea side holidays came into vogue.

The next few days we spent with Reni. We caught up with her parents as well; they were visiting from Berlin and had the new dog in tow, a very lively golden retriever mix.

For the next day she promised that we’d take him along the beach for a long walk. Said and done we set off with him the next day – or should I say he took off with us?

He was so energetic that he pulled us along the whole way – the whole 8 km way along the beach! We didn’t dare to let him off the lead for fear that we wouldn’t get him back. Still it was great fun, albeit exhausting.

That did not hinder us from having a great lunch by the beach

Finally we could help with some lawn mowing and carrying some of Renie’s collected artwork to the appropriate places in the garden of the holiday complex.

Now the place was ready for the Easter rush.. to see the art you’ll need to visit her J

http://www.feriendomizil-speranza.de/

Date: 15 April 2019

Location: Mahlow

In the morning we packed up and said our farewells, promising to see each other again in October.

Then it was off again direction Berlin. Our target for the day was Mahlow and we arrived there in the early afternoon.

The next days were spent washing, planning and preparing for the big trip!

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06/04/2019: Sylt

Km travelled today: 550

Weather: Sun shine, 14 degrees

Today’s the day: our fist long distance ride on this trip!

We had never been to the island Sylt in the North sea of Germany, so Gaby took advantage of this and gave Bjoern a great 60th birthday gift last year. You guessed it, a trip to Sylt!

Matthias arrived on the dot at 9:00 am for a timely start. The first stop was after 100 km, then off again for a stop in Ratzeburg by the lake.

Since this was our diet day we had tea and coffee instead of food, which was no problem. After Ratzeburg we drove a while along some smaller roads, then back onto the highway. We finished up at the vehicle train which would take us to Sylt.

Strange thing that train- no passenger carriage at all.

Gaby was a bit worried that we’d need to sit on the bikes for the trip….

But no! They had a truck with about 10 seats parked at one end of the train, with A train attendant driving back and forth along the train in it. Once our bikes were secured on the train by the staff we were sitting comfortably in that truck for the 30 mins journey. Seriously, there were no cabins, we rode across in a truck on the train!

Getting on and off was very easy and after a short drive we reached our home for this week in Morsum.

We had an apartment with two bedrooms kitchen and lounge room, very comfortable.

Now we wanted to finish the fasting day with some fish and Gaby just knew where to go: “Gosh” which is a famous fish shop on the island.

Once there, all of our good intentions came crashing down as we had a scrumptious meal of fish and wine.

Back at home Gaby took out the champagne and after she gave a a really moving speech we re-celebrated Bjoern’s birthday.

Meanwhile on other locations around the world Niko and Simon were working to re-instigate our blog which was not working since our internet service in Adelaide had switched to NBN.

They managed to get it up and running – well limping- with a few issues remaining to be fixed at a later date. A MASSIVE thank-you to Niko at this point who put in a few hours to arrange everything when he really could have used the time elsewhere!

We had a great time on Sylt taking in the sights and enjoying the delicious food. After sightseeing we often went for coffee and cake to different bakery- cafés, for example the Kupferkanne and the Backstube, just to name a few. The Backstube had a noteworthy sign saying:” any piece of cake smaller than 300g is a cookie”- love that J

Bjorn’s pancake J

We visited the most northern part of Germany,

some beach art at that point

the highest point of Sylt – the Uve dune,

and old graveside – Hunengrab

as well as the church that has the gravestone of Mr Hahn, the captain of the ship transporting the first German settlers to Australia – specifically South Australia where they named Hahndorf after him. He was actually born here and came back in his old age.

At night we often went out for dinner into great, always different and always fabulous restaurants. Here the names of some of them:

Sansibar,where we re-celebrated Bjoern’s 60th

Samoa Seepferdchen, where we first enjoyed the sunset

Salon 1900 , after the organ concert in a nearby church

One night we cooked ourselves, easy pasta – obviously also very delicious indeed!

The other night we had a great evening with our host, Keike and Hans-Adolf. Gaby and Matthias knew them from the Glass club as they are proud owners of goggomobiles.

Time flew with great conversation, nibbles and wine.

We even kept up with our exercises, and Gaby joined in. That was great fun! But.. we didn’t take any pictures save this one

With health in mind and to combat Sigrids cough, Gaby even arranged a visit at a homeopathic practitioner, let’s see if it helps!

Oh, I nearly forgot: on our last afternoon we got to try eggnog grog at another great venue, where we watched Sylt’s motor rail trains coming and going.

And last but not least we encountered some friendly wildlife-

Some hares, just in time for Easter

Same with the lambs

And a friendly seal which we could handfeed with some fish!

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03/04/2019: Marienwerder

Km travelled today: 124
Weather: Sun shine, 16 degrees

In the morning we packed or bikes for the first time on this trip, taking all of our luggage except the camping gear.

After saying goodbye to Freya, we stopped for a short coffee at Klaus’s, then headed off to Marienwerder to visit Micha and Manu. We arrived around 3pm in the afternoon. After Coffee and cake we checked out their new overland truck cabin and could help them to get that big thing onto the base of their truck….  accurately!

At night we watched pictures and exchanged tips and stories about travelling. They put us onto an app called Park4Night, which sounds great so we’ll check it out for sure!

04/04/2019: Seeburg

Km travelled today: 80
Weather: Sun shine, 14 degrees

The next morning we continued with our fitness routine – we were a bit lax on that in recent days…. 

And were rewarded with a sumptuous breakfast!

Later we drove Micha to a doctor’s appointment to get his eye sorted out.  Little did we know that this would mean turning into a pirate! 

Returning home we finished the afternoon with waffles and coffee before making our way to Gaby in Seeburg.

Not even 5 mins into the trip we got a phone call… we’d left the bag with all the chargers at their place, U-oh!  U-turn time!

By the time we were ready to set off a second time, Sigrid’s fuel gauge was low and we thought it prudent to drive 15k’s to get some fuel…. turns out that this was in the opposite direction 😉.

Finally we were off to Seeburg and the GPS thought it would be best to drive through the city. Oh well…. In the end we arrived at Gaby’s shortly after sunset and her dad opened the door for us . Gaby arrived 5 mins later; we had a night cap and fell into bed.

05/04/2019: Berlin

Km travelled today: 40
Weather: Sun shine, 14 degrees

We’re keeping up with our exercises! Wohoo! All exercised out, we did some washing and planning for the trip. Sigrid had the luxury to get to a facial today. Bjoern dropped her off at the public transport and picked her up after in the city. There we visited a range of shops, namely the Ampelmännchen shop, Apple Sore and Aldi.

On the way back to the bike we saw this! The Quadriga with bears! How cute!

All set up we finished with dinner at a Currywurst stand.

Later at Gaby’s we finished the night with a glass of wine… Well, actually Bjoern and Gaby talked until midnight 😉