I wake up at a quarter to eight, that’s perfect. We crawled in a bit later yesterday, as I infected mom with the Words of Wonders virus and we spent the whole evening playing on my phone. Getting quite far in the butterfly tournament! Breakfast is leftover bread with olive oil, grapes and cherry tomatoes.… Continue reading Fine arts
Up at seven again, it’s just impossible to get used to Spanish time unless you really make an effort, but then afterward you’ll have to make a similar effort to get back on Belgium time. Both are in the same time zone, but the Spanish do have a different rythm. Fruit salad and goat yoghurt… Continue reading Shop & Eat
I wake up around seven, I can tell mom is awake as well by the light of her phone coming through the frosted glass door, so we confer briefly and decide to get up. We have some crackers and dark Belgian chocolate for breakfast and spend the early morning looking up plant info for the… Continue reading Guggenheim
Up at eight. Eight! It’s just that there’s nothing to do early in the morning, plus restaurants start serving lunch only at two or so, so we’re shifting our whole day out of whack. First job is to get the DHL shipment ready, so after a quick run to the bakery and a breakfast of… Continue reading A day by the sea
After a quiet flight of about 90 minutes the plane lands in Bilbao, Spain. It looks a bit rainy, or foggy, hard to say. Since I’m in a seat way at the front, I can exit the plane pretty efficiently and, admiring the design of the building, make my way to the luggage carrousels and… Continue reading Logistics
I’m taking off today on a city trip to Bilboa (Spain), internationally known as Bilbao. Not to be confused with Balboa, as in Rocky Balboa. I’ll meet my mom, who left for Bilboa from Belgium about 4 weeks and 2000 km ago. 2000 km! I took a local train this morning at 7:13, switched to… Continue reading To Bilbao! Bilboa!
No alarm again, we're trained so well that we wake up at seven anyway. We look up the different animal parks in the area and decide to visit Planète Sauvage or 'untamed planet' zoo. It has a relatively small area for pedestrians, but 10 km of safari park to be visited with your own car.… Continue reading Planète Sauvage
No alarm today! Yesterday we managed to make a lunch reservation at a nearby gastronomical restaurant somehow. The website said a spot was open on Friday, we took it and then got a very polite call from the restaurant: website was wrong, there is no spot, much apologies, do we want to go on the… Continue reading Sealife, good food and a dolmen
The shuttle over the Saint-Nazaire bridge runs every hour and since we're up pretty early, we'll try to catch the first one at nine thirty. We do an efficient run on the breakfast buffet, pack all our stuff back in the bike bags and are ready to leave before nine. I must admit my packing… Continue reading Back to the car
From Nantes we can make it in one go to the Atlantic coast near Saint-Nazaire. We get up extra early (seven!) in an attempt to avoid the tourist groups this hotel seems to specialize in, but fail utterly and have a basic breakfast in a very busy room: very quickly. We drag our bags to… Continue reading To the coast
I've had to juggle with the segments because the route after Nantes city is a bit bare of accommodation and restaurants on Monday evenings, so today we're only doing 22 km. Having some trouble with the Wi-Fi, my post draft was lost and I don't have time to write it again before going out to… Continue reading Nantes
Breakfast, again, only from eight thirty. That's a bit later than we'd like, but then I realize it's the weekend! Weekdays don't matter much when you travel by bike, except that you have to remember that shops and restaurants might be closed on specific days. In France, that's Sunday afternoon/evening and Monday. Today is Sunday.… Continue reading Fields and valleys
Breakfast is served from eight thirty, so we’re making an effort and set the alarm only at seven thirty. In the small breakfast room I have baguette with smoked meat, with a soft brie-like cheese and one with a boiled egg, with crème d’Anjou as dessert, yummy. It started raining during the night and the… Continue reading Rain (and some castles)
Up at seven, breakfast at eight, it's raining just slightly when we leave around nine thirty. We load the bikes in front of the hotel and leave Tours along the same route we followed the day before yesterday to enter it. A bit boring, but at least it's a safe cycling path. We follow the… Continue reading The long way around
Today is a day off, we haven't even set an alarm. The bikes are locked in the secure hotel garage, the contents of the bags are strewn all over the hotel room and the first batch of hand wash is already drying on hangers. We roll out of bed around seven thirty and by the… Continue reading Tours city
We're cycling to Tours today, by way of Chenonceau castle. Only 68 km planned, so it should be an easy day. We gave the B&B hostess our breakfast preferences yesterday, so aside from the ubiquitous baguette with sides of butter and jam, we get the requested pains au chocolat and croissants. I don't translate this,… Continue reading Châteaux de Chaumonts et Chenonceau
Up at seven, we had a pretty good night sleep except that the TV suddenly started playing in the middle of the night. Don't know what happened, but it certainly worked like a wake-up call. Breakfast is the typical for large business hotels, not great, not bad, just average. We pick up the bikes from… Continue reading Biking by the Loire
Breakfast is from eight, so we've set to alarm at seven thirty. I slept well, I think, though I only turned in around around ten thirty, after reading a few chapters in my new Jessie Mihalik book. Breakfast is a impressive spread, with a selection of cheeses and cold cuts, eggs with bacon and/or sausages,… Continue reading A wolf? And of course a castle
The alarm is at six, a bit early for a holiday but we have a train to catch! I hop out of bed, for Arne it's more of a lurch, but we have no problem getting everything packed and ready by seven. I even have the time to cull a bit in my t-shirt pack:… Continue reading Train & bike
I wake up at six, wide eyed and ready to start the day, but the rest of the household is still fast asleep, so I read until the alarms go off at seven fifteen. I hop down the stairs, it's a beautiful morning, warm enough even to have breakfast outside. Considering we're near the Belgian… Continue reading A hot day in the car
Today starts out as a working day, but we'll leave towards France in the late afternoon. That makes the day a bit challenging: I'll need to focus on work in the morning (working from home), wrap up and let it go, then focus completely on the packing. Though the work progresses pretty well, my subconscious… Continue reading Wrap up and go
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