Europe Bike Tour – RuslanY Bike Travel

EuroTour day 26 – trip completed

My EuroTour bike trip ends today. I am flying from Prague to my home city of Novosibirsk in Russia. I’ve mailed all my camping and biking equipment back to USA via Česká pošta and I’ve taken my bike with me on the flight to Russia as that was the most convenient option.

This tour has been an awesome experience. I really enjoyed riding through the European countryside and visiting small towns and villages along the way. I’ve met many nice and interesting people and visited places that regular tourists never get to visit. As some book about bike touring said: travelling by bicycle is slow enough to experience the local environment and fast enough to get somewhere.

Here are some statistics:

Distance traveled – 1,246 miles or 2,005 kilometers
Elevation gain – 37,964 feet or 11,571 meters
Countries ridden – 5 (France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia)
Countries entered/exited by bike only – 3 (Switzerland, Germany, Austria)
Countries visited overall – 6 ( France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic)

Thanks to all who have followed me on this blog. I hope it was interesting.

EuroTour day 25 – Prague sightseeing

Today I visited the Prague center to see all the major attractions. I rode to the center on a tram #22. There was no ticket vending machine at the station but the nearby tobacco store was selling the tickets. The tickets are based on the time duration, e.g. ticket for 30 minutes, 90 minutes, 1 day or 3 days. The ticket can be used on any mode of public transportation.

Prague is a very beautiful city. Also what is great about it is that there are so many places to eat here and the food is good and relatively cheap (especially comparing to Basel, Switzerland 🙂 ).

I was in the center early in the morning and it was raining a little. Because of that there were not too many tourists. But later in the day it got sunny and there were huge crowds of tourists everywhere.

EuroTour day 24 – to Prague by train

I rode to the Bratislava train station to take a morning train to Prague. I am glad that there were not too many cars on the road because riding a bike on busy Bratislava streets would not be easy. There are bike lanes but they are not well marked in places and sometimes they just end without any direction where to go next.

The main train station looked somewhat similar to the Soviet era train stations in Russia that I remember from my childhood.

Based on the looks of the train station I had pretty low expectation for the actual train, but it turned out to be really nice. It was clean, had plenty of space for bikes, free wi-fi and everything you would expect from a modern train. It was way better than the Amtrak from Seattle to Portland or the Deutsche Bahn train I took last year from Amsterdam to Berlin.

EuroTour day 23 – to Bratislava

After the Vienna sightseeing ride I headed East to Bratislava, which was supposed to be only 30 miles away. But in the middle of the route the road was blocked due to some construction. I had to take a detour which involved a bike ferry across Donau river, climbing a 20% grade hill, and riding on a busy road with no shoulder. Also I rode through a thunderstorm at the end of the ride.

I am in Slovakia now. I do not have much time here as I am leaving on a train to Prague tomorrow morning. I walked to a supermarket which is 1 km away. That was all the sightseeing I’ve done in Bratislava.

EuroTour day 23 – Vienna sightseeing ride

I left my bags in the AirBnB place today and did a Vienna sightseeing ride on my bike. I wish it did not rain as much so that I could take better looking pictures.

Riding in the center was very easy. Vienna has very good infrastructure for bicycles. There are separate lanes and separate traffic lights for bikes. I really liked riding there.