Let the ride begin -Venice here we come! Cycle Day 1

 September 2-3

Frank was instrumental in helping get the bike
in the box for the flight!

The boxes ready to be unpacked in our Munich airport hotel

My bike all ready to go!
Yes there's a lot of stuff on there...don't have Frank along to
share the camping gear and bike tools. And I seem to have a lot of electronics


I'm very happy to report that on Tuesday Sep 4th in the early morning, Nancy and I, together with our boxed bikes and both our gear duffel bags arrived as scheduled, all together at Munich Airport. The expected queue at passport control with the new EES (eletronic entry system) that had been introduced in Feb was about 40 minutes. After just a little bit of hassle, the special taxi arranged with our airport hotel transported us to the hotel where we proceeded to assemble our beasts of burden!

And yes- it took a while, but we both managed to get the job done in spite of our anxieties. The bikes were put together and ready to ride the next day after a good  sleep, hopefully.

Cycle Day 1
Munich airport is about 30km north of the city, and it was from our hotel there that we set off on Wed morning at about 9am. There's always a little bit of trepidation when you first load up all the panniers wondering how it's going to feel. But everything seemed to work out and soon we were on our way, following the route we had pre-planned , helped by the Komoot app.

In no time at all, we were following the Isar river south on excellent bike paths, all the way down to the city of Munich, skirting the city center just to the east of it. We had a perfect weather day, sunny and around 22C.
We made one stop along the way at the nearest Decathlon store to pick up a couple of gas cannisters for our stoves, and a few picnic lunch supplies.


Whenever possible, we hope to stay at campgrounds along the way. Planning around these isn't exactly easy as they're not all that plentiful. For day 1, we had found 2 choices, and we'd choose depending how far we felt like riding.
We ended up putting in a decent 80 km day, and had an excellent experience at our first camp stay - super nice hosts and the finest bathroom facility we've seen in a long time!

We enjoyed our dinner by the tents as dusk fell, then ready to fall into bed to try to catch up on sleep. A great first day on the trail!


Views along our bike route by the Isar river




At the campground 



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