Prague, Czech Republic

This morning I’m going to check out the Nuremberg Castle then head south to the Nuremberg Documentation Center (Nazi Rally Grounds museum).  I’ll then take the secondary roads east in to the Czech Republic to Prague where I’ll drop the bike off and get ready to fly to Zurich tomorrow to catch my flight to …

Nuremberg, Germany

My day today revolves around the 1:45pm factory tour at Audi in Neckarsulm (about 40 mins from Stuttgart).  Everything else had to fit around that.  Given that, I only had three hours to dedicate to the Porsche museum. Fingers crossed that would be enough time. TODAY’S ROUTE Leaving the hotel in Stuttgart (1), I head …

Stuttgart, Germany

The rubbish truck guys must have thought they were a bit much as they didn’t come back and wake the city up this morning. I was looking to get an early start to get to Stuttgart early.  I had set aside a good half a day to visit the Mercedes-Benz museum, hopefully that would be …

Baden-Baden, Germany

It turns out that both Gwen’s and my own reading of the weather, as well as the iPhone and Android’s, does not match that of the old Swiss couple whose Airbnb we were staying in. The thunder during the night was apocalyptic and I was pleased we’d at least bought the washing in.  Gwen hadn’t …

Ruswil, Switzerland

Today really was a short day, we only had 90km to cover to get to our next stop, an Airbnb in Ruswil near Lucerne.  We weren’t staying in Lucerne because I burst into tears again when I saw the hotel prices there. Because it was only going to be a short transit day, we had …

Interlaken, Switzerland

After some back and forth, Gwen decided she was going to pick up a rental car.  She went off to pick that up while I stayed at breakfast writing my stories deriving inspiration from the uplifting Christian music being played in the restaurant. Since I would be on my own on the bike today, I …

Davos, Switzerland

At dinner the previous night Gwen had floated the idea of her renting a car and following me in that.  The wet and cold of the previous day, combined with a pressure point on her forehead from the helmet was not helping with her enjoyment of the trip. We had looked at renting a car …

Arabba, Italy

The loft ‘bedroom’ in our Ljubljana apartment was so effective we slept past our planned wake up time by about 30 minutes.  Which was lucky because otherwise we would have heard the howling down rain outside 30 minutes earlier. We had a lot of distance to cover today and it was raining and we were …

Ljubljana, Slovenia

As cool as the little hotel in Log Pod Mangartom was, the lack of curtains meant a pretty short sleep.  Gwen had foreseen this and slept with an eye mask.  I got up early and went downstairs to write a story.  After an hour or so the staff started to show up, their first task …

Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia

The curtain in the motel wasn’t fitted overly well and so at 6am the searing light of the day lasered my eyes open.  Me being awake meant that Gwen needed to be also, though there was some fierce resistance to this, so I went to wait for her at breakfast and plan the day. Planning …

Zell Am See, Austria

The first day of the motorbike holiday saw me up early playing with the GPS.  I’d spent a lot of time planning out my route on the computer and wanted to make sure it transferred correctly to the bike’s GPS system. On the 2013 trip I’d had a bit of drama with the GPS which …

Garmish Part 2

The rain decided it had done enough for the second day at the festival.  Today I would be picking up the bike and the real adventure could begin. We went to downstairs to get a recommendation on where to have breakfast.  Dave Bautista’s twin was still at reception.  He was having none of us going …

Garmisch

Each year, BMW holds a big motorbike festival in the southern Bavarian town of Garmisch.  This year 40,000 motorbikes, some from as far away as Malaysia, will attend.  This is where I’m picking up the bike that I’m renting. Picture I took of Garmisch surroundings walking back from the festival in the evening .  It …

Zurich

Cathay Pacific has direct flights to Zurich from Hong Kong, so that was a natural place to fly into.  As is always the case you can never actually use your Frequent Flyer points for flights you actually want so we had to buy the tickets.We?  This trip started out as just me going, but after …

2018 European Alps

This is somewhat of a hastily planned trip.  At the end of May I was offered a new job with a company outside of the broadcasting industry.  I had been at my company for 13 years, it was time for a change. Changes such as this need to be marked with something significant, and it …

The End: Day Thirteen – Geysir to Reykjavik

The last day with the motorbikes dawned to clear skies.  I met up with Nick, Anna and Craig at the place they were staying, a little farm house just down the road from me. Nick and Anna’s flight was due to leave mid-afternoon so they wanted to head directly to Reykjavik, return the bikes to …

Day Twelve – Borgannes to Geysir

Friday morning dawned to rain ofcourse so I psyched myself up to get wet while munching on breakfast. Gwen was getting ready for her diving trip and was getting picked up at 8am, I was meeting Nick, Anna and Craig in Borgannes at 9am so needed to leave just before Gwen. I rode up to …

Day Eleven – Stykkisholmur to Borgannes

Ann Frank’s house wasn’t too bad in the end.  I woke up to the sound of Gandalf downstairs busy doing something.  Gwen was supposed to have picked us a place for breakfast, but the options were very slim.  Anna came up and announced that Gandalf was busy preparing us breakfast which was handy. The breakfast …

Day Ten – Breidavik to Stykkishólmur

The day started with a lot of administration going on. Nick and Anna weren’t sure if they could get onto the ferry and wouldn’t find out until later in the morning if they’d get on or not.  I was trying to work out what to do about the pannier starting to come free of the …

Day Nine – Heydalur to Breidavik

Kayla came sprinting across the carpark to greet us the next morning while we were loading the bikes. Given we’d already spent a fortune with the Heydalur Hotel we didn’t want to give them any more for the crap breakfast so we decided to scoot on and have breakfast later at Isafjordur.  An hour and …

Day Eight – Hvammstangi to Heydalur

Heading up to the West Fjords to Heydalur was basically just riding along the coast all the time a lot of it on dirt roads.  Dirt requires a fair bit more concentration.  You’re scooting along trying to avoid pot holes, but not trying to do sudden movements that will upset the bike.  You’re trying to …

Day Seven – Akureyi to Hvammstangi

It was sad to leave the old hospital, it was the first decent accommodation we’d been in where we felt we got what we paid for, instead of being ripped off. As was the case with so many of our stays, we were sharing the place with a tour bus load of mainly older people …

Day Six – Rest day

So I talked nearly everyone around to doing something on the motorbikes on the ‘rest day’.  I wasn’t keen to sit around all day when the bike was just sitting outside.  The condition everyone else laid on me was we had to allow for a sleep in which was ok for me, but I still …

Day Five – Reykjahlio to Akureyri

Actually, the $220/night shitbox that Craig had checked us into had a decent breakfast.  The pancakes were really tasty and I got right into those. Today we were off to Akureyri on the Northern Coast, but via Husavik, Iceland’s prominent location to do whale watching.  I’ve never seen a whale so I was keen. Riding …

Day Four – Porshofn to Reykjahlio

The guesthouse didn’t serve breakfast and I’m a firm subscriber to that being the most important part of the day.  If I don’t get muesli in the morning, the likelihood of it being a bad day multiplies.  With it being a two dog town, there were exactly zero options for having breakfast so we had …