arrival bicycle cycle tour schedule France hospitality hosting Nice people showers

Posted by: Tori

In the aftermath of the accident, I realized the pain that remained was in my upper leg, and my pride. In spite of the injury, Devin and I cycled 60 km the next morning to the town of Antiebs where a possible host and the promise of rest and recuperation lived. After a beautiful yet painful ride along the rocky coastal roads, we arrived in Antieb to find not our host Manford, but instead his temporary roommate named Juliana- and adorable student from Columbia. She was kind, laid back, a bit bubbly and the apartment was comfy and calm- just what I needed to shake the pounding headache and rest my leg in peace.

Shortly after settling in she told us she was having a couple friends over to make pizza, and invited us to join- a low key night with pizza, perfect! By midnight fourteen of her friends had arrived, each bringing a bottle of wine or liquor and an endless supply of beer. They were all  students around our age and came from all over the world to earn a European Maters in Renewable Energy.  Every person there was awesome, friendly, talkative, and knew English well enough to be our best friend by the end of the evening. Music blasted while custom pizzas flew in and out of the oven- some with eggs on top and even “Mr.Pizza” were created and devoured. Great conversation, music swapping and even dancing pushed until the early hours of morning, and then it all ended with a bang- literally.

read more…

bicycle Cycling France French Rivera ouch touring Traffic travel water

Posted by: Tori

When I think back to my travels in the French Rivera I see palm trees, sunny beaches, beautiful salt water waves, and that one curb that ruined it all. It has now been a month since I flew off of my bike onto the pavement below and slowed my pace to a record low- stationary. A minor concussion, scrapes and bruises have since healed, but a tear to a small muscle in my leg has made me switch gears and paths for this trip.

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? It’s a long story but worth sharing I think, and mostly true…

read more…

Greece

Posted by: Andrew

Well, after nearly 3 weeks of separation, all six of us managed to show up at the same time and the same place: Thessaloniki, Greece. Devin and Tori have already been here two weeks, and have some good stories about home stays and people they’ve met. Kallie and I took the motorway in from the coast 70km out–a recommendation of travellingtwo.com–and we arrived in roughly 3 hours, cruising at 25-30 kph.* Peter and Lindsey opted to pick their way through smaller roads, but since the maps we have aren’t completely reliable, they ended up coming in at 105 km for the day and arriving five hours later than we did. But we made it, and celebrated with pizza and gyros! We are staying with Gael, a friend we met on the road back in 2008 in Cambodia, who was doing his own world tour (common-life.org). Now he’s offering us hospitality in his studio flat, and we are seven. Lindsey’s friend Priya joined us from England for a week, so we are planning to celebrate an early Thanksgiving today and enjoy our collectiveness until tomorrow night, when Kal and I catch a ferry to Turkey to continue our journey with hopes of meeting up in Istanbul Dec. 1. Devin and Tori plan to bus it to Istanbul, as Tori is still not bike-ready (traveling can make for poor convalescence). Lindsey and Peter, as of now, are still planning to bike to Istanbul from Thess., but as always, nothing is final. Stay tuned…!!! *When we entered the city, we found our way to the coastal walking area and rolled along, noticing a Starbucks. Kallie immediately grew fairly excited about the prospect of her favorite holiday drink from Starbucks, and made some sort of vow to come back and procure one. About 500 meters farther down we saw another one, and then we saw a blonde sitting outside next to a bearded fellow and it was… “Devin and Tori?!!” We caught up then and there with a Starbucks holiday drink.

people

Posted by: Kallie

Surprisingly enough, we haven’t ran into that many other bicycle tourists. In Germany, we saw hundreds of people out for a weekend ride, but it wasn’t until Pisa where we met our first long-distance biker. We pulled up next to him and noticed his freshly-laundered socks strapped on his luggage to dry. We complimented his system (we usually have a couple pairs of underwear flapping in the wind as we bike). Keegan is from California and was biking and wwoofing throughout Europe (“wwoofing” is volunteering on organic farms). He was on his way to a farm, so we unfortunately didn’t get the chance to bike with Keegan.

The next cyclist we met while sitting down eating pitas in Metsovo, Greece. We flagged Wouter down and instantly liked him. He just graduated with a Masters degree in engineering and was celebrating by taking a one year bike trip from Switzerland to China. We biked with Wouter for a few days and were sad when the day came that we had to part ways.

We stayed in Meteora for a few days to hike around the famous monasteries. While we were there we met two couples set out to travel the world. The first couple were Americans. Ashley was a recent graduate of Vanderbilt and had received a 14-month travel fellowship. She and her husband (also newlyweds) are documenting people and their stories via photo and video. Their work is beautiful, so make sure you check out their site: http://www.tell-well.com

Last but not least, we ran into Christian on his bicycle and stopped to say hello to a fellow biker. We learned that he and his wife, Anja, quit their jobs, sold their car, left their house and children (now grown) in pursuit of their dream to travel the world. They hope to take two years to travel the silk road east to China. We met up for drinks, swapped travel stories and found comfort sharing similar beliefs and reasons for traveling. Christian and Anja have a great philosophy and are great people. http://www.nordseehnsucht.de/

Today we arrived in Thessaloniki. We are being hosted by Gael, a Frenchman who cycled around the world from 2006-2009 with Elena. He and Elena were working for Unesco, photographing all of the world heritage sites. Elena is now working on a project in Siberia for national geographic. http://www.common-life.org

camping Greece

Posted by: Andrew

Our last two campsites have been in full view of Mt. Olympus. It has been clear and cold, with a slight breeze to keep down the frost, and the mountain has snow on its cap. Each of us has been digging deep to find all the warm clothes we are finally glad we brought, and the fires have been a bit bigger than usual (especially since the night a Greek farm woman showed us how it was done).

read more…

camping Greece home stays hospitality Italy

Posted by: Andrew

We are always looking for a place to stay. Whether it be a place to camp, a hostel or hotel, a home stay set up on warmshowers.org or couchsurfing.com, or a spontaneous invitation, we are daily in need of a place. So far on the trip we have had all of these, but we were not always welcome.

read more…

camping Greece people

Posted by: Andrew

After a couple days in Igoumenitsa, we were primed and ready to enter Greece… and it happened to be Halloween.

We found a LiDL grocery store (one of our favorites–like ALDI) that accepted credit cards, so we decided to stock up on groceries and Kallie and I decided to buy $15 worth of candy for our very own FBR Halloween celebration. We did this on the sly, and then hid some among Peter and Lindsey’s gear for a surprise. They were thrilled when they found it, and we were surprised when we found out Lindsey had also purchased $15 worth of candy just because they accepted credit cards. We had also heard rumors that the sheep dogs in Greece were somewhat aggressive, so we each picked up a “dog stick” in case any got too close for comfort. Peter’s was an intimidating yet mostly harmless dried thistle stock…

read more…

Posted by: Peter

As Drew and Kallie mentioned, we are alive and well in northern Greece! In the interest of time and cutting down on cold rainy weather, we took a ferry from Ancona, Italy to Igoumenista, Greece. Greece has been very mountainous and sparcely populated, but very beautiful. The Greek people have been more smiley than the Italians and very welcoming.

We stayed with a kind couchsurfing host in Igoumenista, Ozan, a 20 year old foriegn student from Turkey who was brave to take us on after only moving in himself 1 month before.

And tonight, a Godsend, Jason, approached us in the street after a hard day of mountains, rain, and cool weather, to invite us in for coffee, that turned into hot showers, that turned into staying the night. He and his roommate, both young Americans, hosted a Lord of the Rings 3 viewing tonight with about ten other people. As movie nights for us are quite rare, this was perfect and well appreciated. Oh, and did I mention they bought us dinner? Huge Gyros the size of my head. Most Excellent. Thanks, Jason, for being our 2nd spontaneous host!

read more…

Posted by: Peter

Imagine sitting inside a gourmet Italian chef’s home with the chef himself greeting and welcoming you into his home. Imagine slowly savoring the first of over 10 courses (counting drinks)in a set meal, which is beautifully and simply local olives soaked in herbs and olive oil, while sipping on local wine that has no lable with enough for nearly one bottle per person by the end of the meal. Then, Liquors following the meal that you pour yourself. Finally, imagine on top of all of this, taking in a breath-taking view down a beautiful valley of olive tree groves and medieval churches to the Mediterranen Sea, where on a clear day, one can see the island of Corsica in the distance. Price for everything: only 30 Euro a person.

read more…

position team

Posted by: Andrew

As often happens on journeys we have needed to make some adjustments along the way to our travel plans due to unforeseen circumstances. What follows is a brief synopsis:

read more…