Well, we’re a little behind here, so where do I start?
The ride from Austria to Prague was not much fun, it was raining when we left the KTM factory, and it was still raining when we arrived in Prague, my heated handlebar grips were not working so my hands were like ice all day, and we did half of it on very slow b r0ads to avoid buying a vignette in Austria.
Then Prague, we stayed for three nights in two different places, we drank in cool little underground bars, listened to some blues (jazz???) music in a restaurant over dinner…
pretty hard going for the beer drinkers!
we walked about a million kilometers around the city, saw the famous bridge with the saints looking down on us, visited an amazing church in the middle of the old palace,
The chrush in the palace of Prague
amazing from the inside!!
and generally just bummed around for a few days.
just another square in Prague
From there we rode to Berlin via Dresden where we camped the first night in really cold and rainy conditions, and subsequently booked a room in a crappy hotel near the train station (they are always the worst!). Dresden was heavily bombed by the allies in WW2, apparently quite controversially, but the result was about 80% of the buildings destroyed. Considering the remaining buildings, it must have been an amazingly beautiful city, as it’s still quite grand today.
Just another lovely old building in Dresden
From there a quick 200km ride to Berlin, where we booked ourselves into a strange little hotel, consisting of converted shipping containers, and tiny little boxes just big enough for a bed, spread over an area that looked like it could house an electro dance party. Of course we were in half of one of the containers, which we shared with some chain smoking men for 2 of the 4 nights, resulting in our room full of smoke too, we weren’t impressed.
The remains of the Berlin wall
Berlin was really interesting, we spent most of our time there in museums and exhibitions learning about the history of Germany, the 2 world wars, the plight of the Jews in WW2, and the Cold War. Really lighthearted stuff!!
The Reichsteig????, Hitlers favourite place to scream at people from.
We also ate in the same Italian restaurant three times for dinner, I’m not sure if that’s a poor refelction of german food or our desire to look for it, anyway…
The Victory monument, I’m not sure what they won…
From Berlin it was a windy 7 hour ride to Ultrecht in The Netherlands (40km from Amsterdam). We stopped half way for a break and some wifi at a roadhouseand found a treehouse for 20euro in a campsite 5km from the centre. Great!
The view from our treehouse 🙂
The treehouse was small but dry, and the city was surprisingly bustly, with a lovely old quarter, some really cool pubs and nice restaurants. This afternoon we left there and rode to Amsterdam, where I’m now sitting in a bar around the corner from our friend Deb’s house. We’re here for a few days before the last little leg to Calais and the ferry crossing to the UK.
Sal tells me sadly that we only have another 570km to reach London, it’s all coming to an end 🙁
