We left Clearwater on Thursday, June 21, at 1:30 PM and took a bus to Orlando International-Sanford. We flew on Icelandair, changing planes in Iceland, and arrived in Amsterdam around 3 PM on Friday, June 22nd. Traveling to Iceland (3 hours) was a nice break from the cramped airplane quarters but it was still a long trip to go (7 hours) to Amsterdam. The total time change was forward 6 hours. We basically, considering the time change and travel hours, spent almost a day traveling.
We spent the night (Friday night/Saturday morning) in a nice hotel across the river from downtown Amsterdam. On Saturday, June 23rd, we toured downtown Amsterdam and had a good time browsing the downtown sights in the shopping and ‘Red Light’ districts. Later Saturday afternoon, we were bused to Nijmegen, Netherlands where the Barge (Merlijn) was docked and waiting for us on the Rhine River.
The Merlijn looked brand new and was quite charming. We settled comfortably into our 11 cabins below deck. Living out of your suite case was the name of the game as there were no drawers to put anything into, however, our suitcases slid easily in and out from under the beds.
Life on the Merlijn through June 30th was very delightful. The boat owners Jantien and Henk were also the workers. Ij is pronounced like an “ah” sound and ja is like a ”ha”. Jantien was the host and chief chef. Henk was the boat captain and boat docker, boat driver, diesel mechanic, dinner server and cleanup guy. Henk was also our singer/entertainment guy and very witty at times. Jantien had two young lady helpers Ester and Marinka. Marinka was the bar server among other duties. Her father became ill during part of our trip so Marinka left to visit him. The guests filled the gap and pitched in with some of the serving and cleanup chores. Jantien was a connoisseur of fine wines and had an excellent selection of fine wines for sale at reasonable prices. Ester was also the chief deck hand when it came to docking and Klaus (our river pilot) was good at the ship's lines placing them with Seabunny knots around the pilings. On the Rhine River, Germany requires a registered pilot to run the barge. When we passed Loreley Rock, which is at the narrowest part of the Rhine River, we saw the naked statue of the mythical Loreley siren, which was said to sing to the river men causing them to crash on the rocks. Jantien and Henk then broke into the song of Loreley, which lasted a good five minutes. The words of the song can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorelei.
The Rhine River is very unique in that every 0.1 km is indicated by visible signs marked (1,2,3,4,+,6,7,8,9) along both sides of the Rhine. The Rhine River also floods like most major rivers and has those infamous dikes along its banks. The tops of the dikes are usually paved as a road/bike path. Buildings along the Rhine have high water markers that indicate when the Rhine River rose 30-40 feet above normal in the 1920’s and 1990’s. These high waters basically flooded everything in the lowlands of the river past the dikes. They have continuing dike improvement, which caused us a few detours at times while we were biking. The Rhine River flows from the South to the North. It begins in the regions in and around the Alps and ends in a big delta at the North Sea. During our trip up the Rhine, the current was strong, somewhere around 5 knots. Our barge struggled to go upstream at about 6 knots. They said the Merlijn did 19 knots going down stream. Boat and barge traffic on the Rhine River was always busy.
We ate a delicious buffet breakfast every day at 8 AM. The crew packed our lunches for biking in a plastic container and provided a sturdy bike saddlebag for the lunch, clothing, camera etc. Some bikers added extras from the breakfast table to compliment their provided sandwich, candy bar and drink. Dinner was at 6:30 PM. Dinner was pre empted by a detailed description of what we were about to eat and why Jantien had fixed that particular dinner delight. After dinner we got a presentation of the next days barge and biking plans, which was followed by a daylight tour at 9:15 PM of the town where we were docked. Since we were around 50 degrees latitude, we had 20 hours of daylight at this time of the year. Jans had studied each town we were to stop at and gave us a nice local description and history lesson.
As it turned out, we barged about 252 miles and biked about 137 miles. This meant that on some days we had to meet the barge at a particular time and then continue on to our docking place for the night. Some days the barge left around 5:30 AM and dropped off the bikers at 9:15 AM. Docking sites must have been at a premium as we shared a one boat-docking site twice with another boat. Yes, this meant we had two large boats side by side docked at the same place and tied together. This also meant that the people on the outside boat had to walk through the inside boat to get to their boat. Actually, this turned out to be of a very minor inconvenience. However, this also meant the outside boat had to leave about an hour prior to the inside boats departure time. We left around 5:30 AM on two days. Yes, when they crank up the engines, it also cranks up the passengers.
Not every one biked. Darlene, Helen, Marcela and Holly did not bike. Depending on the weather and length of biking that day several other people would elect not to bike. As it turned out, only 7 people biked every day (Lou, Saray, Charlie, Mary, Rick, Ron & Bruce). A few people would then go into town, shop around and then take a train to the city where the barge was to dock that night. We didn’t lose anyone taking the train but I heard a few hectic stories.
The weather for our biking trip was not exactly ideal but tolerable. It rained a little bit on us every day but one. Fortunately, the rains would only last 15 to 30 minutes and then the sun usually came out for a short period and then it would typically rain again. In the mornings it was almost always cold (50 degrees F). All of this required rain gear, a regular jacket and a billed hat. However, sometimes a short-sleeved tee shirt was very comfortable. Layering your clothes was the secret. Another important aspect of the weather was the wind. Biking into the wind is not very much fun and we usually used bike gears 3 & 4. Fortunately, the wind was generally out of the WNW and only in our faces one day. It also rained a lot that day but we still had a good time. The rest of the days the wind was mostly at our backs and you could up the bike gears to 6 & 7 and easily cruise along.
We biked on an Austria made KTM aluminum model 7005 bikes. It basically looked like a girl’s mountain bike and had 7 gears inside the rear hub. We biked at about a nice-easy 15 km per hour and our high gear was enough for that speed. Faster speeds would have required another higher gear. However, we were there to have a pleasant and easy biking day and not a racing day. The bikes had adjustable everything so it was just a matter of a few adjustments to make the bikes custom fit each person.
Biking was easy and fun. We stopped multiple times whenever we needed to be rested. Even though we packed our lunches we always stopped at a restaurant, that would allow us to eat outside at their facility as long as several people ordered something to drink. A couple of koffee (Germany spelling) breaks and pit stops were also programmed in. This obviously reduced our 15 km per hour biking pace down to about 5 km per hour overall. No problem going at a slow pace as we had all day to meet the boat. We actually saw the boat several times from the bike path and we were always biking slightly faster than the boat was going. Some of us thought we could have easily biked another week or could have gone a lot further per day.
Jans, our biking tour guide, was the same tour guide as we had in 2002. He is a great bike trip planner and map-reader. He did have to innovate when construction blocked our path. Jans made the biking tour the success it was. Jans included in his planning historic sites of interest along the way. A lot of World War II history was made along the Rhine River. One long stop was made at the bridge at Remagen. This particular bridge allowed 8,000 allied troops to cross the Rhine and set up an important bridgehead. The bridge was so important to the Germans defense to the approaching allied troops that Hitler court marshaled 5 officers and executed four of them for failing to destroy the bridge. In actuality, they had partially destroyed the bridge and it just took five days of allied use before it fell into the river. We spent time in a museum that was placed in the still standing bridge towers commemorating the events of that WWII era. Jans, also, briefly stopped us at other sites along the river that were of historic in nature.
One biking day we came across a rather large group of over 200 bikers going down river on the trail. We were going up river. It was quite impassive to say the least, as they were all on fancy road bikes complete with helmets, stylized shirts and bike pants. Most of us 17 or so bikers pulled off of the trail to let them pass. We must have caught the attention of one of the bikers as he lost his cadence and the guy behind him ran into his bike. The result is that the guy that ran into the other then flew about six feet in the air across the trail and landed on a hillside. He was unhurt as he got back on his bike and rode on. It is nice to be young and flexible under those circumstances. This was not the tour de France, although it could have passed for it. Another interesting point about European bike trails is you sometimes have to share them with car traffic.
We really enjoyed the few times that we biked through small towns along the way. There is a small problem in that the people, except in the very tourist oriented towns, close up over the lunch break and no shops or restaurants are open for business.
All along the Rhine River are castles placed there by the important people of the era prior to about 1500AD. They were to be used as defense against their enemies. However, gunpowder was invented and that made the castles vulnerable and useless. They then became like summer homes that were not lived in by the owners but where maintained by a few live in servants and workers. Some castles are very elegant, but us bikers didn’t see inside of them as they were on the right side of the river. On the later part of the trip (where most of the castles were) we biked mostly on the left bank (the west side) and the castles were on the right bank. The left bank had better biking trails and gave us protection from the prevailing winds. The water view from the castles was probably very impressive.
Our bike and barge trip ended on June 30 in Mainz, Germany. We spent the night on the barge and then we relocated to a very nice (lots of stars) hotel called the Favorite Park. The hotel was a little bit outside of downtown Mainz where we left the boat. All the ex-bikers enjoyed the hike through town and the beautiful park. We had all-day and evening to tour Mainz. The next morning we packed up and headed for Frankfort, Germany by bus.
We then caught a plane to Iceland. We landed in Keflavik and stayed in Reykjavik. The main cities, Reykjavik and Keflavik, are pretty cool. Up to this point our hotels had been 4 to 5 stars. Our Iceland hotel was about a 1-2 star hotel but we all managed for two nights. The hotel was in the terminal building for the local Reykjavik airport. It was probably the original major international Iceland airport before it was moved to Keflavik. You could look out your window and watch and listen as the executive jets came and went. The air conditioning was to open your window, which tilted inward at the top, and then go and beg a fan from the front desk. The beds were comfy and like all European beds they had feather duvets. . You could walk from our hotel to most places in Reykjavik.
The daylight hours in Iceland were also longer than they were in Germany. This was because we were now at 64 degrees north. The longer hours were great for some of the more energetic younger travelers. Iceland is 64% wasteland, 22% vegetation, 11% glaciers and 3% lakes. The wasteland portion of Iceland is rough and bumpy lava rock. It must have had a tough and noisy beginning way back in time when it all started. One day the group did a tour that went to a volcanic crater, an impressive waterfall, a neat geyser and a National Park. The National Park was the site where two intercontinental tectonic plates came apart and cracked the earth open. When that happened it was probably just as noisy as the rocky lava falling everywhere else.
After the tour and on the way back to the hotel, the bus dropped some of us off at a large and modern shopping mall called Kringlan. The shopping mall was around two blocks long and had three levels. As we only had about an hour before the center closed at 6:30 PM, we concentrated on important things. We purchased three bottles of wine at about $14 a bottle. This was very inexpensive wine as most items in Iceland were around two times the price in the US. In Iceland, a glass of wine at the hotel was $12 a glass. For winos, that is pretty steep. The stores in Iceland took your credit card without hesitation. They would also take your left over Euro paper money and United Stares paper money and give you local currency plus hard change. The conversions were very loose to say the least and any hard currency was worthless. Many stores had hard change jars for the children charities. It was a great day touring and shopping.
Our trip home on July 4th started at 10:15 AM. The group had a scheduled stop at the Blue Lagoon, which is on the way to the airport at Keflavik. The Blue Lagoon is basically an outdoor 2 to 5 acre spa pool with a natural hot water geyser that feeds the pool. The water is warm (37-39°C) geothermal seawater.
The pool’s normal color would appear to be blue to the observer. This is probably because the water is crystal clear and the white silica sediment on bottom reflects the blue sky. When you add a bunch of people that are stirring up the bottom walking around and playing in it, the color appears to be bleached green. Undisturbed other pools around the complex appeared to be the blue color that is talked about. There were dry and wet steam rooms to be used and a nice warm waterfall to stand under for a water massage. The pool also offered a place where you could take spoonfuls of the silica and smear it all over your self for therapeutic value. A scary silica smeared group picture was taken.
We left Iceland and arrived in Orlando International-Sanford at about 9:30 PM. We did see a lot of fireworks from the airplane while flying over Florida. We were bused to Clearwater and arrived around midnight. Our vehicles were stored in a locked-covered parking and were safely awaiting us courtesy of the England’s friends. It had been a fun and rewarding trip but it was good to be home. Another memorable and terrific adventure to talk endlessly about.
Respectively submitted by Ron Wagner & Bruce Myers
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