Planning and Preparation

(Written after the trip) In some ways, planning for this trip began years and years ago, before Noah was born, before we lived in Chicago, and before we probably could afford it! I did lots of biking when I lived in Germany, taking advantage of the better bike facilities in much of Europe and further…

Friday, April 22

After months of planning for and preparing countless aspects of our biking adventure to the Netherlands and Belgium, the start of our trip finally arrived today! The first hurdle we needed to clear was the first leg of travel: getting us and our three bike boxes to the airport. We called an UberXL, but the…

Saturday, April 23

We arrived at Amsterdam’s airport after a night of little sleep for all three of us. But for me at least, the excitement and challenge of building our bikes and getting our tour started kept any kind of jet lag from setting in. We worked our way thru the baggage claim, not sure where our…

Sunday, April 24

The first full day of our Europe bike trip! We ended up sleeping a couple hours longer than planned, waking up at 9am – I think we each had different issues with sleeping well (pillows, insomnia, room temp, etc.). But we got going quickly and were off to Haarlem (clothes and bags at the hotel…

Monday, April 25

Today was all about flexibility! Our original plan of biking from our hotel in Amsterdam to the tulip fields and Keukenhof was derailed by a cold, steady drizzle that wasn’t forecast until yesterday. So with needing to choose between biking in the drizzle to stick with the plan, or taking a train to Leiden and…

Tuesday, April 26

With the rain changing our plans, today was a return to the trip I envisioned! After Noah had a very nice breakfast with Juliette and her mom at the hotel, we decided to take the bus from Leiden to Keukenhof due to a sunny-but-cold morning, and we again made the right decision. Arriving at Keukenhof…

Wednesday, April 27

Today, April 27th, is King’s Day in the Netherlands – and since Tammy was feeling a bit under the weather, we decided on a whim to take a day trip from our hostel in Rotterdam to both Utrecht and Gouda. The biggest takeaway from the day, besides more affirmation that I love this country, is…

Thursday, April 28

Today had a little bit of everything. We woke up in our hostel in the center of Rotterdam  and ended in a luxury hotel in the very center of Brussels, and we mixed in biking, tourism, laundry and Mexican food! After breakfast at the hostel we fell in love with, we got our bikes out…

Friday, April 29

Even though we loved the hostel in Rotterdam, the first night of sleep in Brussels was an extreme shift in comfort, and we took it quite slow to start the day. Noah and I walked back to Velofixer, where I test-rode a Brompton folding bike for the first time, then got Noah some breakfast at…

Saturday, April 30

Our last full day in Europe was less adventurous but with train trips to two amazing Belgian cities: Bruges and Ghent. We got going pretty early and walked back to Brussels Centraal for the train ride to Bruges, sans bikes, and got there shortly after 9. We enjoyed a relaxing breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien…

Sunday, May 1

Our clocks were set for 5:30am, but I woke up early and luckily learned that our flight would be delayed for a couple hours. So we stayed an extra hour, packed our stuff into our bike panniers, I retrieved the bikes from the hotel garage, and we embarked for Brussels-Noord station at 7:30 for the…

Post-trip summary

Thanks to all of you who followed our bike journey! Posting was really just a way for me to journal it with pictures (which I love to take tons of!). Dan has been dreaming of doing a bike trip like this with his family even before Noah was born, and now that we were all…