Last weekend we’ve spend cycling in the northern parts of Rhine-Westphalia, an industrial region in the center of Germany. A friend of mine has developed a 165-km 2 days trip through the picturesque fields between Duisburg and Munster.

Here are some photos I’ve made:

This time I’ve tried to mix German beer and cycling. Surprisingly, it went really well!

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The last 3.5 days I’ve spend in a hot hills of Czech Republic. It’s my first time, and actually, it was only work, work, work. No time to sightseeing. The only thing’s I’ve noticed are:

• It’s a very clean and bright country. Apparently they’ve spend a lot of money, cleaning the centers of old cities in the last 10 years. They look very fresh and beautiful
• Very nice food, mostly meat with vegetables and beer. Every evening we’re tasting Pilsner Urquel and local brands: Bernard, Starobrno
• Absolutely awful American-style coffee everywhere
• Very few crowds outside of Prague. We haven’t been to the capital, so I don’t know how it’s there. But no traffic jams on highways.

The only picture in this post was made from 15 floor restaurant on the outskirts of Brno. You could see the main road to the old center and Moravian hills on the background. Hopefully next time I’ll have more time for pictures.

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Yesterday we’ve all enjoyed +28 degrees and spotless sun in Netherlands. I’ve made a 112 km cycling trip from Zwolle to Hilversum around the coast of Flevoland, the newest province of Netherlands. The province is a huge chunk of man-made earth, risen up only in 1968.

This is the map of the route:

Actually the trip started in one of the oldest cities in Netherlands – Zwolle. It may be even a nice city, but unfortunately not along the way I rode. I got lost a couple of times in countless water-gates

The first part of the route was on a dyke of river IJssel. When a piece of North Sea was cut by a dam, water from this river made this piece fresh and it became lake Ijsselmeer. The dyke is typical Dutch one:

On the border of the Flevoland lays a nice and old town Kampen with a big cathedral and remains of city walls

It also has a bridge with gold-plated wheels

Finally the last water-gate and I’m in Flevoland

The road on the coast of the province is a bit boring, but then you notice that the whole land is actually hand-made. This neat pavement on the right framing the whole 150+ km coastline!

From the center of province people are exiting in their boats to IJsselmeer:

One of the way you can enjoy the nice weather is to come by car to the dam on IJsselmeer, park 200-300 meters from each other for ultimate privacy, open the chairs and enjoy the sun:

On the north-west point of the Flevoland there are huge windmills.  They actually stand on water, I don’t know why:

The most amazing things, is that the space between the windmills and the dam is actually a field for sheep. And the bicycle road is going right through the herds of sheep!

The capital of Flevoland – Lelystad is a heart of yacht-sport for Dutch people (one of the hearts, actually). The coast is filled with marinas:

The center of Lelystad hosted some kind of yacht-fair this Sunday:

There is also an old East-Indian Company ship “Batavia”, restored as a museum:

The part between Lelystad and the southern Flevoland is the most boring. Around 35 km of “straight-to-horizon” cycling road and no shadows at all

Only on the most south-eastern point there are some windmills again:

Next trip (when my sunburns are healed), I’m going to plan via forests. I had enough sun for a couple of months!

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Finally a weekend with nice weather in Netherlands. I can not believe it! I even planned another big cycling trip tomorrow. However it’s still humid and still not very easy to take pictures. Just bought a new polarizing filter for this weather.

I liked it actually. It looks like it’s doing something weird with skin colour, but the sky and shadows are much better that just with UV-filter:

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Here are a couple of pictures from the main event of Archeon theme park – the gladiator fight.

Archeon is located near Alpen aan den Rijn in the center of the Netherlands. In this park you can watch and even try the life of people in different periods of ancient Dutch history – from stone age to medieval times. The most interesting is, of course – roman part. Of course, it’s mostly for kids, but the gladiators are a lot of fun. They are just students, working there, so they don’t use as much steroids as the fighters from Spartacus: Blood and Sand, but they’re funny anyway

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I really have to learn how to make pictures with bad weather. Looks like the whole summer will be clouded here.

Today, instead of watching “Burn Notice” and looking at the sun-filled Miami on my monitor, I went to Utrecht for a short walk with some friends. The positive part was completely empty streets. Netherlands is resting after winning yesterday a soccer match against Japan. That’s all I was able to do in such weather:

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Last weekend I fell a victim of the weather forecasters. They’ve promised cloudy Saturday and perfect Sunday. The reality was quite the opposite. So, again I spend the whole day cycling and waiting for sun. All the photos from this trip are of very bad quality, sorry about that.

Anyway, the this is the map of route (aproximately 94 km, which I made in ~5:40)

Most of the way I followed Landelijke Fitsroute 2 (State Cycling Road 2) Amsterdam-Brussels. The other name of this route is “Stedenroute” or Route of the Cities. There are a lot of cities, small towns and villages among the route.

The route started in Rotterdam. Normally it’s a nice and funny city, but with foul weather is very dark and unfriendly:

The way from Rotterdam to Gouda goes among on of the arms of Rein right on a protective dam.

(check out the size of it!)

From the dam you normally have a nice view on the river itself:

And on the farms on the other side:

Sometimes on the river you could see typical dutch elements:

- yacht parking

- Bicycle-only ferry

-bicycle-only bridge

The Gouda itself has a very beautiful old city center

To the north from Gouda there is a wel known recreationa area Groene Hart (Green heart), and the road goes right through a collection of lakes Reeuwijksche Plassen

The thin road actually has houses on the both sides. It looks like this:

After of this recreational area the roude goes through the center of Randstad. Almost all the way you ride beween houses and channels:

Sometimes the cycling road becomes very very narrow

Or even goes right through a field with cows and sheep

Another 20 km to the north the road goes around lake Noordeinder Plas. The houses on the lake a literally surrounded by water from all the sides, they’re staying on a small islands

From the road it looks like this:

After 60-70 km it normally not really funny any more, so I tend to make less and less pictures and chose straiter and streighter roands to home. Like this one:

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People like to watch monkeys and apes. They’re so similar to us and yet so different. The funniest part are human emotions, which you could guess on their faces. I can watch them for hours!

There is a very nice attraction in the hills of Alsace, called Montagne des Singes (Monkey mountain). It’s a hill, completely surrounded by huge 5-meter high fence. There is a bi population of monkeys living inside. Except of the border fence, there is no limits inside, so monkeys could come and interact with you.

In order to make interactions productive, you’re given some unflavored popcorn, which you can feed to them. Monkeys don’t afraid of the people much, but don’t like them much either. They can take the popcorn from your had, if you’re let them. They also can steal any small objects, so be careful with jewelry and glasses.

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Every year in the summer Brussels celebrates Ommegang. It’s a kind of medieval parade, representing official entering of a king into one of his subject cities. In this situation it was emperor Charles 5 in 1549, which entered the Brussels with dozens of other kings from the whole Europe.

During couple of days there are a lot of people on the streets of Brussels wearing medieval clothing and weapons.

The parade itself I didn’t like that much. A lot of guys just marching with all those kings (there are really like 100 of royal heads in the parade)  and showing how beautiful they are:

At the end there is a distribution of free belgian beer and sweets (together). Which was very nice indeed!

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Almost all travel guides agree that Brugge (or Bruges) is the most beautiful city in Belgium. I think that’s because all the nice old buildings are conveniently located in one small area – the old city center.

However, my first impression of Gent was much better. Yes, the old churches and castles are located in different parts of the center, separated by blocks of 19-20 century houses. But there are less tourists and more beautiful places, than in Brugge. Also, the city is trying to be something more that just an attraction with a bunch of hotels. You can find a lot of funny art and strange decorations, adding a bit of smile to the serious flemish architecture.

There are some pics from my 2007 vacation in Gent:

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