Month: October 2016

Our ferry arrived to Venice at 7AM. I dressed warm but I was still freezing on the early morning ride from the ferry terminal to Venice Mestre train/bus station.

Train reservation to the Czech Republic was difficult to make with the bike. All the local trains are bike friendly, however only a few long distance trains allow bikes. I had a ticket for a bus from Venice Mestre to Ostrava in the Czech Republic with a bike transport reservation for 9PM with RegioJet – Student Agency. RegioJet required the bike to be packed and for that purpose I was carrying a light big bike bag the whole tour. There was only one bus change for the whole trip to Ostrava with RegioJet.

From Venice Mestre I did some sightseeing in the Venice area.  I returned around 5PM and spent about an hour packing my bike and getting ready for the bus. The train/bus station area in Mestre is quite busy and I was a little worried about my safety. I packed everything in a side street in front of a 4 star hotel and then I spent couple hours in a nice bar attached to a restaurant.

The bus ride was on time and I arrived in Ostrava at 10:15AM the next day. My friend Iveta picked me up and took me back to my brother’s house where I started the tour. Thank you Iveta!

I will add a summary of the tour in couple days. I already started it on the long ferry ride. Thanks for reading my blog. 🙂

 

 

The ferry leaves at 11:59 PM on Mon, Thu an Fri. It takes 2 nights and one day so my Monday night ferry is expected to arrive at 7 AM on Wednesday. I booked and paid for the ticket by phone on Friday with the central Superfast Ferry office while I was still in Astakos after an e-mail inquiry. I received 20% discount with my Czech rail discount card InKarta, but the online system or the ticketing office in Igoumenitza were not able to apply the discount. Bike is free on this ferry. There are 10 different categories of travel on the ferry. I choose the 4th best – 3 person outside cabin. I was lucky and it turned out I had the cabin all for myself with the window on the front side of the boat. We had one intermediate stop in Igoumenitza. I woke up and there was a bad storm with lightning. Lot of people camping on the deck had trouble. There was one bar, one self service restaurant and one gift shop on the ferry. I was also expecting a gourmet style restaurant but it was not there.
The weather was not nice but I still looked around, I saw Southern Albania, Corfu and it reminded me of my bike rides in these areas. The ferry was going about 40 kph. It was a very comfortable but not a speedy way to travel. My main motivation for the ferry was the ease of bike transport. The next section is Venice – Ostrava by bus and I will need to take the bike apart a put it in a travel bag.

This was my last ride in Greece. I am planning to take the ferry to Venice tomorrow night.
This ride brought my total Strava recorded kilometers for this tour to 2500. ?

I was ready to leave Astakos after spending three nights there. First half of the ride was pretty nice but nothing spectacular. The second half was on busy roads and I managed to bypass some of it by getting on back roads.
Of course the first sighting of the Peloponnese and the Gulf of Corinth was exciting. Crossing the Rio-Antirrio bridge was also quite interesting. It is one of the biggest bridges and the view is great.
After I checked into a hotel in Patras I went out for a fish dinner. I was surprised how many young people are out and about in the Patras town. Probably because there are 3 Universities here.

Hotel Olympic Star, B+B 38EUR

After 13 days of biking I took a rest day on Thursday the 6th. I am in a small town and not much is going on here. The ferry comes twice a day and few trucks get on/off. There are 2 restaurants here and a lot of coffee shops. Couple cruising sailboats docked here, looks like mostly with sailors from Germany. There are only about half dozen guests in the hotel where I am staying.
Because of stormy forecast I decided to stay another day. There was some rain on and off but not much till about 5PM, the storm came knocked out power and it was really scary for a while.
After reviewing the weather forecast I decided to book the ferry from Patras to Venice for Monday night. I have about 100km to the ferry. It was my goal to get to it so let’s hope it really happens.

This was a very nice ride around the coast, most of it was close to sea level.

I stopped at Mitikas for cappuccino and pastry. I ran into a bike touring couple from Switzerland and we had a nice half hour chat.

Hotel Stratos, B – 30EUR

 

 

 

 

 

Overall today was a nice ride. I was biking by the coast for a long time and it was beautiful. I went through a 1 mile long undersea tunnel today. I got a ride from the tunnel service people because bicycles are not allowed in the tunnel. Looked like they were set up for it. As soon as I showed up in the views off the security cameras they came to me with a car and trailer.

Today was so far the biggest struggle to find a room for the night. I hope it is just a one time thing.

Hotel Elektra, B – 34EUR

I was planning to stay a little longer on Corfu. However, the forecast for cooling weather made me continue south. The ride through the central Corfu was very pretty. The ride from Igoumenitza to Parga was also nice but more hilly than I expected.

Private room, B – 25EUR

 

This was an easy day. I took the ferry to Corfu and rode around Corfu Old Town – lot of history. However, it is a little painfull to ride around a big busy town like Corfu.
I ended the day in the little touristy beach village called Agios Gordios.

Mires House, B – 30EUR

This was another great stage. Most of it was winding by the coast up and down around gorgeous little bays.  However, the everywhere present garbage was not a pleasant sight.

I planned to finish in Ksamil.  I got there at 2 o’clock and I decided to go on and try to make it all the way to Greece. I was really looking forward to Greece.

When I thought I was already going to leave Albania without major incidents I ran into a little confrontation with a dog shepharding some sheep.  He saw me coming and tried to move the sheep of the road. But I was too fast (haha) and got there when the sheep were still on the road and he didn’t like it. He barked at me and ran at me but he did not do anything bad to me. I think he was just doing his job – looking after the sheep.

I stopped in the first fishing village in Greece. There was no hotel but I asked at the local waterfront pub where I could get a room they called somebody made the arrangements and explained how to get there.

Private room, B – 25EUR