2016 European Trip Overview

Song of the Day:  Eyes of the World by Grateful Dead

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,
And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,
sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,
sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.

Here we are, year 4 of the Mike and Linda Hike/Explore Europe series!  In 2013, we hiked over 500 miles across northern Spain on the Camino Santiago.  In 2014, we hiked 650 miles from Lausanne, Switzerland to Rome on the Via Francigena.  In 2015, we had a series of hikes and activities across Italy, totaling over 400 miles of hiking,  including hiking from Florence to Assisi on the St Francis Way, spending a week at an Italian cooking school south of Rome, hiking and visiting the beautiful Amalfi coast and hiking around Lake Como.

2016 is a real mixture of European adventure.  Most of the action this year will shift to northern Europe.  We will visit  9 different Northern European countries on this trip.  However, because we enjoy Italy so much, we decided to tack on an extra week at the end of this trip to explore and hike Italy again.   It's just a magical place for us and we always look forward to going back.

On Thursday, June 16, we fly from San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany.  From Frankfurt, we will take a fairly short train ride to the small town of Rudesheim to begin a 9 day hiking tour along the Rhein River.  The Germans call this hike the "Rheinsteig".   From start to finish, the Rheinsteig is about 250 miles, from Wiesbaden to Bonn.  We will only be hiking a little over half of the total trail.  The photos of the trail look beautiful, with very lush landscape and lots of climbs.  The challenge with hiking in Germany in June is the weather, as it is often rainy and overcast.  We have dealt with this situation before, particularly on our Spain hike in 2013 when we battled rain and snow on many days.  We will have the opportunity to visit some old friends in Germany as well.  My good friend Klaus Hieronymi and his wife Ulili,  will join Linda and I on part of the hike.  I worked with Klaus for many years at HP.  In addition, Detlef and Christian, two German guys we met on our hike in Spain in 2013, will hike with us for a couple of days.  We have stayed in touch with these guys over the past several years, and it will be good to see them again.

After finishing the Rheinsteig, Linda and I will spend about 6 days exploring some of northern Europe.  We plan to tour Cologne, Germany for a day/night,  then take a train to Brussels, Belgium for another day/night.  Then, we will go to one of our favorite little European towns, Bruges, Belgium for 3 days.  We have very fond memories of visiting Bruges with our family, along with Linda's Mom and Brother in the late 90's when we lived in Barcelona.  Finally, we will spend a couple of days in Amsterdam, another city we have enjoyed in the past.  While in Amsterdam, we will celebrate Linda's birthday!

On July 1, we take a 12 day cruise from Amsterdam to St Petersburg (and back).  My brother Bruce and his wife Lisa will join Linda and I on the cruise.  We have traveled with Bruce and his family on several occasions and always have an excellent time together.  We are really looking forward to this cruise, and we will have the opportunity to visit some terrific places, including Berlin, Copenhagen, Norway, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and the always interesting St Petersburg.   The days are very long in northern Europe in early July, so it should be a great time to visit.  In the late 90's, I happened to be in St Petersburg on June 21 (the summer solstice) for the "White Nights" celebrations.  It stays light until 4:30 am, then gets dark for only an hour!

When the cruise ends in Amsterdam on July 13, Bruce and Lisa will fly back to Chicago and Linda and I will fly to Italy.  We will start out exploring Venice for a couple of days, then move onto Bologna for a day, then take a train to Montepulciano for 3 days.  We plan to do some hiking around the Montepulciano area.  We had hiked in this area on our 2014 Italy hike.  We will then end up with a day  and night in Rome before flying back to San Francisco on July 20.

One big challenge for this trip is packing.  We will only take backpacks, which will make us quite mobile.  But the weather differences of Northern vs Southern Europe, combined with the formality of a cruise ship vs hiking, has presented some interesting trade-offs.  I suspect we will not win any awards for  best dressed couple on the cruise ship...

I will once again be keeping a blog of our trip, updating every couple of days.