At the end of last year’s cycling trip through South Korea and Japan, we were ready for a stay home vacation. Upon our return, we promptly started our kitchen upgrade which spanned a few months. Although we were fully engaged in our renovation, we found time to enjoy several hiking outings in the fall. Over the winter, we had a great cross-country ski season even though we had to wait until late January for some ideal snow and weather conditions. Jenny, in particular, was quite pleased with her improved ski skills as she mastered all the Blue (intermediate) trails we came across during our 19 skiing outings.
Over the past Christmas period, I discretely started to look for our next tentative travel destination. As we preferred to explore countries we had not yet visited , I sought some inspirations from the EuroVelo routes namely:
- the 6,750 kms EuroVelo 11 – East Europe Route that runs from the north-east tip of Norway all the way down to sunny Greece,
- and, the 9,100 kms EuroVelo 10 Baltic Sea Cycle Route
After combining various sections of the above EuroVelo routes, we managed to create a route (~3,000kms) that would allows us to explore several new countries. We opted to start our trip in Warsaw (Poland) while cycling through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. As all these countries are part of the European Union, we realized our cycling trip would be limited to 90-day under the Schengen visa. We also planned, on our journey back home, to flight to London from our final cycling destination for a short visit with Jessica and Rob, the newlywed couple from last year’s wedding in Italy.
