phile

Got home afew hours ago from my first tour. rotterdam to antwerpen and back the next day. stayed at a cheap hotel but didn't get much sleep due to me making terrible decisions.

total distance travelled about 225 km.

will upload pics taken en route both yesterday and today once i have more energy tomorrow.

also way back was heavier load since i brought 6 belgian beers with me

cobalt123

those bottles look full. that was a terrible decision. ;-)

Looking forward to pics.

phile

As promised, pictures. This was first leg of Rotterdam to antwerp. all pics taken within Rotterdam

phile

more pics from dutch side, day one

phile

more dutch side of day 1




road is ride on border, right lane netherlands, left lane belgium


this left had me officially in belgium

phile

belgian side of the border
day 1





antwerp city border




first beer


second beer

phile

day 2 antwerpen to rotterdam.

belgium




spotted at random house in belgium



i'm a child...


grew up on this anime back in the day, this made my day


border marker, belgium/ netherlands i was in netherlands bike in belgium

phile

day 2 dutch side of border

phile

phile

excuse any pics that i may have uploaded doubly, the upload and posting here is a bit unwieldy. that was my 2 day long 225km trip from rotterdam to antwerp and back

indyfabz

Try something like Flikr.

berner

Well done and thanks for the photos. I enjoy seeing other terrain and other countries.

GrainBrain

Nice, I like to buy the Delerium Tremens every once and awhile. Sweet pics. Spring is in full swing huh?

djb

those are very large breasts

and on that note, I have to say that your totally stickered up bike looks pretty cool.

Gypsy1

Yo! I really love the pictures... The graffiti under the pass was dope. I actually like how your artistic ability lead you to adding all those stickers and yet, is clean, clear and balanced. I've seen many bikes, growing up in S.F. that look like garbage but again not all art is appeasing to everyone. Good job!

Take many more trips, I'd want to see more.

Gypsy Miles

tcs

Outstanding! Thanks for sharing!

phile

we've had a ridiculously light winter, i think i used a scarf for maybe 3 weeks? and only my light scarfs

those chickens gave me an idea for a ridiculous character illustration that i will flesh out once i'm done with a sculpture/painting that is due in 3 weeks

that was actually a damn nice skatepark, marked it in maps for future reference, might engineer a board rack for next trip and stop there for a skate session.




to everyone else thanks for compliments on bike and pics and trip. way back was muuuch harder, due to trifecta of bad decisions the night before at antwerp (alcohol, drugs and women). headed out on maybe 5 hours of sleep and finding bananas was a pain in the ass for some reason, rode around a good 30 minutes before i found a place. and was finally able to head out of antwerp.

the way there was a route i planned trying to go through as much nature as possible besides some minor adjustments (if google maps does everything it can to stop you form planning a path in, it's for a reason) it's going to be my go to route when headed that way. On the way back just let google maps make it's own decisions, which had me on the LF2 stedenroute, essentially a preplanned path from amsterdam to brussels. had me going through every city on the way and going through mostly residential areas. not a route i would take again, going through cities and towns the whole way gets kinda boring, both in views and riding.

that said, will be headed out with a friend for a longer belgium trip, hitting up antwerp, brussels, and possibly ghent, then head back in a few months. ordering a bikepacking handle bar bag to help carry things more comfortably, and getting a battery pack with solar panel for charging phone and speaker. Currently bigger battery pack charges speaker whenever i get low battery and smaller battery pack charges phone, but noticed on way back the small one gave me barely enough juice to make it back.

thumpism 

The cycling paths in the Low Countries are something to behold and something Americans can't appreciate until trying them. What a way to get around!

Happy Feet

Thanks for the pic's. They were great. I hope to get to Europe one day for some touring and that just urges me on.

Ps. If finding the bananas is a pain in the a$$ you are probably keeping them in the wrong spot!

HobbesOnTour

Try https://cycle.travel/map for planning the routes. It chooses very good routes, avoiding urban areas as much as possible. Easy to adjust and you can see the long distance routes marked on it to follow or not as you choose. Used it for all over Europe and it excels in NL & Belgium.
Try using OSMand then to follow the route. Free to use, fully offline navigation.

djb

take this suggestion as you will, I'd do a tighter/smaller photo selection next time, it's more enjoyable to view.
I worked editing photos for a long time, so thats my take on it.

your written English is excellent, congratulations.

DropBarFan

Nice photos, thanks! The Belgian beer looks tasty, their good beers are very expensive in the US. Amazing to see clear cloudless skies for the whole trip, from what I know that's not very common in Benelux.

seedsbelize 

Honestly, I don't know how you could go wrong with alcohol, drugs, and women.

phile

if ever you touring takes you aroudn netherlands or nearby im down for tagging along.

that said maybe the bananas were in oh so right place....

will look into it. i just didn't want to take same route i planned going back, so let google do it's thing.

yeah this was more of a family and friends request to take all the pics. so i went for it.

yeah i actually got a tan, pretty sure only one among my friends currently not pale.

well it took me almost 3 hours longer to get back home because of this holy trinity of bad choices. so that sucked.