Interesting. I can't imagine changing in and out of 'civies' to spend 45 minutes mid-day in a little town's local history museum or just to grab a meal at a crossroad cafe. Do you forgo bike-optimized clothing entirely while cycletouring?
I do not do 45 min trips in a museum, but I wear my bike clothes in restaurants on travel days. Mostly I was talking about taking a day for sightseeing in civies. I am there to enjoy the trip, the bike is my means of travel in the outdoors, and I like camping.
Most of my tours have had all day long days of sightseeing where I did not travel to another place for the night, but my travel days are usually not spent on sightseeing either. There have been a few days where I only traveled a half day, made camp or got to the hostel, and then spent the rest of that day sightseeing, after I clean up and change to civies.
I just looked at my schedule for my last tour:
Arrive in Halifax NS. It took 30 hours to get there from Madison WI. Planned to stay 2 nights, includes food shopping, butane shopping, packing, extended to 3 days due to heavy rain.
Rode 5 days.
WInd bound 1 day. Very dull campground with nothing to see.
Rode 1 day.
Wind bound 1 day. National Park on Cabot Trail, Cape Breton Island, but not much to see.
Rode 6 days.
Wind and rain 2 days, campground in Antigonosh (spell?), NS, no real sightseeing but did laundry and some shopping.
Rode 6 days. The last two days was the start of a six day rainy stretch.
Sightseeing and rain 2 days, stayed at a Hostel in Charlottetown PEI. (This was on Canada Day weekend.) This was not part of my plan, this was a spur of the moment decision when I saw a forecast of 5 days of continuous rain (it actually was 6 days), the hostel was not full so made a reservation.
Rode 3 days. (First day was rain.)
Was ahead of schedule, did 3 days sightseeing in a Provincial Park on Bay of Fundy, as I needed to waste some time and this was a really nice park with hiking trails for that.
Rode 3 days.
Arrive in Halifax, stayed a couple nights at the hostel before flying home. Did some sightseeing.
Thus, rode 24 days, stuck for 6 due to weather but did some sightseeing on a couple of those wet days, and pure sightseeing 3 days. This does not include time in the city with the airport where I started and finished (Halifax, NS). Overall a nice relaxing trip for someone that is 65 years young.
