We woke in Lisbon to a cold and rainy day: and it’s time to try to catch up on some washing!

Finding a supermarket to buy a few essentials proves a bit more challenging than might have been imagined as the nearby streets are narrow, albeit full of character. Finally, after many queries to friendly locals a supermarket is found and bits and pieces purchased. It seems that fresh milk is unavailable here after using my iTranslate app to ask a number of older women in the aisles, it seems that ‘leite fresco’ isn’t on offer here.

Lisbon still uses a system of trams to access some areas, with trams which would be in a museum elsewhere.  After a great lunch at an organic restaurant, Pachamama, we grab a couple of 24 hour passes which we can use on all forms of public transport and seek refuge from the cold and rain on Lisbon’s famous 28 tram.

Here are some images from the tram as it winds, with absolute right of way, through the streets of Lisbon.  You’ll see, along the way, a taxi having to insert itself in a narrow laneway to make way for the tram.  This is a fascinating and historic city.

We find Topo, a rooftop bar, not far from the Castle of St George and enjoy the view before using the metro to get near the water front and the magnificent square overlooking the harbour.

Lovely Lisbon Riding the 28 tram and metro from Roger Pryor on Vimeo.

Yesterday, Sunday, was our last morning aboard the MS My Story. We docked back at Passau around breakfast time and had fun saying our farewells to the many new friends we’d made amongst the the group from the Upper Cape Ski Club, who were travelling from Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  It seemed like the appropriate thing to do to don my New York Yankees T-Shirt amongst so many Boston Red Sox supporters and it attracted the appropriate response from Mark, who we had just spent lots of time cycling and hanging out with on the trip. Apparently, according to Mark,  the Yankees have some sort of vacuum cleaning capacity.

It was then on to the railway station at Passau, the Passau Hauptbahnhof, for our train trip toward Munich, where we alighted at Freising for a seamless connection with an airport bus which took us to Munchen Airport.

We enjoyed the fast, free wifi at the airport and caught up on clearing some emails and getting some great food.

It was then aboard a Vueling, (pronounced ‘welling’), flight to Lisbon via Barcelona in Spain. Now, if you are my height I would strongly recommend that if you are ever on one of these flights that you upgrade to a seat with more legroom. My knees were forced against the seat in front and not a pleasant experience at all. Luckily it wasn’t a long flight and we arrived at Barcelona with an hour to wait: just time to reacquaint ourselves with crusty baguettes and Iberian jamon.  All was going well until we discovered that the gate for our onward flight had been changed without us hearing any announcements.  We needed to cover around 750 metres inside the terminal with carry on gear and the knowledge that the flight was making its final calls.

Made it!

Another cramped flight before our descent into Lisbon and the realisation that, unlike Spain, the proximity to the Atlantic means that much of the land around Lisbon is fertile and green.

A cab takes us to our next AirBnB apartment which is fabulous.  Very spacious and, after a fold out bed on the cruise, the luxury of a beautiful big comfy bed was great.

We walked to the end of our street where a new market development stands.  The Time Out markets are a vibrant oasis of fun and food on a very cold night. Hundreds of young Portugese people enjoy food at long tables which they have bought from one of the many pop-up kitchens around the building hosting food from top line restaurants and good wine and beer.

A large group is free-styling swing dance in the middle of the large space and the atmosphere is one of a newer, more internationally focused generation having great fun and providing an uplifting night out.

The view across the rooftops from our apartment

So, we wake on a cold grey morning with an opportunity to catch up on some washing and get out and explore what looks like being a fabulous city. We get a sense that Portugal may well be flying under the radar a bit and we look forward to some getting a better picture in the next couple of days before heading to Spain.

A foray out in the morning to find a supermarket turns into an epic winding walk through narrow streets and lanes with many attempts to get directions from friendly locals being even more confusing. Eventually, the market is found and the next challenge is to find fresh milk.  It turns out that there is no fresh milk to be had in a market like this. Luckily they have plenty of cans of pilsener and a nice bottle of Rose to go with the washing detergent and croissants. It’s good to have a bit of catch up and breathing space.

Our last cycle leg takes us upstream from Krems to Melk, still in Austria.  The scenery is wonderful and we a lucky to have a gorgeous sunny spring day.

The cycle way is busy today along the Danube with lots of groups and families.

After a brief village where Richard the Lionheart was held hostage, we head on to the next village where it’s time for a refreshing Schwechater bier.

Then we’ll keep to the cycle way further up the river through winegrowing country toward Melk.

After a slightly more challenging cycle leg yesterday from Vac to Esztergom, we enjoy the chance to relax on the upper deck as we cruise upstream and will be alongside in Vienna soon. We’r looking forward to taking part in a guided bike tour this afternoon around Vienna before our final cycle leg tomorrow further upstream before our return to Passau.

All along the river in this section we see small fishing shacks its square nets suspended on poles ready to dip into the river in search of dinner.

Knowing that today was a later start, the crew provided us with some fun last night with a Pirate themed dinner, and everyone was happy to get into the spirit.

Our internet access has been limited to our mobile data on this trip which makes blogging and uploading images a bit of a challenge but we’re grateful for the chanc to stay in touch.

 Luckily the wind has dropped and, after a quick look around Vac and the chance to take a snapshot of another ‘Westie of the World’ we crank out about 20k upstream before a coffee break looking across the Danube to ruins atop the hill.
  

After a ‘rest’ day in magnificent Budapest, we’re heading back upstream today and have another 42 k ride ahead along the Danube from Vac, still in Hungary. The bikes are carried on the upper deck aboard the My Story and all staff not involved in serving breakfast combine to form s human chain and unload over 100 bikes ready to go. There’ll be a briefing about the next leg after breakfast in German and repeated in English before we head off.  We’ll pack our lunches on board ready to go in the panniers, along with fruit, water and snack bars. It’ll be chilly first thing in the morning so we layer up with skins, wicking t-shirts, our shirts and jackets, with plenty of pannier space to peel layers later in the day.

Alongside at Vac – that flag shows the wind strength and the bad news is that it’s straight into our faces as we set off.

After around 26km of beautiful flat riding and 2 ferry rides across the river, we’re on the Great Loop. Time for a coffee.

OK, so Prague doesn’t have an Eiffel Tower or some of the other famous landmarks, or the grand vistas along Hausmann’s boulevardes but it does have some amazing street and landscapes, with castles topping hills and the rabbit warren of the Old Town reminiscent of La Marais, bustling with cafes and bars and shops selling all manner of things.  We managed to cover a fair bit of the inner city on foot and took to the bikes for a look a little further afield on our second day.

Unfortunately, Prague isn’t as cycle friendly as some cities but we found Okolo Bike Hire who were able to get us set up with a couple of bikes and we headed to the river to ride the cycle path upstream.  The narrow streets and lanes in the Old Town don’t lend themselves to comfortable cycling and this is exacerbated by the cobble stones which make the ride less than comfortable.

After heading upstream for a while we crossed the river and followed the bank back downstream before crossing back over and walking our bikes through the throngs of people on the Charles Bridge and across to the ‘lesser town’ on the Western bank.  We were able to take a break at one of the many cafes and restaurants that line the river and spent a very pleasant break enjoying the sunshine which seemed to lift the spirits of everybody after the cold snap which had been lurking for the last week.

I’ve gotten a little out of practice at using a flip camera while riding, so this video is a bit shaky. It does though provide a little snippet of some of the wonderful scenes around central Prague.

Prague 29 Apr 2016 from Roger Pryor on Vimeo.

We found the Czech people very welcoming everywhere we went, being extremely forgiving of our absolute lack of any Czech language skills and always willing to help with directions or explaining menu choices. The reference in the title of this blog post, ‘Paris on a budget,’ comes from the fact that food and drink is exceptionally affordable here.

Last night, for example  I was drinking a couple of pints of a very nice full American Pale Ale brewed at Nota Bene craft brewery and restaurant in Prague and it was costing around $2.50 AUD each. We had dinner in the restaurant there and along with the 2 pints of APA, Lynette had a locally brewed light lager and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc to go with her dish of Iberian Beef Cheeks. I had Pork Belly and lentils and both dishes were superb. Total cost: $42 AUD for everything. This was in a nice stylish restaurant filled with twenty somethings and attentive friendly service.

On the way home we dropped into the Illegal Beer Bar which is a speakeasy style craft beer bar about fifty metres from where we were staying and grabbed a couple of longnecks of a very nice Raven APA made in Pilzen which is the traditional home of Pilsener. They’ve clearly recognised the need to follow trends. The large bottles were 89 Czech Kroner each, or $4.90 AUD. 

It’s a lovely city and, when it’s remembered that  communist rule only ended here at the very end of 1989, in the ‘Velvet Revolution,’ it is clear that there have been great changes following the opening of the borders and the take-up of so much from the West.

After an early checkout from our AirBnB apartment our Uber arrives at the door right on cue as we walk out and we’re off to catch the train to Passau, with a change at Regensburg and then Plattling before finally finding ourselves beside the Danube which we’ll be seeing much more of as we cycle downstream for a week with our bags and beds safely aboard the MV My Story.

It’s time for some new experiences, so we planned a month long trip through a number of countries in Europe from late April to the end of May 2016.

Our Opal cards get us all the way to the International station where we are able to make our 6am departure on an Emirates A380. The very early start has the benefit of very little queuing to do the bag drop and passport control/security processes. 

The huge aircraft lumbers down the runway seemingly bound to the ground until airspeed and aerodynamics set us free from earth as we turn right to spend the next few hours simply crossing the Australian mainland before pushing on north westward across the Indian ocean.

Everybody seems to have their own way of dealing with the 14 plus hours of flight; reading, sleeping, watching movies and generally trying to find a way to ignore the fact that many hours are slipping by that can never be retrieved.  The early morning flight is only around half full, so we grab some empty banks of seats, raise the dividing handrests and make the most of the chance to stretch out and try to get some sleep.

We drop into the heat and haze of Dubai where the vast sums of money invested in infrastructure and aircraft is evident in the Emirates’ terminal and the long line of aircraft nuzzling their airbridges.  It’s an amazing place: 2 million plus people with well over 80% ex-patriots. Luckily our layover is only 2 hours and we’re soon aboard another A380 en route to Munich, where it turns out that there has been snow and temperatures in the low single digits, despite being a month into the Northern spring.

We had timed our arrival to be at night to try to be able to sleep straight away and deal with the jet lag. The airport train gets us into the heart of Munich in around 45 minutes, and we find our hotel close to the Hauptbahnhof, the main station in Munich, check in, set alarms and sleep soundly to get our body clocks back on track. We look outside our hotel window to see snowflakes and a light dusting of snow on our window sills and nearby buildings. After a great breakfast we don warm clothes and hats and gloves to counter the cold as we set off for a walk around the immediate area.

As in most cities we’ve seen in Europe, there is an evident recognition of the need to use multiple forms of transport and, despite the cold, people are everywhere on cycles and large banks of parked cycles sit outside many buildings.  It’s clear that there is an appreciation of the way that transport modes can integrate to provide solutions which supercede the use of private cars for trips where it’s reasonable to use a bike.

Back home in NSW it seems as though the policy makers are falling for the usual trick of trying to appease a range of lobby groups through adopting what can only be described as punitive laws aimed at sending a message to rednecks that ‘this government is going to make it as tough as possible for people to actually contribute to a range of positive outcomes for cities and people through use of bikes for commuting and getting around: replacing car trips and reducing emissions.  We hear the whines that ‘they should have to pay rego;’ ‘they’ shouldn’t be allowed to do X,Yor Z.  It must be shades of our convict beginnings where there seems to be a fixation on getting governments to make rules so that we can work out ways to thwart them, or spend time complaining about them.

In Munich, as in so many cities, bikes are an integral part of the business of getting about and age is no barrier. We’re looking forward to our bike adventures riding along the Danube next week.

We check out and pick up our rental car for our trip to Prague to gain a brief encounter with the Czech Republic and a city rich in history and beautiful buildings.

The landscape in Bavaria, this part of Germany, is postcard perfect with small villages and towns peppering the green hills and valleys, steeples and steep roofs providing a means of shedding snow and reaching up to some sense of a higher being.

Yet again we see an area where policy makers back in Australia seem to be dragging the chain as a result of their vulnerability to powerful lobby groups.  All the way along the highway huge areas of solar arrays stand on valuable agricultural land, and barn roofs are covered in solar panels.  Elsewhere, huge wind turbines add to the suite of renewable energy options.

Given that Australia has both large amounts of space and sustained sunshine it is verging on obscene that we have policy makers who deny the need, or who are so beholden to populist ideals and powerful mining and other lobbies that we have dragged our feet on what seems to be taken as a given in this part of the world.

Driving on German roads is also a revelation.  We’d all, no doubt, heard stories of the German autobahns where cars travel at speeds approaching 200km per hour in some cases.  I had always imagined that this meant that the roadways had special characteristics to allow this to happen. The reality on this trip is that the roads travelled were no more advanced in terms of number of lanes or surface/banking/gradients etc than, say, the M1 or Hume Highway in Australia.  One difference is, however, that the cars generally driving at very high speed on German roads tended to be a bit larger and probably safer and more able to handle the speed than, perhaps, a Barina or Hyundai i30.  It was interesting, however, that we didn’t see a single equivalent of our Highway patrol vehicles and we never had a radar gun pointed at us.

Our rental car turned out to be a diesel Volvo wagon and it proved to be able to comfortably stay with the traffic stream at speeds between 140 km and 160km per hour.

We stopped in the beautiful city of Regensburg on the upper Danube where we were able to enjoy a great lunch at a cafe in the ‘old town’ before pressing on to the border and into the Czech Republic; arriving at our AirBnB apartment just off Wenceslaus Square in Prague.

We check in and find that our AirBnb apartment is spacious and well located. Our street runs down to the square and is amidst a number of bars, restaurants, cabarets and, just across the street, a ‘sexy sauna!’

Like most inner city areas in Europe, parking is at a premium and we’d stopped along the way to book into one of the Mr Parkit garages in Prague.

This garage was a fascinating concept where the car was driven onto a turntable reminiscent of the old turntables used in locomotive roundhouses on our railways.  Once correctly aligned, the operator hit a button and the car disappeared into the bowels of the parking garage where it was slotted into space number 14.

Car secured, we’re able to grab some essentials at the cheese shop on the corner and get ourselves organised before trying out one of the many craft beer bars that we’d read about in Prague.  This one, the Illegal Beer Bar, happens to be about fifty metres away up our street and we find that they have a very nice Saison on tap for Lynette and a serviceable Rye IPA.

Now, after over 24 hours of flights to Munich followed by a drive to Prague, it’s time for some sleep, ready for new adventures.

Prague turns out to be a fascinating city, with beautiful squares and narrow cobbled streets.  We spend most of the day walking to different parts of Prague 1, the innermost area: where beautiful buildings line the streets, and trams play back and forth along the routes where they have room to do so.

We find ourselves in the old town and Old Town Square; dating from the 12th Century, where tourist groups bundle along behind their tour leaders holding aloft a coloured umbrella or flag, as a rallying standard for their small army of visitors who move like locusts ready to tick off the sights in their guide books.

We wander aimlessly before employing the trusty Google maps and the ‘blue dot,’ thankful as usual for mobile data via our international travel SIM, gradually find our way back to the apartment before heading out in the lat afternoon for some more great craft beer at the Prague Beer Museum and a memorable dinner of traditional Czech cuisine at the Lokal.

On our way home we spy this marvellous looking bike and imagine how it might add to our ride next week.  For now, though, it’s time to catch up on some sleep ready to tackle tomorrow.

The amazing thing is that food and booze is very cheap here.  We ate a very nice dinner washed down with a pint of Kozel dark lager for just under $20 AUD all up. Bottled and canned beer sells in convenience stores and I was able to pick up two 500ml bottles for a total of 44 Czech Krona, or $2.42: $1.21 each!

Time to call it a day.  We’re hoping to hire some bikes tomorrow and set off further afield to see more of this enigmatic city.