Another Journey - Back by Popular Demand

 I really, deeply appreciate the number of you that have asked if I would be writing during our upcoming trip.  We'll leave on Tuesday, April 11th for just about a month traveling in Portugal (again), Holland and Belgium.  The first leg of the trip will take us from Edmonton to Amsterdam via Vancouver.  We'll spend a little over 24 hours in Amsterdam and fly south to Lisbon.  In Lisbon we'll join our friends, also from Edmonton, who are taking a different route - leaving a day later and arriving about 18 hours earlier (if everything goes according to plan).  Tilly and Sig Jensen, Marni Wisner, Barry and Dianne Bowtell will be out feeding their faces and listening to Fado Music when Sandy and I check into the hotel.  Tilly's been looking forward to those chicken gizzards since we first tasted them in 2017 on our very first visit to Lisbon.  Truth be told, I'm a little jealous, the Fado music is in a very Portuguese restaurant that's a little off the beaten track.  Unlike most of the Fado experiences in Lisbon this one is NOT tourist oriented.  There are two or three tables in the restaurant and the food comes while a small number of singers perform the uniquely Portuguese music.  Moody and expressive it is a form of protest music that grew out of the many years of dictatorship during the 20th Century.

As a general overview of our trip - we'll begin with a couple of days in Lisbon.  Tilly has reconnected with the tour guide we used in 2017 and 2018 to introduce Marni, Barry and Dianne to Lisbon.  We'll join them for a couple of days of visiting a few of the sights - Sintra, Caiscais, and more.  

On the 16th we'll bus together to Evora meeting up with Huw and Carolyn from pedal Portugal and three others from Edmonton Bike and Touring Club.  From the 17th to the 27th we'll be cycling between castles in Eastern Portugal on a loop from Evora.  I'll be taking it easy on an e-bike again - makes those hills a lot more enjoyable - while Sandy rides honestly on a touring bike.  

On the 27th we leave the group behind.  We'll part in Lisbon and they'll fly home on the 28th.  We'll fly to Amsterdam, take a bus to Harlem (OK, I'm not using dutch spelling yet), and meet a couple of new bikes.  On the 29th we'll take in the tulip fields cycling out to them and back from our hotel.  On the 30th we'll begin the journey south - mostly along the coast of Holland to Bruge, Belgium.  We stopped in Bruge in 2018 following our first Camino.  That trip we stayed in Ghent, a university city between Bruge and Brussels.  Bruge maintains a medieval character and is well worth a visit, or two, or three, if you every get a chance.  I remember a gigantic bicycle parking lot at the train station that puts Edmonton's rather inept attempt at Bike lanes to shame...1000's of bicycles locked and secured while people commuted by train to wherever their workplaces happened to be.  In Belgium it is easy to think that people are commuting from Bruge or Ghent into Brussels by train every day - they announcements that trains are late by 2 or 3 minutes are constant in the stations.  For a Canadian who measures train delays in hours (usually 24, 48 or more) the Belgium equivalents seem absurd.

The final leg of the journey sees us spending another day in Amsterdam - we'll take the train back on the 7th, cycle around the city on the 8th, and fly home on the 9th...maybe visit the VanGogh Museum, or Riksmuseum, or tour the canals while we're there...no, I don't think Sandy's going to want to visit the (in)famous Red Light District while we're there...

Lots to look forward to!  Come along on the journey...it'll be fun (I think)....even with Sig along for the ride...

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