Long Holiday Weekend

We're not quite there yet, but we do have what amounts to a three day weekend coming up ( four days for some people... ). Friday is May 1st, Labour Day and Sunday the 3rd is Constitution Day, another national holiday. Most people don't know that Poland has Europe's first and the world's second (after the U.S.) national constitution. The weather should be fantastic and we expect to be busy.

Wedding Season on the Bike Tour

Back-to-back days with groups from England here on a stag weekend. This time, it was Damian from Bristol (picture) and ten friends. Congratulations and good luck to him & the future Mrs. Damian - maybe we should start to offer Bike Tour Wedding packages... Fantastic day outside today, with proper summertime heat and lots of people outside along the river.

Congratulations & Good Luck to Paul and the Future Mrs. Paul...

Two groups on the tour today. We met Paul from Manchester (third from left standing) and eight of his friends who were here on a stag weekend three weeks before he ties the knot. Congratulations & all the best! We also met an Australian group from Intrepid Travel as well, including someone from Wodonga, which is right up there with Wagga Wagga for "Best Australian City Name".

We Salute ANZAC Day

Up, up & away

We passed a new and somewhat unusual addition to the Krakow riverfront area today. The city is trying to promote the area as a tourism and leisure destination by adding a balloon that takes people about 150 meters into the sky to enjoy the view. It's just started making the up-down-up-down trip this week and today was the first time we passed it while on the tour when it was up in the air. Maybe we could get a good picture of our tour for the blog from up there...

Where are the Australians???

An interesting but slightly strange aspect of our season so far is the fact that we have met so few Australians. In each of the last five years, we have met more people from Down Under than any other country, but almost two months into our season, we've met just a handful. The British are far and away in the lead, so to speak, when it comes to the people we've met this year and it looks like they could take the title away from the Aussies for the first time. Then again, things can change quickly - we had lots of tours last year which were about 90% Australian, so let's wait and see how it goes...

Boston on 44 wheels

We met a group of 22 students and teachers from TechBoston Academy today. This was the school's third trip with us since 2007. The school organizes a yearly European trip for history students so they can see up close what they study back at home in the classroom. It's always a lot of fun meeting and talking to them and we had a perfect day for taking lots of pictures, even if the dragon made us wait to get a good shot of the fire coming out of his mouth (picture)... Thanks again to them for visiting us this year and we look forward to doing it again next April!

Quiet

Just coming out of a very quiet weekend although the weather wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. Riding through mostly empty streets with us were Nottingham, Brighton, Oslo, Donegal, Belfast, Cleveland, San Diego, Montreal and Denver.

All good things must come to an end...

We've enjoyed about two weeks of warmth and sunshine but that has come to an end now, at least for a couple of days. It's dark, windy and the rain clouds are racing in right now. Busy streets are now empty and it looks like it's going to be a cold, rainy and quiet weekend.

Ye Olde Krakowshire Bike Tour

Lots of English "shires" on the tour lately - Shropshire, Gloucestershire, West Yorkshire (a lovely little town called Holmfirth), Oxfordshire & Lancanshire. The Merry Old England theme continued today when we ran into a Medieval festival (click on the picture) with archers, blacksmiths, brave knights, etc. Today on the tour we met six fair maidens - three from Oxford and three from a small town outside of Glasgow (sorry - forgot the name!).

Kiwi Easter, first of the year from India

Great tour today on Easter Sunday. After meeting just our second Kiwi of the year yesterday, we met four today - two each from Auckland and Wellington. Three English also made the trip with us - two from Sheffield (second time in three days) and one from Cheltenham. We also met one from Frankfurt and our first Indian of the year, from Mumbai.

Auckland, not Oakland

A lovely group of people on the tour today on a sunny & breezy day. Lots of people out in town because of the Easter holiday tomorrow. Along for the ride today were four from England (Shrewsbury & Southend-on-Sea), two from County Sligo, Ireland and one from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We also met a woman who we thought was from a city in California until her accent made it clear that she was in fact from the biggest city in New Zealand...

Romania-Ukraine-England-Holland-Taiwan-Australia

Very interesting group today. After meeting our first Romanian ever on the tour last year, we met a group of five today from the city of Cluj, as well as someone from another place that we don't meet too often - Kiev, Ukraine. Also joining us were six from England (Manchester, Sheffield & Luton), two from Amsterdam, two from Melbourne and our second guest from Taiwan in the last week.

Getting a tan 11 days after we were freezing

We had a mid-summer's day at the beginning of April today, with bright sun and 27c/81f degrees. It's a great sign heading into the Easter weekend. Today we met five people from different places in Texas, two from California and one each from Ottawa, Liverpool and Manchester. Here's a picture of everyone listening to the trumpet player at 2 o'clock.

Another new record - 80 years young

It's not often that we meet someone who has biked more miles than we have. It's also unusual to meet an 80-year old on the tour but we met both in Carl, who was visiting from Washington, DC with his wife Joan and their grandaughter. Carl and Joan have logged almost 30,000 miles together on a tandem bike and Carl has ridden almost 60,000 miles in total, so our 9 mile tour was absolutely no challenge at all for him... Amazing and great example for us all. It was a pleasure talking to them as well as the others we met today and yesterday - Liverpool & Manchester, England, Arizona, Idaho, Stockholm and Newcastle, Australia.

Deja Vu

Yesterday, 11 of the 14 people on the tour were from the UK. Today, 11 of the 14 people on the tour were from the UK. This time, we met London, Birmingham, Cardiff, and a small town near Glasgow. Two from Chicago and one from Melbourne came along for the ride as well. Since tomorrow is a Monday (usually our slowest day of the week), it's unlikely that we will have THREE straight days of 11-out-of-14 from the UK, but you never know...

Little Britain on a Perfect Day

'Perfect' was the only way to describe the weather today. Twenty-two degrees, sunny and a light breeze - an absolutely wonderful day to ride. The weather & the weekend brought the whole city out for walk in the center of town and the crowds were huge. We added fourteen people to those crowds, with 11 of them coming from different places in England. We also met someone from Taipei, Taiwan - our first guest from Asia this season - as well as a couple from from Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.

The U.S. and us...

Lots of Americans over the last two days, with two from Orlando, two from Boston, San Francisco and a group from Phoenix all joining us on the tour. We also met Vancouver, Malmo, and Sunderland, England as well. It's finally sunny and (kind of) warm!!!