Part VII. Conclusion

We pedaled almost 1,000 kilometers over 21 days of cycling with five days of rest interspersed. It was a little too much, but we were so late in the year starting that we pushed ourselves to cover as much as we reasonably could. But we saw many interesting and historical sights--many more than I've mentioned here--and the biking for the most part was superb. Germany and the Netherlands are probably the absolute best places to take a biking vacation.

The transportation costs were about $500 for airfare for us and the bikes round-trip (don't forget, we used all our frequent flier miles), $250 for train fares, and about $75 for equipment. The rest of the trip cost us about $5,300 or about $200 per day. It was worth every penny of it, too.

Web Resources

If you understand some German, a good place to look for more information is http://de.wikipedia.org, the German Wikipedia site. Of course, all searches should be in German; all results will be in German, too. Otherwise, you can get some limited information from the English Wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org. On the German site, if you search for the various radwegs you will find a list of all the cities that are on the route with links to the city website where you can get a lot of information.

Google has a German search engine, too: http://www.google.de. Again, it's a German language site. But don't forget about Google translate: http://translate.google.com/. The translations are sometimes butchered, but often you can make sense of what's said. You can put a URL into the translate box and a new tab will contain the translation. Furthermore, it will automatically translate any links that you click.

For the Donau Radweg a good site in German is http://www.donau-radweg.info/index.html, especially under "Info & Tipps" you will find distances (Entfernungen) between the cities on the radweg and information on boat trips (Schifffahrt) and attractions.

For the Romantisches Radweg, you might look at http://www.fahrrad-tour.de/RomantischeStrasse/UebRomantischeStrasse.html, especially look at the "Ettapen" which gives more details for parts of the radweg.

For the Altmuehl Radweg, consider http://www.altmuehltal-radweg.info/ It's a commercial site, but it contains interesting information.