Travel with your tandem.  Share the trip with someone you really care about!

"The travel tips you provide make staying in tough and getting around easier".

A guided tour company is the way to go for those that don't have the time or gumption to set up their own tour.

You can have some really good tours on your own if you are willing to do some leg work and set up your own tour. We have been on three guided tours and one self guided tour in Europe and can tell you the first time or two it is a good idea to take a touring company's guidance and the experience they offer when traveling abroad.

Now that we have a few trips under us and the unguided tour it really isn't a problem but it sure would have been difficult to assimilate not only the language barrier but the cultural differences you have to wade through.

Traveling outside the United States can be a little daunting for some people so the hand holding is not a sign of weakness but should be looked upon as a way to get your feet wet so you can do it on your own later. Granted, there is a cost to having someone take care of all of the details for you, but if you pay attention and learn what they are doing, ask some directed questions and keep your mind open, you can do it yourself.

You are most likely going to take your tandem with you. Getting it there in one piece is pretty important. See the this page for information on how to get your bike there safely.

If you do plan to go it alone, or should I say without a guide, you will need to know a few things. Maybe some of the things that I have learned can save you some headaches.

Research your destination

This is a very valuable piece of advice.  If you plan to do any riding at all you will want to get an idea of the routes, the terrain you will encounter and where you can go for alternate routes should you be too tired to do the while ride.  Sure you say, I know that. No, really. Take some time, get Michelin maps (the really big, detailed ones) and study them. Know what the symbols on the maps really mean. You don't want to be on your bike and have to guess if the road really goes where you thought it went. We have found that gravel roads are sometimes markeed as paved so be prepared for that.

Get a GPS!  On my most recent trip to Spain in June of 2008, I brought my Garmin Edge 305 which I have been using for about a year and a half at the time.  and just figured I could follow the turn by turn directions if I needed to get back.  They are pretty rudimentary but they work well if you go back the same way you came.  You basically get an arrow with a countdown in distance and time until the turn.  There is not a mapping feature to speak of.  

I have only used the Edge 305 for recording rides and uploading them to the Garmin Training Center. Once on the site you can review the ride and see where you were.  This is great unless you are lost in the mountains of Spain (something I don't recommend), then the feature won't really help you because you need to see where you are now, not when you get home.  Like I said above, you can follow turn by turn directions to go back the way you came but you can't use a map to find your way back on the device which may be a shorter route in real life.  If you want features like that, you will need a better GPS, like we did.

Our rental car didn't come with the GPS that I asked for in Spain so I stopped at MediaPlay (a store over there like Best Buy) and bought a Garmin Nuvi 250W that was made for a car.  Once I plugged it in I found that it worked really well as a portable unit but it had a 4 hour maximum battery life (which you find out when lost in the mountains in Spain in the rain) and it was a pain to pull it out of your pocket, put it back in, pull it back out etc. I do have to say that Garmin's GPS units are really accurate.  We never had any problems getting a signal (save for a dead battery) or getting a wrong turn. Even when traveling at the fast speeds on the Autostrada in Spain. The phone I took with me (my wife used my Mobal phone), the Blackberry 8800 world phone has GPS, but it doesn't work overseas. What was I to do?

The Answer

The Edge 705is just the ticket to put on your bike when you travel.  Then for the bike wasn't available until I got back.  I saw one at the Garmin store on Michigan Ave in Chicago about three months before my trip but it wasn't for sale. 

The shop where I get all of my stuff had one that they asked me to use and give a review of it (owner likes me to figure out the "techy" stuff and let him know how it works).  It is, first off, so much larger than my Edge 305.  The display is crisp and bright with no lag when the map moves.  The battery life, over the week that I used it, was very impressive.  My Edge 305 lasted about 14 hours at the longest.  I got over 10 hours out of the Edge 705. This is pretty impressive considering how large and bright the display is on this unit.

Now that I have used one, wow, it really works! I can't imagine traveling with out a GPS with me.  Even when walking through Girona or Barcelona it made getting around so much easier than a map.  It doesn't need to be folded, it is waterproof so you don't have to worry about the rain (it rained on my Nuvi but not enougth to worry about.  I would't want to get caught in a real rainstorm with a Nuvi.  It wouldn't stand up to the rain.

Stay in touch when you travel

How are you going to stay in touch with your family and friends while on you travel? Calling cards work okay. Internet phones are a good idea if you have access to an internet connection or cafe. Generally speaking though, free internet connections are harder to find around Europe than they are here in the United States. Most of the sites that you want to connect to in Europe will be a pay per session or pay per hour type. This is true in hotels as well as wandering around.

International cell phone ownership is a good option. Mobal World Phones is who I have used for the last three trips to Europe. What I really like about them is they are truly an inexpensive option if you only plan to use the phone on trips and not here in the United States. There are no, none, not a single one, hidden charges when you get one of their phones. You simply buy the phone (I got the $49 model), and you pay for what you use, period. You don't use the phone for a year, you don't pay a dime. Compare this to AT&T's plan (higher rates per minute than Mobal's), Verizon (you might get a lower price per minute but you have to buy the $80 sim card and you have to figure in the $15 per month charge for the international plan you have to add).

For the $49 plan, you get a nice Motorola phone like this one.  It is perfect for travel.  It is small, easy to use and the battery lasts a long time.  I found this out when I left my charger at a hotel and we traveled on our bikes for a three day out and back and I didn't have my charger.  Battery lasted the whole time.

If you are going to use your phone overseas like you do here; 10,000 minutes a month, 9000 text messages, etc you might want to consider one of the higher models or just setting up service over there. If you just want a phone to say, call home, check on the kids and stay in touch, the Mobal phones are really the way to go. I even let my friends take it on trips with them and they end up buying one for the next trip. You can get a nifty thing from Mobal too that if you sign up a friend, you get a discount off the per minute charges on your own phone. I think I am up to 50% off now with all of the friends that have ended up getting phones from these guys.

Car Rental

You have decided to take the trip into your own hands eh? How are you going to get around. I'll let you know all of the things I learned about renting a car overseas that can make things easier for you. I can speak from experience with this company Car Trawler.

Get your international drivers license. What you say? I have never heard of that! Believe me, you probably will never need it. You most likely won't have a car accident or incident but if you are one of the unlucky ones, won't you wish you followed the rules. It would certainly be worth the $20 or so wouldn't it?

Stuck in the airport

If your travel plans happen to take you through JFK or Ohare, you might want to plan on getting stuck. I have been stranded there more than I haven't. You can see on my bike case page  a picture of the results of our last trip getting stranded in JFK.  I just found out about this product that might ease some of the pain of a last minute flight cancellation that always crops up during travel.  It is called the Mini Motel.  I am working on getting a link put here to make your inevitable stranding a bit more bearable. We spent 14 extra hours in the airport.  It sucked.  The Mini Motel would have been a welcome addition to our baggage.

Bike doesn't follow you home?