Europe on probably way more than 5€ a day - intro

I see it has been  more than two months since I attempted to foist anything at all off as a post. I can hardly explain where the time has gone, but just shy of three weeks of it went to Europe on a lot more than 5€ a day. I've been thinking about how to frame the whole thing and what keen and novel insight I can bring to the whole experience, and that's probably why there's been no post - because thinking isn't the same as writing, even aimless, unstructured, pedestrian writing...which you will now see.

If you've been wondering about when I was ever going to do anything you can thank my friend Michael for this post. I was slated to run with him last week and didn't want to tell him I'd done nothing at all, so I had to start. If you're annoyed to see I didn't just go away, blame Michael.

So, I went to Europe, with my usual amount of intense planning and forethought, which means I bought some tickets last spring and some Euros about a week before I left and otherwise didn't think much about it. My friend Dale, whom I traveled with, is probably still exhausted from having to do all the thinking and telling me what to buy from whom when. Just to get it out of the way, I DID put on my own pants every single day.

The original impetus for going was a cycling vacation at the Belvedere Hotel in Riccione, Italy. Dale and others had been before and raved about it. Take a look here at the glossy website for the hotel. You ride a bike through Italian countryside (or "citrus idea" to the iPad spellchecker) for a week, and spend the time when you're NOT riding eating sumptuous feasts, drinking free wine, and sleeping. What's not to love?  Here, check out the sumptuous feast menu, just one evening:

It doesn't matter that half the time I couldn't recognize the menu items on the platters I was choosing from.  I just ate, and ate, and it was allllll good.

A bonus shot of the pool and deck...okay, so yes, this was taken on the one rainy day, but you get the idea.  Nice.

Still, flying to the other side of the world entails time zone changes, and finely tuned athletes like us need time to adjust to to those in order to perform at our peak. That meant getting to Europe and killing some time waking up at normal hours before riding. That same flying entails a large cash outlay, which meant thinking about what to see and do while over there and NOT riding. Having seen and done nothing in Europe for 35+ years, I was going to be seeing new everything, so I didn't care WHERE I went. I couldn't lose no matter where I went or what I saw...you, on the other hand, as a reader... well...

So the plan was:
fly to  Munich,

Central train station in Munich

take a rented car to Nuremberg,

Ancient castle in the heart of Nuremberg

stay the night
press on to Berlin the next day and stay 5 nights in Berlin,

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

flight to Rimini in Italy, short cab ride to Riccione, stay 7 nights there

Belvedere Hotel owner cooking pasta feast, Italy

take a train to Verona,

Roman bridge in Verona

overnight there
take another train to Munich,

Oktoberfest beer hall in Munich

two nights there
Fly home from there.

The plan here is to basically do posts in that order; let`s hope it works!