IF ANY of you are considering a bicycle tour of Europe

you'll enjoy this letter.

Dear Barbara: J heard you took an
interest in our trip by including it
in one of your columns.

! am presently in Arhus, Den-
mark, after travelling parts of
Spain, France, Italy and Greece.

My friends and | have had a
great time so far and were fortu-
nate enough to sec much of the
Mediterranean coast of Southern
Europe on our bicycles.

We rode from Valencia to
Barcelona and the highlight of that
had to be a stop in a place none of
us had ever heard of called
Peniscola.

travel

by Barbara
McCreadie

It had a castle on the top of a
narrow peninsula almost surrond-
ed by the sea — great beaches. It
was a difficult place to leave.

Accommodations in Spain were
a good bargain as we rarely had to
pay more than 500 pesetas ($5 Ca-
nadian) for a room.

We found that the outskirts of
Barcelona were extremely smelly
and were relieved to get to the cen-
tre of town where the smell im-
proved considerably.

Although Barcelona didn’t en-
tirely live up to the bad reputation
we had heard from fellow travel-
lers 1 wasn’t. particularly sad to
leave it.

From Barcelona we took the
train to Marseilles since by this
time we were anxious to get same
real food. One foot over the
border and a whole new world of
gastronomic possibilities opens up.

Like Barcelona, Marseilles has a
reputation as a rough town, but as
long as you're not careless with
your belongings there’s usually no
trouble.

When staying in a hotel we
always made sure that we could
keep our bikes somewhere inside
overnight. The management — is
usually helpful about this.

We also avoided hassles by pay-
ing in advance for our rooms. This
way, any hidden charges, like tax,
surface. In one place we got
charged extra for storing our bikes
plus tax.

The five of us
Marseilles to Nice (Barbars’s note:
Some ride! That coastline is a
series of cliff-hangers and I doubt
if any more than 50 feet of it is
level!) We were able to see the cn-
tire coastline and the beautiful
beaches that « Eurailer would
miss.

When planning to ride you have
to realize that your expense for
food goes up incredibly. It seems
you’re always hungry. It is also
difficult unless you really enjoy

rode from

riding and don't mind a few hills.

From Nice we set out for Rome
on our bikes. It was a long stretch
of riding and we were happy to ar-
rive nine days later.

We stopped in Pisa to have a
look and found that they weren’t
joking when they called it the
“Leaning Tower’’. (Hope they
climbed it! That's an experience
too — the outside walkway has no
guardrails and slants along the
tower. B.McC.)}

Italy was far more expensive
than we had anticipated. In Rome
the cheapest room we could find
cost 10,000 lire each — about $10
Canadian. The expense was com-
pensated for by the great sights,
especially the Colosseum and the
Vatican Museum.

After five days in Rome we
travelled by train to Brindizi. This
train leaves at midnight and is
notorious for people having their
things stolen. A common. tech-
nique is for the thief to gas a com-
partment and steal everything
while the people are knocked-out.
We had no pi oblems.

From Brindizi we took the ferry
to Corfu which is an “allowed
stopover’? on the way to Petras.
This is a great stop with lots of
young people on the west side of
the island.

On the train from Petras to
Athens we learned that Greck
buses are a better and cheaper
alternative —- our train broke
down about halfway and they had
to bring in a second locomotive —
both looked like they were new 50
years ago.

Athens had some good sights
but it isn't a place you want to
hang around too long. It's too hot
to be trapped in a concrete jungle.
It’s very cheap for food, shopping
and accommodation. My bed in a
hostel cost-about $3.50 Canadian.

From Athens we travelled to the
island of los. People do not go to
this island for culture. You go
there to drink, dance and lie on the
beach. We managed to do this
successfully for 18 days.

[ paid about $4 for my bed and
lived on omelettes and souvlaki.
The souvlaki with pita is the best
food bargain I’ve seen so far in
Europe.

Then { headed out on my own,
Passed through the island of San-
torini — absolutely beautiful — on
the way to Crete.

The northern coast of Crete is
over-touristed and not particularly
appecling but the southern coast
is greet. You can still find great
deserted beaches. I stayed in a
small town called Plateias (Hope I
got that right! B.McC.), which has
three great beaches around it.

That was a week ago — now I’m
in the cold of Denmark.

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