European Vacation, Summer 2026
Chris and Lori explore Europe with bicycles
Here are my favorite pictures from the trip! Or, you can browse the full photo gallery.
In May and June 2026, Lori and I explored Europe. We visited Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munich, and Salzburg, before riding our bikes south through Slovenia and Croatia before finishing up in Italy in Lucca, Florence, and Rome. We took a plane to Europe, then we got around by trains, boats, and rode our bikes carrying our stuff, and we'll bring you along in the below trip report.
Lori's packing montage!
We had some epic travel days going to and from the other side of the planet, and spent about 28 hours flying and in airports between Portland, Seattle, Reykjavik, and finally Copenhagen on the way over to Europe.
Sights from an almost-empty Icelandic airport
Half of what made the travel so hard was that we took our bikes, and had to lug bike boxes through airports and across the sidewalks of Rome, and we also had quite a few hours of fun collecting packing materials and then getting the bikes packed on our own in Rome. But, spoiler alert: everything with the bikes worked out fine!
The trip was really memorable and fun! I journalled every day during which we biked between cities, and then had some longer write-ups for the places we hung out for a few days.
We landed, very tired, at 10pm in Copenhagen and had to reassemble our bikes before we could set out from the airport, since we couldn't carry our luggage and the bikes still in boxes. We spent the next few days exploring Copenhagen and the surrounding area. This was a rather gentle introduction to Europe, since just about everyone in Copenhagen (and Denmark at large it seems) speak English. Boy, there are sure a lot of bikers in Copenhagen!
We took a pretty dang long train ride from Copenhagen to The Hague, which went reasonably smoothly, even if it was a bit hard to figure out the best way to get us and our bikes across the continent in advance. Amsterdam and The Netherlands in general were pretty neat, and we made plans to return once we realized our time there was too short - we just spent a couple days staying near Amsterdam. This was the most "friendly" town, where I knew a handful of folks and we got to visit with all of them while we were there!
Another moderately complex train-dance - featuring several transfers - back across Europe (this time east to west!) through mostly Germany brought us to Munich and a biergarten (recommended by a Portland friend) for dinner. It was just down the street from the train station so we dropped our bags in a locker, and went and had huge beers, sausage, and pretzels with a crowd of a few hundred rowdy folks. We saw quite a few leiderhosen-clad individuals (the male waiters were required to wear them, and more than a handful of guests were wearing some too). We then rushed to our next train connection and got on just in time to finish our journey to Salzburg. In Salzburg, we stayed only a day (2 nights) before setting out on the loaded biking portion of our trip.
Our first ride was Salzburg to Werfen, which was not much of a destination tourist-wise, but pleasant enough. We then continued on from Werfen to Bad Gastein, which was a little harder right at the end (super steep climb into town) than we were expecting, but we made it in time for some relaxation at a local spa (rooftop hottub in the Alps? yes please!) and some pizza before we crashed out.
The next morning, we said goodbye Bad Gastein, and Hello Mallnitz (by the end of the day). Mallnitz is fairly close to Bad Gastein as the crow flies, but we had to take a train through the mountains (literally through, in a tunnel) since there is no direct roadway for bikes or even cars. We got in early, had yet another pizza (we probably had pizza for 2 dozen meals over the course of the trip - every country makes pizza!), and then enjoyed hiking in a nearby national park at the recommendation of our airbnb host.
The next day we rode out from Mallnitz down to Villach, which turned out to be the worst day (weather-wise) for riding, as it rained and rained on us all afternoon. We had rain gear to wear, of course, but we were riding largely on dirt/gravel trails and both of our bikes (and bags, and jackets) got quite filthy, to the extent that we stopped to "hose off" Lori's drivetrain every time we came to a water fountain. But, in the end, we made it to town just fine and took a cab to dinner because we had finally dried off, even if much of our wet gear was still hanging up in the apartment.
In the morning, we said auf weidersehen to Austria and biked from Villach to Tarvisio, Italy, where we had a couple days to let our legs recover. It was also here that we declared, about 10 days into our trip, victory over lingering jetlag! And ate some good food...
This stay in Italy was brief, just passing through before we rode from Tarvisio to Bovec, Slovenia. Bovec is in the scenic Soca river valley, and the ride was fantastic (but I knew that, having done it last year with my friend Jeff). I was glad to share this beautiful area with Lori! We just stayed one night before riding our bikes from Bovec to Kanal (and then taking a train to Kranj)>
The next day was a treat - riding through the alps to Slovenia's only national park. We made our way from Kranj to Logarska Dolina, riding out of Slovenia and dropping (literally) back into Austria briefly, before climbing tediously back up the other side of a 2000+' deep valley, which was the most strenuous riding of our trip. For reference, I managed to ride my loaded bike the whole way, but beat Lori who was walking with her bike by only about 5 minutes over the course of an hour total work. But, also some of the most scenic riding! The destination - Hotel Plesnik in Logarska Dolina - was amazing and restful and tasty (and expensive, but worth it!)
Next, we rode back out of Logarska Dolina to Mozirje, which was more a place to stay than a destination. But it worked :). We jumped immediately from Mozirje to Paska Vas to train to Kocevje to Osilnica, where we visited another of the "greatest hits" from my tour with Jeff, and stayed in what is a nice hotel, though it was severely understaffed while we visited and the experience was pretty sub-par. It was after Lori went to bed that I realized we had a problem with the next day's planned route - there would be no food available and we didn't have much with us, and it was to be a very long, hard day.
So, in the morning, we tried to figure out a plan B and decided that we'd just We'd just head directly into Croatia a few days early. Luckily the hotel proprietor returned in the morning (I'd met him last year) and helped us plan the next leg and then we set off, and had a great first day of Croatian riding on some great roads after a big climb just before lunch.
The next day, we rejoined our planned route on the Trans Dinarica Trail, which turned out to be pretty unpleasant riding for us. Usually, unpleasant means narrow road with lots of fast cars, but in this case, it was just lonely, scenic dirt roads that were a fair bit too rugged for our bikes. The route would have been great on light mountain bikes, but that is not what we had, and so we spent quite awhile (hours) going quite a short distance - averaging near walking speed for much of the afternoon as we made our way from Novi Vinodolski into Senj. Exhausted in Senj, we slept well!
The following morning took us from Senj into Novalja, and we decided to just ride along the highways, since they were direct, flatter, and well paved. So we danced with traffic over the next few travel days as we made our way down the coast and through Croatia's Adriatic islands. Traffic aside, the views were good and the services sufficient. While it was warm, we were lucky to dodge the incredible heat wave that Western Europe was struggling through at the same time, while also being fortunate not to "enjoy" experiencing the full strength gusty winds that the region is famous for - the coast highway apparently gets closed to motorcycles and bicycles during some gusty periods!
After a day of rest in beachville (Novalja is a Florida-during-spring-break feeling town), we headed from Novalja into Zadar where we also spent a couple of days. We stayed in an apartment inside of the old (Roman emperor!) city walls in Zadar. Zadar was the oldest continually-occupied settlement I'd thus far ever been in (but wait, there are more coming, from Split to Rome!). We ate some good food and explored the city, including the weird and wonderful Sea Organ and some 1 foot tall Roman ruins (our tour guide explained that Zadar has been razed to the ground fairly frequently, so there are almost no "taller" ruins left!)
We left Zadar and biked into Sebenik, which was also cute and we once again happened to have an apartment in the old town, a neat pattern that would continue even if it was mostly an accident in my AirBnB booking choices (Lori's choices were a bit more intentional than mine. I just went for "central", but lucked out repeatedly!). Eating at a local (and local-food themed) restaurant at the recommendation of our host, we had one of the best meals of our trip here!
In our final loaded touring day, we biked from Sebenik into Split, which was a somewhat unpleasant ride on the highway, but we made it and found ourselves again in Old Town - this time in a Roman-era imperial castle of which much was still standing. We spent a couple days Exploring Split - including the newer parts like a shopping mall - before we took a boat across the Adriatic Sea to Italy.
Getting to Lucca (and then exploring it) was most of our next week as we slept on a boat and then spent the day on trains before we arrived at our place in old town Lucca, and enjoyed a 5 day stay in town. We still biked around a fair amount, but it was nice not to have to be carrying all of our stuff, and this was our favorite Roman place - it was full of neat stuff but not drowning in tourists like us, and the traffic was manageable in town (although we suffered during a bike ride to crappy Pisa - it's really just about the silly tower and not much more - along a crappy highway, while we were staying here).
Next up, we took a train across Italy and spent a few days in and around Florence, which was quite idyllic and picturesque outside of town, but less pleasant in the city center - lots of tourists and traffic everywhere.
Our final stop was a few days in Rome. We ate a lot, biked a little, and enjoyed our time in an old neighborhood just off the Tiber river. Saw some sights, packed up our bikes, and caught a rare cab-van to the airport since the train workers were on strike! (but also it would have been a big challenge to lug our boxed bikes and our baggage across town since the nearest train station was a mile+ away!). We still managed quite a long travel day on the way home too, even though that was only Rome, Seattle, and Portland, and the wall clock time wasn't long since we crossed almost 10 timezones chasing the sun, but we were very, very happy to be back home with the kitties after the long trip.
Overall, the trip was amazing and I hope we don't wait another 50 years for our next visit!