AACHEN PARIS BIKE ADVENTURE <- clicken Sie here ...

This was to be no ordinary vacation. Six days, six hundred kilometers, two bikes, two tents, and no comfort. My friend Mario and I wanted to challenge ourselves for vacation, and we set off on a bike trip from Aachen through Belgium and France to Paris.

Some vin rouge to keep us happy

Well, it turned out to be quite an exciting quest, full of beautiful countryside, burning ass-pain, and a lot of adventure along the way. All the ingredients to make a great vacation. Mario played the part of the experienced guide. He had done the trip to Pairs two years earlier, but it had taken him and our friend Frank a sluggish eleven days to reach Paris, and he couldn´t stop thinking back on this disgraceful pace as we were to set the record straight. His goal was to get to Paris as fast as possible with a newbie like me in his tow. At the same time he wanted to use as little money as possible. Back to basics was his motto. Wild camping, cheap food, and cheap drink was his thing. He was kind enough, though, to take my capabilities as a greenhorn bike tourer into account, and we came to a good accord on the trip. We managed to keep a medium 100km per day pace.

Mario was very keen on keeping the bill down, so much so that he opted for wild camping on the side canal and swimming in it´s dirty-green waters instead of putting up tent in nice camp-grounds with toilets and showers. We also didn´t take a stove with us, so my food consisted of French baguette with salami and the occasional can of cold Ravoli, while Mario even went a step further by taking six rolls, 6 pieces of salami, and 3 camemberts with him from Aachen, and living off of this alone for quite a few days along the trip. Just imagine fresh camembert grilling for three days and blazing heat in his bike basket, and you can imagine how much he went back to basics.

Nice cold drinks to combat the heat were also not part of the plan. Instead we each would fill up two big bottles with luke-warm water from faucets we found along the way. The water would last us about half a day, but were far from refreshing, as they heated up pretty quickly in the blazing sun. But hey, it was for free, and that´s what seemed to count.

Mario and I under the Arc de Triomphe

Despite the hardship the trip was all worth it. We got along great, with Mario being quite considerate to my ideas, especially when I just about had it with the back to basics stuff. On day 6 at 21:00 in the evening we finally were in downtown Paris. We made it! At that point my ass hurt so much I couldn´t even appreciate reaching our goal. I decided to hit a hotel to reward myself for the long ride, while Mario camped out at the nearby Bois de Boulogne camp ground. We spent four wild days and wild nights in Paris to celebrate our trip.

In the next days I will post the diary of the trip that I recored along the way, so stay tuned.

tags: adventure, bicyle, aachen, paris