This week was all action as we spent six days doing a big bike tour around Lake Constance (or “Bodensee” in German). We had chosen this spot because the bike ride itself is mostly flat but it’s in a beautiful hilly area that also touches the alps on one leg. It’s also very established as a popular biking route that is really well signed and mostly on dedicated bike paths or bike lanes. All of the towns and hotels along the way are accommodating of bikes and there’s lots of public transportation options in case any portion of the route needs to be skipped.

We started the route in Konstanz Germany, but looped through both Austria and Switzerland along the way, adding two additional countries to our tour count. This was our route, for a total kilometer count of 263.9 km:

• Day 1 – Konstanz – Stein Am Rhein (Switzerland) – Radolfzell – Konstanz (77.7 km, although Lucas and took a ferry part of the way back, so clocked only 47 km)
• Day 2 – Konstanz – Überlingen (39.5 km)
• Day 3 – Überlingen – Friedrichshafen (36.4 km)
• Day 4 – Friedrichshafen – Bregenz (Austria) (36.9 km)
• Day 5 – Bregenz (Austria) – Arbon (Switzerland) (41.3 km)
• Day 6 – Arbon (Switzerland) – Konstanz (32.1 km)

We purposely chose short days (except the first one) to make sure all family members could keep up, but at the end of the tour, Lucas stated that it was all too short and he wants to do longer days next time! We downsized from our carry-on suitcases to one small panier each for the tour, now proving that we can survive on even less stuff, but we were very lucky with the weather, needing only t-shirts and shorts and no rain gear required. It was 25-28C each day and clear skies the whole week. Our rental bikes were pretty heavy touring bikes and being laden with paniers, every hill was a slog so we were grateful it was mostly flat route.

The route snaked through many beautiful old towns, forests, farms and hugged the lake most of the way. It was incredibly scenic and there was always something to look at, so the kilometers passed very quickly. We saw hundreds of other bikers on the trail each day as it’s such a popular route, but what surprised us most is that about three-quarters of the other bikers doing the tour were on e-bikes. I definitely get the appeal of an e-bike, especially on hilly terrain, but in this case with even young people on e-bikes, it really looked like cheating 🙂

For Tour de France watchers, we also created winners for what we called the “Tour de Lucas”. Nicholas won the polka-dot jersey for climbing, Zachary won the green jersey for sprinting, and Lucas won the yellow jersey as the overall winner. His stamina really did impress all of us.

Some photos from the Tour and the sights along the way:

Next up

The end of the trip is coming so quickly, we now have less than one month left. It’s hard to believe. Only two countries left: The Netherlands and Peru. More blog posts coming soon!