April 18, 2023
Getting underway
After 7 weeks staying with friends and family in New Zealand and back in the Netherlands, we are finally starting the biking part of our adventure.
It was great to head back to New Zealand for the first time in 3.5 years, and finally take our kid to his homeland to meet all his family and our friends. He coped so much better than we imagined with the long haul flying and change in routine which gives us a bit of hope for our next endeavor. Actually, I think there will be a bit more structure to our cycle touring days than there is when we are staying in somebody differents house every week.
We weren't actually planning to bike much in NZ, but we lasted 3 days in Rotorua relying on cars to get around before we got frustrated and found a second hand kid seat. Everyone we know has an old mountain bike in the shed, so we carried it around NZ with us to get around where we could. There have definitely been improvements to the cycling infrastructure in NZ in the last few years which made us feel a bit better about moving back home later this year.
Back to the Dutch (cold, windy) spring we spent a week with our Kiwi/Dutch friends and their 2 year old kid. Taking a jetlagged family into a Dutch-sized house is no joke, and we were very grateful for a place to stay with plenty of toys when Tobias decided to wake everyone up at 3:30am every day. He slept till 5:30 last night, so we're hopeful that the worst of the jetlag has passed. We spent most of the week collecting all the things we'd left in Utrecht then rearranging them into different boxes and dropping them back off with friends.
I'm writing this in the dark in a hotel room at the Eindhoven Airport while Tobias sleeps. It took a fair bit of logistics to get organized for our 9:30am flight to Tirana tomorrow. To get to Eindhoven Airport by public transport you need to take a train and a bus, which is pretty hard with 2 boxed bikes, a trailer, 2 suitcases, and a kid. So instead I came down earlier today with Tobias and a wee bit of luggage in the train (we don't have a carseat, so we couldn't get a lift) and James is on his way with the stuff now in a friend's van, driven by another friend.
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