The other part of the problem was that we had a codeshare flight with Lufthansa on the Frankfurt to Dusseldorf leg and it was going to require confirmation from them that they would accept the bikes.
So we ended up changing our flight to Ottawa to Toronto to Frankfurt.
The Ottawa to Toronto plane is always big enough to accept bikes, and we dropped the Frankfurt to Dusseldorf leg entirely. All of these changes ended up costing another couple of hundred dollars, but it's worth it to us to be able to bring our bikes. We will still have to pay another $50 CAD ($40 USD) per bike as a handling fee when we drop them off.
When we arrive in Frankfurt we will have to take a longer and slightly more expensive train ride to get to Max. Then we will drive Max back to Frankfurt to pick up the bicycles. It's pretty much along our route anyhow. Glad that's taken care of!
Okay, so we had some surprise visitors on Wednesday night!
Popular YouTubers Howard and Katelyn from the Newstate Nomads stopped by.
We had been in touch a few times regarding RV'ing in Mexico and all of the information on this blog really helped them in planning their own trip. In fact they were in Mexico while we were on our last trip, and we almost bumped into each other a couple of times then, but it just didn't happen. This time, they found themselves in Ontario and made a detour to come for a visit.
The Newstate Nomads
They are just returning back to the states from a couple of months in Alaska. They've got some great Alaska YouTube videos if anybody is considering an RV trip up there.
They gave us a tour of their motorhome.
A lot of our discussion involved RV'ing in Europe... something that is on their list of future possibilities. It's a bit more of a difficult logistical problem, since they travel with three dogs! They've had Piper and Ella for quite a while, but Scout is the newest member of the family. They adopted her from a beach in Mexico.
It's interesting that when we first started out we were certainly among the youngest people RV'ing and traveling full time. Now we are a little older, and there is a new crowd of younger people coming up behind us. We are happy to share our knowledge with them!
Scout loves looking out the window.
Katelyn, Howard, Ruth, Kevin.
We had lots of laughs, and there was instantly lots to talk about. One night really wasn't enough, but they were on a schedule and we are also really busy. We're glad they contacted us when we happened to have a free night, and that it all came together. I'm sure we'll meet again some time in the future. Possibly it will be in Europe!
Ruth's brother and his girlfriend Brenda came over for dinner last night. He's a bicycle technician and he brought a couple of bike shipping boxes from his store. He took apart our bikes and we got them all packaged up, with me watching everything intently because I have to put them back together. He also gave me a couple of specialized tools to make the job go easier.
Today, I am off to my annual guy's weekend away!
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And in Canada...
The in's and out's of traveling with dogs in Europe is explained in some of WheelingIt.us blogs. They moved from the US to France a couple years ago and RV in Europe. Good reference for you and your guests.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't mention looking at the Wheeling It blog but we would expect that they have already checked it out, seeing that it is a popular blog and that they have been in Europe for quite a while now. Thanks so the suggestion for them to look at it though. :-)
DeleteIt's been a while since your blog came in my email. My wife has been forwarding them to me for at least a couple of months. Yesterday, I started receiving them again. The first one went into my spam, but today I received in my In Box. Take care and keep having fun!
ReplyDeleteWe are so glad to hear that you are finally receiving the notifications again, hopefully it will continue to stay that way. :-)
DeleteYikes, I never pictured the bikes being in pieces for travel. Happy assembling!!
ReplyDeleteThey aren't in total pieces, the framework is still all together, I expect the wheels are still attached too but I didn't see how they went into the boxes. I think the handle bars have been removed and the petals, at least all but one that they just couldn't loosen off of my bike. I think it is a little more disassembled than Kevin thought they were going to be, so yeah it will take a little time to get them all back together again.
DeleteI love the Newstate Nomads. Their last most recent post was them leaving Alaska so I guess they have traveled a lot since that post. They also introduced me to FnA's YouTube. They traveled with them in Alaska too. Frankie is a gem with his Brooklyn accent.
ReplyDeleteYep, that was their latest one. It takes a lot of work to put those videos together. Kevin said he is quite happy to just stick to writing our blog, having said that they really do put together a professional looking video. :-)
DeleteWe haven't watched the other couple yet but we will have a peek at it one day. That is the other thing for us, videos use up a lot of bandwidth so when we are on cellular we just don't watch any videos!