Cycling Through Europe
Going on vacation soon and need ideas to make your trip more adventurous? Well, if you are anything like me and enjoy biking when visiting new places then you will enjoy Freewheel Holidays. A division of Sports Tours International, Freewheel Holidays specializes in self-guided, expertly supported European cycling holidays that strike the perfect balance between leisure pedaling and immersive sightseeing. The company offers easy cycling programs designed with special appeal to European and North American travelers. Guests cycle on their own, with enroute assistance and distinctive accommodations expertly chosen and secured by the company.
Freewheel Holidays offers the chance to visit cinema locations on several of its 2018 itineraries. Included in program rates are lodging with breakfasts, detailed route notes, point-to-point luggage transfers and complimentary bike rentals.
Movie buffs or anyone with a love of history and adventure will enjoy these bike tours:
Austria’s Lake Constance welcomed the crew filming Quantum of Solace. Cyclists can visit the strikingly modern opera house (Festspielhaus Bregenz) where the nefarious Quantum organization meet up during a performance of Tosca. Lake Constance Family Special is a 7-day journey that wanders through vineyards and Baroque villages, and by castles and Roman ruins, with suggested stops at the Zeppelin Museum to view a model of the famous Hindenburg airship.
Italy’s Venice was the site for The Talented Mr. Ripley. On any of Freewheel Holidays’ itineraries of Venice, guests can stop for an espresso at the old café in Piazza San Marco, a meeting place for Ripley (Matt Damon), Marg (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Mr. Greenleaf (James Rebhorn). Tours range from five to eight days. Venice Round Tour is one example. Days 1, 2 and 7 focus on Venice. Other days are spent exploring the foothills of the Italian Alps near Vicenza to Bassano del Grappa to Treviso, enroute sampling trademark grappas and proseccos and Italian village life beyond La Serenissima.
Belgium’s Bruges is a treasure trove for cyclists who watched In Bruges. They can visit where the hitmen hole up, Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce Hotel, and brave, like Ken (Brendan Gleeson), the 366 narrow steps of the Belfry. They can meet for a beer as the main characters did at 1 Zwart Huis (the Black House) and gaze, as did guilt-stricken Ray (Colin Farrell), at the Hieronymus Bosch painting of The Last Judgment at the Groeninge Museum and dine at Cafedraal where Ray enjoys his first date with the cheerfully drug-dealing Chloe (Clémence Poésy), before punching out the lights of a Canadian couple. They might even linger, as Ray and Chloe did, on the Meestraat Bridge, between Vismarkt (Fishmarket) and the Groenerel. Bruges and Belgian Coast is a 7-day itinerary that targets families with easy cycling routes and child-friendly attractions.
Czech Republic’s Prague can be visited through the lens of Mission Impossible. As the mission falls apart, controller Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) falls into the Vltava River from the famous Charles Bridge; the art deco headquarters of villain Max (Vanessa Redgrave) is the Hotel Europa on Wenceslas Square. Prague to Vienna is a 9-day holiday linking these cultural capitals with lakes, forests, vineyards, the old Iron Curtain and historic towns of south Bohemia and Moravia, including two UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Another itinerary in this region utilizes the Elbe (River) cycling path between Prague and Dresden. Enroute to Dresden’s Zwinger Palace, Semperoper (Opera House) and Frauenkirche is Theresienstadt, a World War II concentration camp.
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