SUSANNA Post 17 Sept. 8, 2021 Brussels to Mulhouse - done!

We finally reached Mulhouse! In one month, we cycled from Brussels to Strasbourg to Mulhouse. We took only 1 train (crazy TGV experience, not to be repeated!), which was needed in order to keep up with our timeframe. Here is our route in more detail (please check out the map under "updates"):

          Brussels airport to Brussels City: 14 kms
          Brussels - Overijse: 20 kms 
          Overijse - Gembloux: 34 kms 
          Gembloux - Namur: 25 kms 
          Namur - Dinant: 29 kms 
          Dinant - Givet: 25 kms
          Givet - Charleville-Mézièrs: 93 kms 
          Charleville - Sedan - Charleville: 60 kms (Day trip to the castle, beautiful town)
          Charleville-Mézières - Strasbourg: TRAIN
          Strasbourg - Obernai: 45 kms
          Obernai - Scherwiller: 36 kms
          Scherwiller - Colmar - Breisach: 58 kms
          Breisach - Neuenburg: 35 kms
          Neuenburg - Mulhouse: 35 kms
               TOTAL: ~509 kms, fully loaded and happy. How cool is that?

We have cycled under the hot sun and under the pouring rain. We have seen bigger cities and smaller towns, we have camped mostly in campgrounds and have stayed in a couple AirB&B’s. We have gotten lost multiple times, we've had disagreements about small and not-so-small things, and we've problem-solved on the spot. We have learned that physical maps and common sense often work much better than mobile applications. We have gone from being taken over by all the stuff we were initially carrying to taking control of what we carry. We still have to find more solutions to our load, but we are doing so much better. We even downsized our packing time from 4-5 hours to about 3 (pretty impressive, huh?). And we have carved out time to work. 

Now we are resting and working in Mulhouse for a couple of days, while also getting ready for the second leg of the adventure: Mulhouse to Nantes. It's a pretty long one (over 1000 kms.) and by now we have realized that we underestimated the time it would take us to cover those distances. The weather and the need to rest slowed us down, as is natural. We just didn't quite calculate those needs too precisely. 

We want to reach Portugal by the first week of October in order to cycle there for 1 month and leave on time before our visa expires. We will have to make some adjustments to achieve this–pretty much a train here and there. 

On the bigger picture–after Europe we planned to cycle in Taiwan in November and then move on to Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. Already, these countries have been closed to non-essential travel or have extreme measures in place for tourism, so we will probably have to completely change our plans. We will deal with that in about a month, hoping meanwhile that COVID-19 gets more and more under control everywhere around the world.