Boldly Go Solo

Great cities to cycle around and ways for solo travelers to find bikes and companions

Travel + Leisure's July issue describes the "world's top biking cities" Three are in the U.S.: Minneapolis, Portland (Oregon) and Seattle.

The others are Amsterdam (of course), Bogota (who knew?), Copenhagen, Montreal, Munich, Paris and Perth.

The site offers a slide show of the various cities. There's a great photo of a four-story parking structure in Amsterdam filled completely with bikes.

The write-ups give a nice little description of why the writers liked these particular biking cities. Even better for the solo traveler, they give information about where to rent a bike.

Here's a tip they didn't mention: If you don't want to bicycle alone, check out the Adventure Cycling Association's "companions wanted" page. Perhaps you can connect with someone who wants to bike where you do.

In Copenhagen, the "bycyklen" are free with a refunded coin deposit. The city so supports cyclists that a city agency maintains the huge fleet available to tourists. The bike Web site claims its city bikes are world famous. "When you tour the city you notice, that especially tourists love riding the city bikes."

One of the more unusual experiences I had, while in the Netherlands, was renting a bike as a means of transportation for a several-day excursion. My friend and I (this was not a solo trip) would throw our bikes onto trains and park them in front of hotels.

Because they were rentals, they weren't anything fancy but who needs a lot of gears in a flat country? One night we pedaled several miles from our hotel to a nice restaurant with white tablecloths. We dined on seafood and drank wine by the sea as the sun set. And felt like we earned our food because of the pre-meal exercise.

Minor problem with biking to dinner? Who wants to get back on that bike on a full stomach? Lesson learned. Not that I wouldn't do the activity again. But I would pencil into the plan some post-meal digesting time.

And get home before dark if the ride home is through the woods...as ours was. Especially if I were alone.

Photos: Ellen Perlman. The Netherlands.

Top Ten Train Rides and the lure for solo travelers

Travel writers have come up with a list of their favorite train rides and it has set my mind to wandering. And daydreaming. About past and future trips. The only train ride they list that I've actually been on is the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad that chugs through Colorado's two-million-acre San Juan National Forest.

As the coal-fired, steam-powered locomotive climbed its way to Silverton, I got to know my compatriots on a week-long Backroads bike trip through the Colorado Rockies. The views out the windows were spectacular - forest, mountains and steep drops to a river below. 

When we arrived in Silverton, described on its Web site as, "a gritty little mining town with Victorian pretensions," it had clouded up and I was freezing. A quick visit to a souvenir shop - and there are many, trust me - for a Silverton sweatshirt solved that problem. (I loved that sweatshirt but lost it on some other adventure...)

That was a great bike trip and the train ride, though I remember it going on a tad long, was part of the allure.

The only other two train rides I'm a little familiar with are the Rocky Mountaineer, because I wrote about it in September after interviewing a big fan of the train. And the Flam Railway in Norway. Sadly, I never made it to Flam when I was in Norway years ago. I was hitchhiking with a friend on that trip. Our five-week journey started in the Netherlands and continued on to Bodo, a town above the Arctic Circle.

For five weeks, we went where drivers took us. We didn't have much in the way of plans other than to see the Midnight Sun. Mission accomplished.

 But we did get driven East to West (or was it West to East?) between Oslo and Bergen, a bit south of Flam. I can attest it is one of the more stunning regions on earth. So I'm sure a train ride into those snow-capped mountains with their many waterfalls is just as spectacular.

I'd really love to get back there and see! "Ja, vi elsker dette landet." (The national anthem of Norway. It just happened to be a clue in Sunday's NY Times crossword puzzle.)

The risks, and many rewards, of trusting the locals when traveling

On the Web site "Travelers Notebook," Tim Patterson writes about "10 Travel Risks Worth Taking." Several of them don't interest me. (Decline anti-malaria medication. Brush your teeth with the tap water.) But one I particularly subscribe to: Trust in the kindness of strangers.

Patterson says that almost all the people he meets in his travels are "good-hearted, hospitable and sincere." I have found the same to be true. He says it's "tragic" when travelers' paranoia interferes with their chance to make connections with the locals.

People who shy away from strangers tend to be the ones who hang around in tourist zones, he adds. And those are home to the highest proportion of "scam artists, petty thieves and dodgy characters who prey on naive foreigners."

He makes a good point. I not only have trusted strangers in foreign lands, but often counted on them. For instance, as I've said before, I stayed in a Dutch hotel owner's home when he messed up my reservation and he couldn't find me another room in the city.

I let a French Moroccan airport worker drive me from the Paris airport to a hotel he knew of on the outskirts of the city. I was young. He got interested. I got nervous. But thankfully, he took "no" for an answer.

Whew. Close call. But then again, I never really felt in danger. Maybe because I was sure I could deck him if I had to! He was far from football player sized...

Five days together on vacation equals 10 years of friendship

It seems crazy but you can become friends "for life" with people you spend a week with on vacation. Why this happens, I don't know.

I'm reminded of it because on Sunday, I had dinner with Barry and Viv from Tampa. We met years ago on a skating vacation. Shortly after that trip, I had business in Tampa and stayed at their house for two days. Viv and I lounged in the backyard pool and talked plants and gardening and other important topics.

When they visited Washington the next year, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan and pushed spongy bread around a huge platter of delectable spreads. Barry and I skated in Rock Creek Park.

Then we lost touch for several years. Out of the blue I get an email from Viv a couple of weeks ago: "We're coming to Washington. Are you around?"

I was.

We arranged to meet at La Tasca on 7th Street. On the phone, Viv asked if I'd recognize her and Barry. What a silly question. We spotted each other on the street and hugged hello. Inside we shared tapas and caught each other up on our lives.

There's no whining in solo travel

It was not an auspicious first day in Holland. My bags were still in London and my room at the inn had been given away. And I was to set off the next day for an inline skating trip in Friesland.

This is normally the time that many people explode. Or cry. Or pound their fists on their travel companion. I didn't have a travel companion. I'd arrived on my own, as I'm wont to do. Who was I going to scream at? Cry to? Pound on?

No one. So I skipped the drama. And went about figuring out what to do next. The innkeeper called around and couldn't find any available rooms. He felt so bad that he put me up for the night at his home, five doors down from the inn. (That's another story for another time.)

The next day, I joined my group. We hung around with our stuff, waiting for a van to take us to the starting point outside of Amsterdam. A woman named Vivian asked me where my luggage was. I told her I didn't have it. And I didn't know when I'd get it.

She looked at me, surprised. "You're awfully calm." As I've said already, what were my options? Freak out. Or not. Either way, I didn't have my luggage.

Wheee...skating through Amsterdam

It was thrilling gliding through the streets of Amsterdam on a Friday night, joining a crowd of skaters who had taken over the streets. People out for an early evening stroll cheered from the sidewalks as the "skeelers," wearing blinking lights on their clothing, streaked past.

I never would have had the chance to do this if I hadn't signed up with a group called Zephyr Adventures for an inline skate tour around the Netherlands. A few of my friends skate. But none love it enough to make a vacation out of it. And I don't think I would have been brave enough to join a crowd of skaters in a foreign country on my own. Who would pick me up if I fell?

The owner, Allan Wright, clued us in about the "Friday Night Skate," an optional adventure we could do before or after our week-long trip. As if skating for miles around Friesland and other parts of the Netherlands weren't exciting enough. All of it was memorable, especially skating with Willem Augustin, an 80+-year-old guide known around the country for participating in several Elfstedentocht speed skating races, beginning during World War II. Having new friends to skate with at dusk, and to dust me off if need be, was an added bonus.

Photos: Ellen Perlman
Two locals dressed for skating