Showing posts with label biking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biking. Show all posts

Monday, May 30, 2011

Ibiza Bike Trip

My bike for the day
I know this post is supposed to be about Ibiza, but I just had to share: Salzburg is gorgeous right now.  Yesterday was cold and rainy but today the sun came out and it stayed in the 70s with clear blue skies until the sun went down.  I'm writing this on my balcony with the last little glow of light in the sky (it's 9:40!) and one of my neighbors is playing opera very very quietly. It's amazing. It's times like these that I never want to leave.

Fleur's come and gone, and I have finished my last week of school and have begun cleaning and packing.  I cannot believe it's gone so fast!  But enough of this nostalgia.  First: Ibiza!

Fleur and I had decided from day one that we needed to see more of the island.  So we rented bikes from this cute little place called Mammoth and took them along the coast.  We biked for what seemed life forever, but it turns out we didn't even make it a quarter of the way around the island.  Ibiza is much bigger than we expected!  Still, though we didn't cover as much distance as expected, we saw some incredible sights.  It wasn't that warm, nor was it very sunny, so it was perfect for a bike ride.  We headed south west down the coast, through tourist ghost-towns, until we reached a gorgeous little cove.  There we stopped for a little while, read and rested, had a cocktail, and found about 20 dead jellyfish washed up on the beach.  Though we did not swim - there were live jellyfish all over the place and it was fairly chilly - I did get my toes wet.  I could hear Mona's voice in my head telling me it was a sin to go to the beach and not get in the water!

After our brief pause, Fleur and I continued down the coast.  Finally, as if the cove wasn't beautiful enough, we came to the dramatic coastline I'd been waiting for.  There we took another break, waded in the water, skipped stones, and I played baseball with a stick and a stone.

When we were doing playing on the beach we decided to head back for dinner.  We took the hilly inland trail which was much faster than retracing our steps along the coast, and the last quarter was completely downhill. Ibiza's landscape is gorgeous and full of almond trees, which we wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise.  Biking was definitely a good decision.

Fleur and her bike


Fleur lost her shoe on the slimy rock
View from the cove
Someone's old abandoned keys hanging on this brightly colored thing by the water

I tried to make Fleur model but she's not terribly good at following instructions.  Granted, the instructions I gave her were: "just be more normal".
My model shot
Cocktails
This picture is in here because the sign says 'Es Stop' which is how the Spanish say stop.
 
The gorgeous water that we found


All of the rocks were sandstone like this
Excited to have found paradise.
She's excited too, you just can't tell



Fleur and I waded in the water to get from one part of the beach to the other
There were some cool rocks
This kid was absolutely adorable
Footprints
My view from the sand
I played in the sand. Photo courtesy of Fleur
Fleur played with the stick
...and then she played in the sand too
And skipped some rocks
I played baseball until I snapped the stick in half. Photo courtesy of Fleur
More rocks
Biking back
Reading on the balcony - a perfect end to the day!
The next day Fleur and I took a taxi to the far side of the island to find a gorgeous sandy beach.  Most of Ibiza (or at least the parts that we saw) is made up of little inlets, so my dream of a gorgeous beach wasn't going to come true unless we took some form of transportation to the other side of the island.  So that is exactly what we did, and we stayed all day (protected by my SPF 50 of course) until it started to rain.




Running down to the beach. Photo courtesy of Fleur
Enjoying my book on the beach. See, Papa? It's your copy of Pillars of the Earth. Photo courtesy of Fleur
One of the only long sandy beaches on Ibiza.
Self portrait.  It looks like I have a mohawk. Oh well.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Bike trips

Spring in Salzburg!
Just before Easter break, Austria experienced a heat wave.  We (the assistants) decided to take advantage of that fact and bike to strange places around the city.  Maija and I biked to a rather disappointing little lake where we stumbled upon way too many men in speedos that were way to small.  There are no pictures of that particular experience, for which you should be grateful.  The next day we biked to the next town, Hallein, which normally takes about an hour but we managed to make it take almost three.  Our third bike adventure was to Hellbrunn palace, where we wandered the gardens and searched high and low for ice cream before heading back to Salzburg for a cold beer at the Augustinerbräu.  Ah, what a difficult life I lead.


Maria, Annie and Maija
My bike! It has two fairly flat tires and is stuck on the highest gear, but it gets me where I need to go.
Taking a break
Dynamic duo
Hallein!
Stopping for a drink in Hallein

The group (Maija, Nora, Annie and her friend Louise)
The house that was used as the front of the Von Trapp's in the Sound of Music.  Naturally, it's covered in scaffolding
Biking
Senior portraits photo shoot (Maija, me, Nora)

Annie and Louise
The group
Fishies!
Not on our bike trip.  We thought this man was homeless until he whipped out an amazing camera and started taking pictures of the swans.