Netherlands/Belgium Bike Tour Day 13: Puur to Mechelen
Posted by Cassie, November 11th, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
We made it Mechelen after only a few hours of biking. We were worn out from the long day of riding yesterday and the lack of sleep the night before, so we were ready to stop in Mechelen. The campground was very strange. We arrived at the place where the campground was marked on the map. It was in a big recreation area, but we couldn’t figure out where the campground was. They had a big gate around the recreation area, and we asked someone about camping. They said there was camping and let us through the gate to go to the reception inside the big building. We paid for camping, and they gave us the keys for the bathrooms. However, it was only 1:30pm, and they said we couldn’t set up our tent until 4pm. We got to the “camping” area, and it was really strange. They had three trekker huts, and they said we could set up our tent in front of the the huts. However, the “camping” area was in the middle of a park with benches and a paved walking path. It was a Saturday afternoon, so there were lots of people in the park. There was a beach where people were swimming, and there was a playground where kids were playing. Since they had a gate around the recreation area, they closed it down at night, so we decided to lock up our bikes behind one of the trekker huts and head into town. When we came back later, the place was empty, so we set up our tent in the middle of the park. Although the campground was very strange, it was blissfully quiet after the craziness of our campsite last night. We were the only ones camping there, and we were so happy that we did not need our earplugs at all. 🙂
Riding into Mechelen
Mechelen campsite
Our main task for the day was purchasing train tickets to Germany. Originally, we were planning to bike to Brussels. However, the bike book recommended taking the train from Mechelen to Brussels since there is no good bike route into the city. When we got bike maps, none of them showed the Brussels area. We didn’t want to deal with taking the train to Brussels and then fighting traffic to ride our bikes from the train station to the campground. Instead, we decided to skip Brussels and head straight to Germany instead. We weren’t sure how it was going to work to take our bikes on the train, but it ended up not being a problem at all. We just got an additional train ticket for our bikes, and we were set. However, we had a little bit of a problem when we bought our tickets. We said we wanted to go to Freiburg, but we did not realize that there was more than one Freiburg in Germany. The man who helped us was really great, and he thought he got the right Freiburg for us. He showed us the route, and Jonathan saw that it went through Basel, Switzerland. Jonathan remembered that Freiburg was near Basel, so we knew were going to the right Freiburg. We successfully got our train tickets for Freiburg, Germany leaving at 11am the next morning. We would arrive in Freiburg late on Sunday night.
With our important task completed, we were free to spend the rest of the day wandering around Mechelen. Continuing with our theme that there is a party going on everywhere we go, there was big festival going on in Mechelen. The streets were full of stands and lots of people walking around. Mechelen is a neat city with a grand square with a huge cathedral and fancy guild houses. Having finally made it to Mechelen, we were glad that we decided to continue on to Mechelen.
Mechelen Grote Markt
Mechelen Grote Markt
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