July 2009 - Posts
This day had lazy start. Plan was to start driving SS1000 Iron Butt ride from Split / Croatia to Aachen / Germany.
Same time at the breakfast room there was a group of Swedish people and they were really hard on discussing the one Finnish bike out on the hotel’s parking… but they did not dare to ask anything on that.
Everything was ready by 10:30 at Hotel Zvonimir, so I decided to starting preparing for the ride.
By 11:30 everything was ready and I headed for the first gas station to start the ride, filled my tank and way to Aachen was started.
From Split to Zagreb there is A1 motorway, a toll road with 130 km/h limit. I drove with just t-skirt and shorts half of the way, until it started climbing higher and higher I decided to switch to Gore-Tex. This was not a minute too late as temperature was dropping closer to 20 degrees and it was very windy, speed limit was set to 80 km/h.
It was almost half way already to Zagreb when I started looking for a gas station as planned and I even stopped on one of them for a while until I gave up. There were very long queues on all of them and I made quick calculations on if I’m going to make it with the gas I had to Zagreb or not.
Refueling with these queues would take at least ½ hour or more, but with the speed of 130 km/h my bike is taking too much fuel to handle ~400 km journey to Zagreb so I needed to lower speed to 100 – 110 km/h. I was constantly monitoring from onboard computer on how much longer I could get with the fuel I had left and lowered or accelerated accordingly.
At Zagreb I took 22.33 L into 24 L tank, onboard computer was showing that another 25 kilometers to go at this point.
On the way to Zagreb one Finnish car spotted.
There was also funny thing at the end of the toll road: when everybody was trying to get out from it to get paid, they all wanted to use money and queue was 2-3 kilometers long. When paying with credit card, no queue. Go figure. Not hard to imagine which queue I took…
From Zagreb everything started smoothly, toll road ahead and going towards Slovenia. But that ended quickly: either the A3 highway was under repairs or Croatian / Slovenian border on that road was closed, but everybody was guided away from the highway into very small country roads and that was not very nice. It took over an hour to get out from there back into bigger roads and it went through very small border control which had only one man looking into passports. There went my good night sleep…
Eventually I got out from there and from Slovenia to Austria, no big surprises there. Near Austrian border at the planned stop I spotted hotel by the gas station and again after quick calculations decided to take a 4 hour break and sleep for a while. I got bike at the behind of the hotel and everything was set for a sleep.
At 02:00 alarm woke me up, quick shower, breakfast, clothes on and out. 02:30 I was on the bike and riding again.
This 3½ hour sleep really made big different on the general feeling, only thing which I forgot was to put Gerbing heated jacket on for which I needed to make an extra stop. Temperature at this point was only 8 degrees. After getting the Gerbing on feeling was even better, almost like driving back in Greece!
After driving few hours it was again time to get sunglasses on as sun was finally getting up again and starting to warm up the air.
Rest of the trip went pretty much as planned, some minor adjustments on the stops. Last thing before the end was a bit nightmare again. Gas station that I had planned was there, but road was blocked and no way getting there! After couple of smaller circles I decided to make a bigger one and finally found a way into that gas station. This was anyhow a corner place so I had to get a ticket from it.
Then it was just ~70 ride to end and I managed to get end ticket some 40 minutes in advance.
Total riding 1661 km according to bike’s odometer.
This was the route according to TomTom recordings that I drove today:
Roads were on excellent conditions and one can really ride Iron Butt rides all the way down to Croatia as there are 130 km/h speed limits almost all the way. If just no roads are being cut off… Lots of maintenance work was on the Austrian and Germany side, must have been 100-150 kilometers driving slower than usual.
Now just have to put all papers together, send them over for checking and hope for the best. Those parts in Croatia where I ended up on those small roads are going to be hard one to figure out since MS AutoRoute does not know any of them… but that is not my headache!
This was just excellent day! What a drive!
Day started at 10:00 local time by leaving the hotel at Montenegro and heading towards Split / Croatia. Soon after I left from hotel TomTom made it to the map and started showing directions.
At that point it showed 312 kilometers to the target, but I ended up getting 30-40 kilometers and 1 hour since I took a bit detour around the Croatia you see circled in the red below:
That detour was because I did not want to take the ferry that is seen in the map (looks like a road…). Around those shores were loads of small swimming places, summer cottages, small villages and road that circled that was very small, hardly car and a motorcycle could pass by! But what a view.
At some point I crossed the border to Croatia and then to Bosnia-Herzegovina and back to Croatia. At the border people were not really interested on motorcyclist with a Finnish flag on it, they just waved a hand and let me pass without showing any passport or anything!
Everything went smoothly as usual on this day, just lazy driving, relaxing and enjoying the view. Average speed was somewhere around 60 km/h.
Only few bikers spotted on the way, some more when getting closer to Split.
Air was very warm, whole day over 36 degrees and on some places I spotted this trips best temperatures, 38.5 degrees Celsius!
Hotel Zvonimir that I booked was a small disappointment. They advertized that they have wired internet connection in every room, but that was not true. I needed to pay extra to get a room with that and only third room that I tried had a working connection…
Anyway, now after eating I’m again ready for a sleep, tomorrow need to drive to Aachen / Germany in one ride. SS1000 ride, 1619 kilometers in less than 24 hours.
Today’s plan was to drive from Ioannina / Greece to Petrovac / Montenegro.
Day started ~09:00 and since it was only 21 degrees out, I decided to drive with all Gore-Tex clothes and take them out if it becomes too hot.
First trick on the day was to get TomTom to guide me to the border of Greece and Albania since they are on separate map, you cannot directly point it to the other country and I had to choose one village closest to the border and drive there and then switch the map and continue.
On the Greece Albanian border Greece side had no issues letting me go out of the country, but on Albanian side I had to present all the motorcycle papers along with passport and at the customs I even got an certificate that I had the bike with me when entering Albania!
Albanian side was excellent ride. Although the road that I choose was at first not at its best, the views were excellent and since I was riding only 50-60 km/h, this road condition did not really matter.
In Albania I did only two quick stops to drink, once in some far away country place and second time some 100 km before Montenegro in local gas station.
Traffic was not that bad, although some of the people were driving these local roads which were not in perfect condition like they would have been good highways, but still they passed by using a good distance and not disturbing my driving. But still, it is good to look all the time in the mirrors to see if there is somebody coming from behind of you.
Good think in Albania is that even though euro is not official currency, they all seem to accepts euro’s, which is good since credit cards are not that widely accepted.
Once I got the the Albania Montenegro border, on Albanian side I just had to show passport and leave the certificate from the bike that I got when entering the country and I got out. On Montenegro side procedure was again bit different: there I needed to show passport and also green card I got from insurance company for the bike. Good for me I had that with me. After that I was in Montenegro!
Now it was just time to find Petrovac, before that one quick stop for drink and filling the gas tank in Podgorica. TomTom had co-ordinates for Petrovac, but still there was one surprise on the way: there was a new tunnel road built which TomTom did not know and I decided to take that. That was a bit mistake, should have taken the mountain road… I ended up doing a bit side tour and the end of the tunnel before finding the correct road again, few kilometers and 15 minutes wasted on that…..
After I found village Petrovac, finding the Hotel WGrand was easy, all the area’s hotel were pointed out very well with signs. TomTom had no clue what so ever from this village, only the location of it.
Driving into this village from Ioannina was ~500 km and it took 9½ hours so I arrived here ~17:30 local time. Montenegro is in different time zone than Greece where I left.
Hotel is very nice, excellent wireless internet connection which cannot be said from all of these places where I have been!
Dinner was excellent in the restaurant near by, 300gr grilled stead with potatoes, rice, beans, small carrots, mixed salad and two big beers was only 18 euro’s.
After that I was ready for a good night sleep.
Waking up in the morning was quick, 06:00 local time and starting to plan for next day. This looks like it is going to end up in Split Croatia. There I have found a nice little hotel to stay for a night.
Below is the map of the route I took, recorded by TomTom (click for larger map):
At the end of the route on the top you can see the detour I took…
We started at 11:00 from our Arkadia Hotel at Zakynthos, escorted by family to the airport and looked that they got through the check-in.
After that headed to the ferry from Zakynthos to Killini, ferry was about to leave at 13:00.
All ready to roll, my TomTom had direct co-ordinates to the next hotel which was Dovitel Boutique Hotel at Perama near Ioannina.
I started at Killini harbor at 14:30 and ended up in hotel after driving ~400 kilometers. Some detours on the way and some happy surprises as TomTom did not know all of the roads ahead…
Also the hotel POI that TomTom knew was about one kilometer too early, but lucky for me I found an German speaking lady who guided me to the right direction.
Hotel is very nice, quite new and only drawback is that air conditioning is not working. But that was known issue as the hotel manager called day before after I made the reservation and let me know about this.
This was the route that I actually drove, straight out from TomTom (click for more details):
Right now I’m driving on my own, two ex-friends Kari and Arto I had on the way to Zakynthos decided to take quicker route through Italy.
Day 1
Our first driving day started with SS1000 ride which we started from Tallinn at 00:36. Then just heading down Via Baltica to Riga, Kaunas, Bialystok, Lublin, Svidnik, Debrecen and Oradea.
Did not have much surprises on the way except the fact that driving through eastern Europe is a pain. Way too little roads and too many turns.
This lead us into timing issue on our SS1000 ride and we needed to take the plan B instead of original plan.
I had already checked an earliest possible ending spot which we gained easily and filled our tanks, but decided to continue to the next one just in case. Next gas station we found some 30 kilometers further towards Oradea/Romania where we made then our final ending for our SS1000 Iron Butt ride. This was just few minutes before the time ended.
After this we continued to our hotel which was Hotel Maxim in Oradea. Had some issues on finding the hotel as TomTom did not have any clue on Romanian streets… Arto fell with his bike while it was on very slow motion, but eventually we did find the hotel, managed to get our bikes parked and got some sleep.
First day driving was ~1700 kilometers.
Day 2
Second driving day started ~10:00 as we let us some extra sleep. Packed our bikes and started heading our next stop which was going to be Pitest / Romania.
On our way to Pitest we hit few minutes of thunderstorm and we got our bikes cleaned… water was really pouring down! But eventually it stopped and sun was shining again.
This day driving was only 460 kilometers, but we took it quite easy and stopped often for a while and we were on our Hotel Victoria. Hotel was very nice, again had some trouble on finding it but some local biker was kind enough to guide us there.
Finally got some real food inside as well.
Day 3
Third driving day was from Pitesti to Sofia / Bulgaria.
This day was now the first time TomTom did not find the correct way. On the border of Romania and Bulgaria there was a passing of river in Vidin / Romania and TomTom did not find the way to border and to the ferry from Romania to Bulgaria.
We had to do a bit of detour and start following the signs to the ferry and finally made it to there as well. Had to wait some 1½ hours before the next ferry came and took us to the other side.
We got our bikes really on the front of the ferry where the cars drive out from it, that was a kind of interesting place for us…
But eventually we got to the other side.
In Bulgaria we needed to pay some road taxes at the border which was from all of us three 9 EUR all. Not too bad.
We had some company from some Italian bikers, one driving with scooter and other with motorbikes. They were driving really fast and passed us quickly. Then on some cases they made a wrong turn and we passed them again, but on the ferry they catched us again and they were so much faster on paying the road tax so we never saw them again.
When arriving to Sofia TomTom guided us directly to our hotel and there we got some interesting requests: Our bikes were to be parked in the hotels restaurant!
Just drove them in from the main entrance! Nice one from our Hotel Maxim.
This days driving was little over 450 kilometers.
Day 4
Fourth day started with the morning exercise of getting the bikes out from the Hotel Maxim’s restaurant:
Up until this day we had followed pretty closely the planned route, but now came the first change for it. City that we had planned for next evening was all full, no cheap hotels on our price range was found so we took the next best option on our route and started driving to city called Nea Achialos in Greece and Hotel Protessilaos.
Here we actually got our first swim as the hotel was just in the beach! On the evening there was terrible thunderstorm again and the hotel manager was telling us that it had been like that for the last two weeks that in the evening it just rains and thunders and everything is gone by the morning. And it did.
This day was ~500 kilometers driving.
Day 5
This was the day that we would be arriving to Zakynthos, our final destination. We had only 370 kilometers driving which took 5 hours from us until we were at the Kyllini harbor waiting for our ferry to take us to Zakynthos island.
In Zakynthos we did not get into final hotel yet, so we needed to book another one for this evening, Best Western Zante Park Hotel.
Day 6
Sixth day was just to drive to the airport, wait for my family to arrive and get to our final destination hotel, Arkadia Luxury Hotel.
Our hotel manager was waiting for us at the airport and we just drove behind him into the hotel.
And once we got there
After this it was just time to enjoy two weeks in Zakynthos Island!
Here is our full route we took with all the stops along, click map to get bigger one:
