As has been previously documented, I went on a cruise this past summer. One of our port of calls was Kiel, Germany, and to better get a feel for the city my mom and I signed up for a bike tour. If you haven’t ever embarked on one of these, it’s a great way to explore a city in depth; the inherent nature of bikes means you get to see things conventional tours don’t allow for. The overall tour was just over 9 miles and lasted for a few hours, so it wasn’t too strenuous. Our tour guide was a very knowledgeable man who provided us with all kinds of Kiel-related tidbits. From the dock where our ship was, we started from there. The first main point of interest we stopped by the coastline of the city. We biked by the parliament building of Kiel, which honestly surprised me; I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting to see that, though it was neat. On that note, within the first half an hour of the tour, we saw some of the German Navy ships docked. Our guide told us that they were primarily medical ships, but the novelty of seeing them still was very high. From there, we went on to bike down some canals and back roads, which, given that we were in one of northern Germany’s larger cities, was a nice change of pace. It made for some excellent riding, and it allowed for us to see some gorgeous scenery. We were taken to some barns, which was unexpected but conveniently was on our route. The purpose of this was to show how some Germans preferred to live on the land, and it honestly did raise my appreciation for that lifestyle. At this point, we were about halfway through our excursion. In order to get to our destination, which turned out to be a cafe, we had to cross over a series of canals, which was daunting to our legs. Was it worth it? Yes! We got to see some cargo ships go up and down this river, which was both inspiring and intimidating. Eventually, we reached our goal: this quaint little cafe. After spending the whole morning biking, this respite was sorely needed-there was nothing that good food and drinks couldn’t heal! After about 20 minutes or so, we were back on the road to port, with over 9 miles under our belt. In the end, this probably was one of the most memorable land excursions that we experienced on our cruise. We got to experience a fascinating city in an intimate way while communing with nature and getting some exercise. I’d highly, highly recommend more of these bike trips!

The parliament building in Kiel

One of the German Navy ships

The barn

The local Cola. Arguably better than the stuff we have at home!