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My family and I moved from California to Amsterdam a month ago. We’ll be in Amsterdam for a little over 1 year. We opted to ship our 80k mile 2013 Cayenne S to have with us, not to use in Amsterdam, but for the many road-trips we plan to drive during our year away. As an added bonus, we got to use the Cayenne as a very expensive shipping container for lots of our household stuff.
Before dropping the car at the shipper, I replaced all the fluids (oil, tranny oil, steering, brakes), brakes, plugs, coils, filters, battery, wipers and tires. I also took apart my PCM and installed a Mr 12Volt for Apple Car Play. In short… not sure this thing could be any more prepared for a year of tearing around Europe.
Shipping a car to the Netherlands is relatively simple. Getting the car a Dutch registration is something else. That’s a whole other story I’ll save for now. Suffice it to say, it took us 4 weeks from arriving in Amsterdam until we could pick up the car and legally drive it… even though the car arrived in Rotterdam in the middle of April and required no modifications to meet EU road regs. This last Monday we were finally able to pick up the car in the morning, drive it to our home in Amsterdam, unloaded everything we packed in it only to reload it with all we’d need for the mother of all road-trips, and left Tuesday (yesterday) at 8am.
Our route over the next month will take us nearly 6000km from Amsterdam through Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Talinn, Riga, Kaunas, Warsaw, BRNO, Prague, Stuttgart (of course…), and home… with many destinations in between in the 11 countries we’d be driving through.
We set up our first day as a bit of a sprint. We decided to do a long day and drive all the way to Odense, Denmark. In other words, three countries, ~800km, and 8.5 hours. Except not… this is the reason we brought the Cayenne instead of buying sh!tbox for the year. The Cayenne on the German Autobahn is a thing of beauty.
I’ve always said the Cayenne with 18-way is the single greatest road-trip vehicle… HARD STOP. It’s comfortable. It’s roomy. It’s got power and handling. It’s big but not too big for EU roads. Tuesday was our first day of really proving all this out on a grand scale.
Once we put the Netherlands in the rear-view and entered Germany, the Cayenne came into its own. We spent the entire day on the Autobahn, including the unlimited speed bits. Although this Cayenne spent most of its time on the Highway in CA around 80mph, it maybe kissed 100mph (160kph) only a handful of times in the last 11 years I’ve owned it. Today was the first time I could really drive this car the way it was designed, and OH DEAR LORD! … it delivered. I can think of very few cars I’d be comfortable cruising at 200kph (~125mph) with wife and son in the car.
In US driving, the 958 Cayenne S kinda loafs around under 2k rpms almost all the time. Unless you’re in sport mode, the car shifts lazily at higher speeds, and generally deliver a nice ride, but it doesn’t feel like the performant car we know it is. Having a handful of Cayennes in the garage, I acutally prefer my 2009 Cayenne S for a racier, faster revving engine for quick errand blasts, and the 2022 Hybrid Cayenne for most everything else. Because of this, the 2013 was the Cayenne I felt I’d be happiest bringing to Europe and leaving. Little did I realize it was the best choice to Continent Conquering.
The first thing you notice is that the big 4.8L V8 really comes alive when the car moves into triple mph digits. Something wakes up similar to the car being in Sport mode. The throttle seems more responsive, and shifts happen much faster when you want them. Accelerating from 150kph to 200kph happens much faster than should be possible for a car this size. I assume it’s that the engine is at a healthy ~3k rpms at 200kph. I’ve always looked at the little sticker in the car that reads, “Max Speed 155mph” and chuckled. After today, I see it. The car was still pulling hard at 200kph and would easily do 250kph (~155mph). I’m pretty sure the 155mph is a software limit, not hardware. I spent large stretches running with a couple big Merc sedans and a Bimmer 650… all of whom seemed a little shocked that an SUV was running with them at almost twice the speed of the traffic we were passing. We probably spent close to an hour running between 160kph and 200kph, traffic permitting, and then slowed to 150-160kph when it started raining.
While traveling at those speeds, I monitored all the temps and pressures. The water temp was pegged at 200 no matter what I did, but the oil temp actually came down below 200 at the higher speed (was ~207 in the speed limited areas). Tire pressures rose to 45 in the front and 54 in the rears due to the extra heat. Other than these things, there were no indicators the car was running at a high rate of speed for most of an hour.
I also had a chance to test the brakes… Just before the Danish border, a 90’s era minivan had a hood-latch malfunction. The hood opened in flight and smashed his windshield. The driver (who was in the middle lane) kinda freaked and began swerving across all three lanes. Not a full panic brake, but I brought the Cayenne down from ~180kph to 100kph within seconds without any real drama. Wife and son were aware of what happened, but no one had to dig fingernails out of the dash. It was just a simple event that happened on our drive.
Mileage was actually better than what I expected, which was a welcome surprise with gas at about $9.35 per US gallon. When I picked up the car, the shipper had drained all but a couple gallons from the tank… which meant is was a €200+ fillup (~$220). The 958 Cayenne S was rated new at 22gph. Before hitting the Autobahn (100-120kph speeds), we were just shy of 24mpg. I was expecting my time on the Autobahn to kill that. In the end, we finished the day at 20.5gph. NOT BAD!!!
By the time we reached Odense, our 8.5 hours of driving shrunk to 7:15. We were all happy to exit the car, but none of were sore. I think it was Matt Farah who said that the Porsche 18-way seats were the best seats in any car. We were all very happy with our first day on the road, and looking forward to a few Viking museums before staying in Copenhagen for a few days.
I have a renewed love for my 958 Cayenne S and am loving this trip even more than I thought I would.
I'll try to post a few pics along the way. For starters, here's the route we are driving -
We spent a couple days in Copenhagen, but left this morning for Oslo. This is us all loaded up in Copenhagen before driving the Malmo Bridge into Sweden and ultimately entering Norway -
I’ve always looked at the little sticker in the car that reads, “Max Speed 155mph” and chuckled.
I'd like to know what tires are you running? It cool to see you actually get up to those speed ratings & your reported temp/psi changes. More of that and pics please.
I replaced the tires before putting the Cayenne in a shipping container ~4 months ago. I can't remember what I bought, but I believe I got good tires. I will get the tire info tomorrow when I get back to the car.
The last couple driving days have not been as much fun as the first - no more high-speed for hour's on end. After leaving Copenhagen we shot North up the West coast of Sweden, and crossed into Norway to stay in Oslo for a few days. Oslo is now one of my favorite cities in the world. Incredible city, but a little disconcerting for driving. The main ring roads around the city are mostly underground which makes things a little tricky if you don't speak the language and are relying on CarPlay GPS to get you around. The exit ramps are also underground meaning that you need to watch your mileage carefully, and be roughly familiar with the street name you can't pronounce. Once you exit the ring road, you spiral upward until you pop out at one of many locations in the city. It kinda reminded me of flying an instrument flight plan where you're in the soup for an hour, fly an approach, and then pop out half a mile from the runway threshold. What this also meant was that navigating around the city by car was a bridge too far if you didn't at least read Norwegian. The car stayed parked at the hotel during our stay... so no awesome pics in Oslo. As well, speed limits from Copenhagen to Oslo were mostly 60-65mph.
This morning we left Oslo to drive South to the Midgard Viking Center. Norway is much hillier than I thought it would be. Lot's of rolling hills through tall forest where you occasionally break out along side a beautiful Fjord. We all wished we had more time in Norway. This is a pic of the Cayenne parked outside an ancient Viking settlement with multiple burial mounds where Viking royalty were entombed in Viking ships. Because everything was buried in dirt, anything wooden disintegrated, but the anything metal was 'preserved'. In other words, the only way they figured out there was a ship was by the position of the gazillion nails that were once holding the ship together. Anyway, great stop to walk around and take all in, and dip your toes in the Oslo Fjord.
She's picked up a few bugs, but otherwise is still driving like new.
I do want to call out Mr. 12Volt. When I get back to the states, I'm gonna find out where that dude lives and plant a big wet kiss on him. Having CarPlay in the PCM is a total game-changer... even more so in Europe. I assume I could have gone to Porsche and gotten the EU DVD for my PCM... but that would probably still be problematic for many reasons. Driving the navigation from an iPhone with up-to-date maps and traffic is a godsend. I wrote a little about this elsewhere, but for those of you who have not done so already, the install is relatively painless. I added a Mr 12Volt to both my 2009 and 2013 Cayennes. My wife commented that adding the unit to our 2013 Cayenne S made the car feel more like a 2020 Cayenne S.
Leaving Midgard, we hopped a Ferry from Horton to Moss to get across the Fjord without needed to drive back to Oslo. From there we drive to Orebro, Sweden where we're sitting right now.
Driving across Sweden is like driving through a beautiful national park that's hundreds of miles long. Beautiful forests, pristine lakes and rivers... Great if you're not in a hurry and want to take in all the scenery.
If you do want to hurry... you're kinda screwed. Most of the driving is on 2 lane roads with no center divider. Passing is a little sketchy other than in the areas where there's an extended hill and they mercifully open up a second lane in the uphill direction. Again, this is where the Cayenne was awesome. For most of the trip to Orebro, the speed limit was set to between 55 and 65mph (90-110kmh). But... people pulling trailers seemed to enjoy a more leisurely pace of ~35mph. There would be lines of 10-20 cars backed up behind some dumbass who refused to pull over. Worse was when the ~6 cars behind them would not pass when passing was available. Punching the 'Sport' button to remap the throttle and tranny, and then punching it could get me un-mired quickly. Jumping from ~35mph to ~90mph within the first couple cars passed was usually enough to get me out in front within 1-2 passing zones.
Because of all the passing, my mileage took a bit of a hit. Before I got to the worst parts, we were up around 24mpg (60mph speeds). By the time we reached the hotel in Orebro we were at 22mpg. Temps were all about the same as what they were the first day. Water temp pegged at 200. Oil sat round 207 for most of the drive. Tires stayed at 45 in front and 54 in back.
Tomorrow we drive ~2 hours to Stockholm. We'll stay there for a few days before putting the car on another ferry bound for Helsinki.
Interesting day today. We've been in Helsinki for a couple days (Ferry from Stockholm). Helsinki is an interesting city, but much more industrial than either Stockholm or Oslo... meaning that you can see all the interesting bits of the city and tour Suomenlinna in a little over a day. Given that, we decided to do something completely different - drive to the Russian border. This is a little tricky being that Finland has closed their main boarder with Russia and forbids cars from getting within ~10 miles or so. Instead of going to that border crossing... we got a little creative and found a Finnish Coast Guard station in Hurpu. We stopped to grab lunch to-go and picked up extra. We then set out on the maze of tiny roads (asphalt and dirt) winding through remote Finn villages. When we got to the Coast Guard station, they were more than a little surprised to see a family from California driving a Cayenne WAAAY off the beaten path... and with a gift of lunch. They let us park on the helipad and hang out. Russia was in full view less than a mile away across the Baltic inlet we were at. in the pic, the place with the house is a small island that is still Finland. Just on the other side of that island is where Russia starts.
After finishing lunch at the edge of the Western World, we said goodbye to our new Finn friends and headed back the way we came to Helsinki.
Before Helsinki, we did spend a few days in Stockholm. Stockholm is a much easier city to drive in. Mainly, *most* of the roads are above ground meaning that CarPlay GPS works for routing you around. The City is also very nice to visit. Stockholm will be the city we make plans to come back to simply because we could not see everything with the limited time we had... and there is a ton to see.
To get to Helsinki, we booked passage on a Viking cruise. Picture a large industrial ship a couple levels below the cheapest cruise line you've seen. BUT! it was awesome to board, get settled in a square cabin with no windows, grab a decent burger and an awesome Swedish beer as you sail through the Swedish islands for open sea. After a little time in open water, you go to sleep only to wake up as the ship is pulling into Helsinki Harbor. Very, VERY cool.
Tomorrow we finish our time Finland, and board another ferry for Tallinn, Estonia. After docking in Estonia, we will be 'on our way back' to our home in Amsterdam and over halfway done with this trip.
Last edited by gonzobreath; 07-25-2024 at 02:09 PM.
We boarded the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn after another half-day running around Helsinki. Unlike the last ferry that went overnight before getting to its destination in Helsinki, this ferry was ~2.5 hours long. I took this time to check all the fluids, check the brakes, clean the bugs off the bumper, and thoroughly wash both front and back windows. After spending the previous day hard-charging down remote Finn dirt roads through tiny Finn villages to get a glimpse of the Russian border, the car had picked up a fair amount of dirt and bugs. Doing basic checking and cleaning felt like a great use of time as we crossed the Baltic to Estonia.To be honest, we had very little knowledge of what to expect other than it was recommended by a Dutch friend of ours, and that all of the EU car rental agencies forbid you from taking one of their cars into either Estonia or Latvia. According to my friend who works in the Dutch gov, the reason rental agencies don’t allow their cars into Estonia is not because of crime, but because of the constant Russian threat. We also heard from our tour guide today that local tourism is largely from Baltic countries because these are the people who also live under the constant shadow of the Russians. She said she does not see many US tourists, or tourists from Western EU countries, making this even more of a gem to visit.
Tallinn is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe that we’ve seen. We were expecting a huge Russian influence with every building being a concrete box, but that was not the case. They have a very cool old town that was partially rebuilt by the Soviets for the 1980 Olympic sailing event hosted by the Soviets (that the US boycotted). Outside of “Old Town”, the city is still quite beautiful. It’s also one of the cleaner cities we’ve been in, with lots of green areas and very low traffic which makes driving much easier than most. Most the of the old Soviet era factories have been repurposed into very cool modern offices, lofts and vibrant markets. There’s also been a sizable influx of foreign investment into the economy.
In case you're wondering, Tallinn is an awesome place to visit. The adventure, the remoteness, the people and the food made this an incredible destination. If we had more time, I'd cruise all around Estonia going through some of the other cities. Unfortunately we have a schedule to get to Paris for the Women's Gold Medal Futbol match. We leave for Riga tomorrow afternoon.
Last edited by gonzobreath; 07-27-2024 at 02:28 PM.
We left Estonia after another walk through the city, and lunch. We were all wishing we had at least one more day to drive around to other areas of Estonia. For reference, the locals suggested the islands off the coast and Tartu. For our next trip we’d likely fly in and rent a car to do these.
We then set off for Riga directly to the South.
Other than the surrounding area of Tallinn, the roads almost immediately went to one lane in each direction with a center divider, and a periodic stint with a passing lane for about 1 mile before going back to a single lane. Speed limits were 100-110kph with a few areas dipping below as we went through small cities and towns. This lasted until we reached the Latvian border.
Crossing into Latvia is noticeable. Latvia is much closer to what I envisioned Estonia and Latvia to be – very 1980s Soviet influence. Almost immediately, the road (the main highway traversing Latvia…) gets a little narrower, loses the center divider, and reduces the speed limit to 90kph. This makes the driving a lot less fun, and lot more dangerous. More than once I found myself frantically flashing my brights at an oncoming car passing in my lane. In one case, the driver didn’t even bother getting back in his own lane and simply moved to the middle of the road with half his car still in my lane and pushing the other car in his direction to the shoulder.
Once again, the Cayenne was great car for all this. For one, when I did get a clear straight for passing, the Cayenne effortlessly passed anything in front of me. Most cars in this area of the world seem to be of the 100hp (or less) variety. Plus the added size contributed to better road presence that seemed to limit the stupidity of people around me… other than a few on-coming cars.
Not really why we buy Cayennes, but I thought the below pic was interesting. With the reduced speed limit, limited passing, and mostly flat terrain, we got record gas mileage (for a Cayenne). It took me a while to tweak the settings to show kms with mpg, but here you go. 86kph is about 53mph.
After nearly 4 hours, we finally rolled into Riga. Driving into Riga is a bit tricky, depending on what part of the city you are trying to get to. In our case, we had to leave the main road (still can’t call it a highway) and travel even smaller roads at lower speeds to angle towards the part of the city we were staying in. It was a bit strange to see that we were ~15 miles from our hotel, but it was gonna take us nearly an hour to get there! … and it did ... with almost no traffic. It's very clear the country has not spent a lot of money on roads here. Consequently, the gas is about 20-25% cheaper in Latvia that in the other countries we've driven through.
The other problem we had was with CarPlay Google Maps. Our hotel was in Old Town Riga which meant the GPS routed us through cobble stone roads. We eventually got stopped by a cop who immediately picked up that we had no idea where we were going and completely dependent on the GPS. The area we were in was only passable by Latvian members of parliament… oops. It was also clear we were not the only people to have made this mistake. Thanks Google. She routed us back to roads we should be on, and even told us where we could park.
Today with have 30mph winds and heavy rain. We're still hoping to get out and see as much of Riga as possible.
Ah, yes, restricted city centers in Europe. It used to be easy: electric bollards, if you didn’t have the right passcode or transmitter, you didn’t go in, no worries.
Nowadays, beware: hardly any bollards. Other than a tiny sign, they’ll let you in, a camera will take a picture, match against their whitelist of authorized vehicles, and if not found, will mail you a ticket. I’ve been known to reverse at an intersection to avoid getting a Zona a Traffico Limitato fine. Some Italian drivers were quite understanding, and some weren’t, but the ones who weren’t still had to wait for me .
Also, in places such as Paris and Madrid you’ll need the proper Crit’Air (France) or ECO (Spain) sticker on your windshield, or, if a cop or parking maid sees you, they’ll ticket you. In London, I think they track your LEZ and ULEZ (Low and Ultra Low Emissions Zone) charges by VIN, not sure anymore.
Keep up the posts!
Last edited by World Player; 07-29-2024 at 11:55 AM.
Interesting about Paris and Madrid. Thanks for the heads-up. Netherlands has polluter laws in some inner cities, but my understanding is that it's meant to keep out diesel cars and trucks that are more than 10 years old.
On this trip, the only thing we've had to be wary of is the speed cameras. I know those are used in different parts of the US, but they are still not legal to use in CA (Thank the good Lord above!). The good news here is that in each of the countries we've driven through with speed cameras, they tell you, "There is a speed camera ahead... and here's the posted speed limit!" In other words, you need to be asleep at the wheel to get one of these. Hopefully Lithuania, Poland, and Czechia will all be the same.
On the topic of driving laws and more specifically, enforcement... We've seen 2 cops on the road since leaving Amsterdam. We see them in the cities, but not on the highways. Is this typical?
Hardly any cops in the roads in Europe, with rare exceptions, because of the photo-radars. I got stopped at police checkpoints in:
• France, a few miles from the Andorra border
• Spain, halfway between Barcelona and Andorra (different trip)
• Greece, within Thessalonica’s city limits
In all 3 cases, they were looking for contraband, not for speeders, I’m pretty sure, and I got waved off as soon as they say my US passport. Germany is actually the rare place where cops riding BMWs will chase you, if I understand correctly, but I never saw that. I’ve also seen biker-cops (rarely) in Spain and France on divided highways.
Rules have recently changed in Spain, they now want to see an European or international driver’s license, otherwise the penalty is they will almost always impound Canadian’s and U.S. people’s cars (even if the car has Euro plates).
The restricted zone in Madrid is relatively small, I drove to many of the places that interested me this past May.
The Crit’Air zone in Paris is huge (everything inside the Periphérique or inner ring road) and so it is impossible to visit unless with a sticker, which you need to get before you leave your home.
In Switzerland you need a $40 annual highway sticker (the vignette), if you want to use the highways. No need if you just use regular roads. Last I knew you could get it at the border, but that was years ago.
Last edited by World Player; 07-30-2024 at 12:52 AM.
After enduring 30mph winds and heavy rain, the weather finally cleared on our last day in Riga.
As expected, Riga is an amazing city. I feel like a dumb American for not knowing any of the history of the Baltic countries, especially about the Soviet occupation and oppression. The strength and resilience of the people in the Baltic states is incredible. There’s an impressive quality of hope that permeates most everything in these cities. The people are extremely friendly and inviting. Kind of curious to me was that 38% of the population of Riga is Russian, yet everyone gets along extremely well, and moves together toward a better future for Latvia. Native Latvians we spoke with have no ill feelings towards the Russians. That said, they are not fans of Putin and are very supportive of Ukraine.
After Riga, we hit the road for Kaunus, Lithuania. We were planning to see Vilnius, but getting our car legal to drive took longer than we thought, so we had to skip Vilnius and make a shorter route to Warsaw.
Driving through Southern Latvia is mostly like it was driving North of Riga. Mostly single lane in each direction with heavy traffic that prohibits passing other than where a second lane occasionally opens for about a mile. For the most part, we were mostly in a line of trucks and cars moving along just below the 100kph speed limit.
And then we crossed into Lithuania…
Lithuania appears to be the most under-developed of the three Baltics we’ve visited, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They definitely don’t have the tech money of Estonia (Skype, Wise, Bolt, etc…), and I don’t think they have the tourist draw of Riga. As a result, the roads are even less developed. The main road traversing the country from North to South is a single lane in each direction, with no center divider, very narrow and with a MAX speed of 90kph. We probably had ~3 opportunities to pass over the entire length of the country. Because these are the conditions of the main North-South artery, there’s a lot of traffic in both directions.
But this is where things got fun and made the road-trip more of an adventure. Because of the highway congestion, and some road maintenance that made things even worse, Google would periodically re-route us off the main road and onto skinnier roads (sometimes dirt) through the rural regions. We got to see some very remote towns we would not normally experience driving a main highway. Although I love my GT3, and have dreams of one day driving it through Europe, today was yet another confirmation that a V8 Cayenne really is the greatest road-trip car ever.
The worst part of driving through Lithuania is the speed limits. There were times when I thought they were simply random. They would be 90kph in some areas, and as low as 30kph in others, with some making no sense whatsoever. To make matters worse, there would be speed cameras placed at many of the changes. In at least one area driving back roads around Kaunus, I’m pretty sure I scored a speed camera ticket when the speed limit changed from 70 to 50… in an area with no cross streets, homes, businesses, live stock, etc… This was the least fun part of driving through Lithuania.
One bonus… gas prices in Lithuania are the cheapest we’ve seen in any of the countries we’ve driven through. Once we did the conversion, they were not that far off the cost of gas in California.
I'm hoping to find a good car wash before we roll into Stuttgart next week. Our silver car is looking more grey, and my GT wheels are starting to look black after just shy of 4000kms so far.
Last edited by gonzobreath; 07-31-2024 at 03:54 PM.
We left Lithuania and drove straight to Warsaw. Once you cross the Polish border, things change quickly. The roads become freeways again. Almost immediate, the speed-limits jump from 90kph (~55mph) to 130kph (~80mph). It’s very easy to make time. Before we knew it, we were rolling into Warsaw.
Warsaw is probably the most modern city we’ve driven through on this trip, there is an “Old Town” (I’m convinced every EU city, town, village, hovel, etc… has an “Old Town”), but Warsaw’s Old Town is much smaller. The reason why is that the city was more or less flattened by the ***** in WWII (over 90%). Too complicated a story for this forum, but Warsaw was one of the most sought after prizes of both Hitler and Stalin. Both were more than happy to see the city destroyed. The Poles put up one of the biggest resistance fights of the war in the Warsaw Uprising. They were counting on the Allies to rescue them, but instead, Stalin halted his troops and allowed the ***** to destroy the city, obliterate the resistance, and massacre tens-of-thousands of Poles. When the ***** were done, they were forced to retreat as the Russians move in and occupied Poland until the fall of the Soviet Union.
As luck would have it, the Warsaw Uprising started August 1, 1944. Our stay coincided with the 80 year anniversary and day of remembrance. At 5pm, the entire city stopped for a moment of silence. All traffic halted, and the people bowed their heads in silence. It was something to behold. Lucky for me, I was not driving at the time.
Driving in Warsaw is similar to driving in nearly any large city, but not quite as congested. New glass skyscrapers have been built over the top of the Warsaw Ghettos. There are large universities, malls, and swanky western bars and restaurants that cater to the wealthier citizens. It’s far more cosmopolitan that I thought it would be.
Oh yes… our stay in Warsaw also coincided with the Taylor Swift concert… that was less fun.
After a couple days in Warsaw, we left for Brno, Czech Republic.
Driving from Warsaw to the border of Czechia was nice. Again, very nice highways, but this time the speed-limit was 140kph, which meant a large group of us moved along at about 160kph (~100mph) for a couple hours. This was quite a change from our driving in Lithuania just a few days ago.
Before the border, we left the highway in Zabrze to check out a smaller Polish city and grab lunch. Zabrze drove home that the economy in Poland is thriving. Zabrze was a very nice small city with an excellent downtown, lots of trees and parks, and everything was clean and well kept. It was hard to imagine this being an old Soviet satellite ~30 years ago. The only challenge was that no one spoke English. We had to rely on Google Translate to get gas (you fill before you pay), and to order lunch in a restaurant. This might have been the first location on our trip where no one spoke any English. After a nice break, we jumped back in the car and crossed the border into the Czech Republic.
The Czech Republic might now be my favorite place to drive in Europe.
Because we’re on a tight schedule to get to Paris next weekend, the Czech Republic is the only country we are staying in more than 2 cities on this trip. We opted to stay in Brno as well as Prague because BRNO is a 40 minute drive from the Punkevny Caves (Punka Caves). The Czech Republic has some of the best caverns in all of Europe, and even an underground river to boat down. This seemed like a great detour.
The Czech highways are on par with Poland as being modern with higher speed limits. The drive is also much nicer as you’re driving through rolling hills and forest with low mountains on the sides. This was all fine, but the real fun came when we exited the highway and drive the back roads to the caverns. Beautiful and near-perfect ribbons of asphalt that wind through incredible hills and valleys with small towns punctuating the way. Long sweeping curves with the occasional hairpin followed by straights bounding over hill-tops and through green valley floors. I was having a blast pretending the Cayenne was a 911… and then got passed by a handful of locals who seemed to know just how lucky they were to have these kinds of roads. The caverns were very cool, but the driving was awesome.
When we got to the caves, there was one guy who spoke English. He was shocked to see us and stuttered a bit when he heard we were from California. During our entire 5 hours of walking and floating through amazing caverns and ripping around the Czech race track, we saw no other English speaking tourists. It was almost entirely Czechs. This seemed to be the hidden secret known only to the Czechs. I feel a little guilty writing about it here for fear it will be spoiled if too many people find it!
After touring the caves, we decided to take an even longer route back to Brno just so we can take full advantage of the incredible tarmac. We even extended lunch by an hour to enjoy just a little bit more exploring of the countryside.
It should also be said that the small towns in this area were equally cool to drive through and occasional stop to check out.
For those like me who never would have stopped in Brno otherwise, it’s a very cool city. Yes… yet another “Old Town”… The city has a cool history, but nearly everything is punctuated with a humor. You kind of need a local to show you as not everything is immediately apparent. Also of note is that ~65k of the ~400k residence are students. As a result, the town has a very cool air, and some of the best beer in Europe. Surprisingly (maybe because of the young population) this is one of the cheaper cities to stay in for lodging, food, etc.
And if this were not enough to call our stay in Brno a win, we happened to also stay during the largest Brazilian celebration in all of The Czech Republic. No. I did not just make that up. The whole city goes nuts with drumming, dancing and drinking. Lots of colorful costumes. The whole city comes out and dances to the Brazilian rhythms. Kinda weird to be dancing with ~400k people on a cobble stone street in The Czech Republic … to Brazilian rhythm drumming.
07-17-2024, 11:39 AM
Continent Conqueror
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