An adventure is nothing more than a crisis that you accept. Put the other way, a crisis is nothing but an adventure against which you try to defend yourself. - Bertrand Piccard

Whew. This is going to be the last blog post, folks. Thanks so much for following along with us, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

The highlights of the trip for us were the following:

• Seeing Paris for the first time! What an amazing, historic, beautiful city!

• Ghent: we loved everything about it (Saroja especially loved, loved seeing The Lamb!)

• Steeping in the history of Brugge

• Sleeping on a houseboat in Rotterdam

• Relaxing in Amsterdam, we especially loved De Hortus and the House of Bols
• Penguin: forcing Saroja to give up on using a hair-dryer.I felt like I should have made a covert nature documentary of her rarely seen air-dried (and therefore very curly) hair (which I love). I would call it, 'Wife-rabbit in its natural state'. 
• Saroja: learning that we're just as good a team on bicycles as we are in a canoe. I loved spending all that time one-on-one with Penguin. It meant so much to share all the highlights with him, it just wouldn't be the same otherwise. He always finds a way to make me laugh when things are wet/cold/miserable. I've never loved this man more. 

Here are a few things we would do differently:

• We would have spent more time in Paris, 2 days just wasn't enough! We would also have downloaded a city-guide app onto the tablet or phone so that we would get more out of our experience while we were there. 
• Had we been able to pre-plan what sights we were going to see, we would have definitely downloaded more apps in general. Most of the museums have guide/information apps that would have saved us both time and money. 
• We would have booked our accommodations more than just one day in advance. We had done this on purpose so that we wouldn't feel pressured to reach a certain goal on any given day, in case we had bad weather or other misfortunes. But in the end, Saroja found it especially stressful not knowing where we'd be sleeping that night if someone hadn't gotten back to us right away, especially if the weather was lousy, having a warm bed and hot shower waiting for you meant a lot. That said, though, things always worked out for us! 
• We would have turned off the Garmin a lot sooner and blazed our own trail. Trying to stick to someone else's route and feeling perpetually lost was really frustrating. It's nice to have a "mostly traffic free" route through places, like leaving Paris, but when that route involves turning at every other intersection, following odd one-way streets, and generally forcing you to look at the map again every 2 minutes, it's not really worth the hassle. We decided in some cases it's better to take a slightly busier route if it's more straightforward, so things improved significantly once we decided to take navigating into our own hands. 
• We would have decided from the get-go whether we were going to camp or stay in B+Bs/hotels. Carrying all that camping gear for only a few nights didn't seem worth it in the end and without it, we would have had a lot more space for more creature comfort stuff (like more than one non-cycling shirt, says Penguin) 
• We would have brought more food with us. We were really hungry during parts of the trip and on more than one occasion, skipped lunch or went to bed without dinner because there just wasn't any food available. Having a bunch of extra protein bars in our bag would have made such a difference! 

Here are some things that we thought worked out exceptionally well:

• Doing spin classes all winter to prepare for the trip. That said, no matter how many 1 hour spin classes you do, nothing will really prepare you for spending 8 hours a day in the saddle day after day after day. But we're quite certain that psychologically, it helped a lot to know that we could do those spin classes. 
• Taking a bike mechanic course pre-trip so that we weren't intimidated by the, admittedly minor, repairs we had to do along the way. 
• Bringing our own bikes. We couldn't imagine doing this trip on a bike that didn't fit us perfectly and we were perfectly comfortable riding. Especially for Saroja, who is on the smaller side and would have had difficulty finding a rental bike that fit her. 
• Getting a European SIM card for Penguin's phone so we could upload blog posts, email B+Bs, and google directions whenever there wasn't an WiFi available. This was definitely a lifesaver! 
• Using Sygic as our map app on the tablet once we started navigating for ourselves; it was definitely the most reliable and user friendly one. 
• Planning our trip based on other bloggers experiences / routes. The advice to head east to west along the Normandy Coast of France was very good advice indeed! 
• Checking out bike-friendly accommodations on Gites de France and TripAdvisor was very handy. B+Bs were by far the most bike friendly and had the best food and hospitality. 
• Lastly, we were really glad that we made this blog. We normally each keep a journal when we travel but this was the first time we made an effort to blog as we went. There's so much that we would have forgotten if we hadn't taken the time (and effort - trust me, some nights it took a lot of effort) to write it all down. But, the blog itself is probably the best souvenir we have from the whole trip.