Looks like a really fun day.

I dunno. Looks like kitteh wants to go. Would it ride on your shoulder like Nala/One Bike One World?

Arlene, great to see your TMS gear represented!

glad to see you are back to touring. I've been using esims for the past few years. they work really well. you do not have to remove your Canadian SIM. just configure your esim to be primary. you may be able to just turn off your regular SIM in the SIM settings, otherwise configure its options to be unused. this trip I've been relying on my free 5 gigs of high speed data from T-Mobile and it's holding out so far. if it runs out, I'll grab a few days of days using Airalo.

I look forward to following along.

Those old SIM cards won't do you any good. I was wondering the same thing last week, and discovered that my Spanish SIM card from last year expired after 6 months of no use. After that point, they can re-assign the phone number. I think I'll use an e-sim on my travels this year for the first time. It'll be convenient, if not terribly cheap.

From the Spanish consulate’s website: Valid passport or travel document: The document must be valid until three months after the planned date of departure from the Schengen territory, and must have been issued during the ten years immediately before the date of entry.

So it’s three months after the date you plan to leave the Schengen Zone, not to enter it. When we started planning this trip we expected it to be 90 days, so we’d have needed to have six months remaining on the passport in order to enter.

Spain is 3 months and I believe so is France.
My wife sent in her renewal two weeks ago and last week (a week later) she saw the charge go through for the renewal. I hope this is good news as I sent in my renewal last week as soon as I returned home from Portugal.

Good thinking. I'll still be outside the 6 month window when I get back, but it will be high up on the must do list for October.

I’ll look forward to following this. We’re thinking we’ll be biking through here next year and will be looking for ideas.

If your passport is expiring next year, you should consider applying for your next one as soon as you get back because it’s a very slow process now. Also in case you didn’t know it, many countries require you to have six months left on it when you enter, regardless of the length you plan to stay. I don’t know about France, but Spain does.

Thanks, Steve, and we're looking forward to it. You got a blog we can read up on? Any particular recommendations?

Have a great ride and lots of fun. We have done the Velodysee and it is reasonably level (mostly) and very pretty.