From the bike to the beach to the ballet

(To counteract my last post complaining about some gear that has failed to survive our around-the-world adventure, I wanted to write about some products that we are happy with!)

Last night we saw a classical pianist perform in Old Town Dubrovnik, and tonight we are going to see the ballet! It’s part of Dubrovnik’s 68th annual Summer Festival, a cultural icon of Croatia.

But one of the challenges of light weight cycle touring is finding a set of clothing that fits all of the situations you might encounter without looking (and smelling) like they’ve been stuffed in a compression sack for months and haven’t been washed for a week. On our last tour, we opted for totally casual shorts and tee shirts, but that made it a little awkward if we wanted to have an occasional night out.

(Spandex works okay at a beach restaurant, but is a big no-no at the ballet unless you’re on stage.)

For this tour, we wanted to have a few nice dinners and cultural events like the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. So, while we mostly wear shorts and tee shirts, we also have a set of clothes that help us look a bit less ragged. You probably haven’t seen too many pictures of us in these, but I wanted to write about them since we are happy with how they are working.

What we ended up with after a lot of research and a few failed trial runs, is what you see above. For pants, we are both wearing the awesome Bluffworks travel pants, which look like somewhat dressy slacks, but resist wrinkles, wash easily, dry really fast, and have lots of pocket space and zippered pockets for carrying cameras, phones etc.

For shirts, we both have Icebreaker polos (although Steve is wearing a classic Ralph Lauren polo in the photo above). These tend to wrinkle more but are odor resistant, light weight, and dry quickly.

What do you think? Good enough for Tchaikovsky in the park tonight?