Tour de France Travellog

Jet lagged...

2012-07-25T18:34:00.002-07:00

I've never been as jet lagged as I am today. I guess in the 12 days we were over in France, my body really got on French time. That, combined with staying awake for about 22 straight hours on the flights home, then getting about 4 hours sleep before I popped up at 2:00am the morning (it was 10:00am Paris time) has me all messed up!

Anyway, I know I've got a lot more France posts to write, but they're going to have to wait for tomorrow.

Signs

2012-07-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

One thing that Nathan and I have noticed is that someone in France loves signs. It may be the people, the government, the road builders, or someone else, but there are so many signs in France it is almost unbelievable. I'm not talking about billboards or other advertisements along the road, but rather the road signs that tell you what you need to do or not do. These things are everywhere!

For example, they have an "end of" sign to match every "start of" sign. For instance, every town has a sign that says the name of the town when you enter it. That's a good idea, but then there is a corresponding end of the town sign when you are leaving. This has the town name with a big red stripe through it. Okay, this may make sense so you know you are out of the town. But they do that for everything, including bridges, tunnels, rest areas, and so forth. For instance, if you get off at a rest area, you get a sign to tell you that you are no longer on the highway or you come out of a tunnel and there is a sign you are no longer in the tunnel. Some seem reasonable, but some just seem ridiculous.

They also do something interesting on the exit from the highway. The speed limit on the autoroutes (the biggest highways in France) is 130 km/h. When you take an exit, they don't just tell you that the speed limit on the exit is 50 km/h, the instead "walk you down" from 130 to 50 in 20 km/h increments. Therefore, you'll see a 110 speed limit sign, then a 90, then a 70, and finally a 50. It's very wierd.

I've already talked about how the signs direct you from town to town. Sometimes they have so many towns to direct you to, they need to split it up onto more than one sign. We saw this a few times on the way to Paris.

They even have some signs ready to go on the off chance that a car or truck breaks down in the left lane on the highway. I guess if this happens, you need to get out of your car or truck and go flip this sign out so people know the road in front of them is blocked. I guess this is a good thing to know, but does this sort of thing happen enough to warrant such a sign? (Perhaps I have the purpose for these signs wrong and actually they get used all the time and are super important.)

Anyway, French drivers must be the best informed drivers anywhere in the world if the number of signs is any indication!

Last day in Paris

2012-07-23T00:20:00.002-07:00

As you've no doubt noticed, I'm about 3 days behind in posting. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to catch up this morning as it's our last day in Paris. We plan to do the Eiffel Tower, the Museum of the Middle Ages and the Arc de Triomphe.

Anyway, I'll see if I can get a post in tonight. Otherwise, I'll have to write some posts up on the flight home and get them up on Wednesday.

Au revoir!

Stage 17 and the long drive to Paris

2012-07-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday night, we decided our plan for Thursday:

Watch Stage 17 of the Tour as it leaves Luchon
Watch the rest of Stage 17 (all the way to the finish in Peyragudes) on TV in the apartment
Return the keys to the apartment to Mme Trichereau
Drive to Paris to the Le Meridien Etoile

All of these activities are pretty straightforward except the last one. We were basically about as far south in France as you could be, and the drive to Paris was showing up as about 850km on Google maps! Even at 130km/h on the autoroute it was going to take a while!

Anyway, we got up around around 9:00, ate our breakfast at the apartment, then headed out to see what was up. We found all the team busses lined up along the Allee d'Etigny, the main street in Luchon. We took a bunch of photos (see my previous post) and basically hung out in front of the RSNT bus. In fact, one of the representatives from Radio Shack gave us a copy of the team's magazine while we were there which was pretty cool.

This would be a good time to show a picture of the little passage we went through about 50 times a day in Luchon:

The Passage Sacarrere

This little passage went from our street to the main street of Luchon, and saved us a lot of time getting where we needed to go in town. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for that little passageway!

Anyway, back to the point of this post. As before, the riders started making their appearances, with RSNT and Team Sky seeming to be the last to pop out of their busses. Not sure that's something deliberate or what, but it seemed to happen every day.

There was one funny thing we witnessed while waiting to see the riders. A German lady was standing behind the barricade with the rest of us. Nothing odd there. Then she stood on a bench on the side of the road to get a better view. Still pretty reasonable. Then, she decided she could rest her feet by climbing over the barricade and then sititng on top of it. A few minutes later, since she was basically inside the barricade anyway, she decided to just stand on the inside of the barricade, leaning against it. Finally, she just said to hell with the barricade altogether and just started walking around inside the supposedly off limits area, taking pictures and doing whatever she wanted like she belonged there, and no one seemed to be the wiser. We fully expected her to hop on the RSNT bus before she was done!

As it was getting close to the start time, we decided to move to a location where we could see the riders go by after the start. We walked down the street, past the start line and all the hubbub to a place where we could get a good look at the course and had some room to stand behind the barricade. When we got there, we waited until they came through. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, here they came.

As I saw them coming toward me, I decided to take a video to capture what it was like. I guess I didn't reckon just how long it would take for the Tour to go by. I figured it would take 2 or 3 minutes, but I wasn't even close. In fact, I was amazed how long the entire Tour took to pass our spot. It must have been about 10 minutes or so.

After we watched the start, we went back to the apartment to pack up and watch the Tour on television. One funny thing that happens watching the Tour on French TV is that it switches back and forth between channels. We were watching an important climb when all of a sudden the station went to commercials and never came back. In a panic, we started channel surfing and there it was on the other channel!

That afternoon I called Mme Trichereau and let her know we would be leaving at 5:30 (after the Tour ended). This was without question my greatest French-speaking accomplishment of the trip! When she actually arrived at 5:30, I was elated, but then pushed things one step too far. I decided to use some of the other words I know to tell her that we were going to Paris. Unfortunately, I think I instead told her that "We have to Paris." Oh well...

After we gave Mme Trichereau the keys and loaded up the car, we were off. We took a different route that required no cols which was just fine by me. We encountered a bit of Tour traffic early on, but nothing too bad, and by the time we got to the autoroute, it was smooth sailing.

The journey was long and uneventful, and we navigated successfully all the way to Paris with no problem. Of course, once we arrived in Paris (around 2:00am) we proceeded to immediately get lost (even with the Google Maps directions on my phone). We had to call the hotel and get some guidance which did the trick. We were actually quite close to the hotel, but it was a good thing we made the call; we might still be circling!

We did see this while we were driving around lost in Paris:

The Arc de Triomphe lit up at night

Anyway, with that, we were done with our wild ride around France. The rest of our time would be spent in Paris (with the exception of our planned trip to the time trial finish in Chartres).

We finally got to sleep around 4:00, and while it was an exceptionally long day, at least we would wake up in Paris and not have to waste a whole day of our vacation driving.

The Tour leaves Luchon

2012-07-22T12:39:00.002-07:00

The Tour left Luchon on Stage 17 around noon. We decided that it would be cool to see the riders ride by, so after we hung out around the busses before the race, we headed down the street, passed the start area to a place where we could catch the riders coming by.

As a bit of background, the Tour actually does two starts. The first they call the départ fictif (I guess "fake start"). This start is the one where you see the 4 jersey wearers lined up at the start line and they all take off together. During the départ fictif, no one is allowed to attack, and basically the riders do a leisurely ride through town so all the people can get a good look at them.

The départ réel usually happens about 10 minutes later, and is when the real racing can begin. Riders will often attack almost as soon as the flag is dropped for the start of the départ réel.

We were waiting around a corner for the fake start and I captured a video. I wanted to see the riders go by, but quite honestly I didn't expect it to take quite as long as it did. Then, after filming so of the pre-rider part of the Tour, I figured I ought to get all the post-rider Tour as well. This meant two things:

The videos are exceptionally long with little view of the riders, and
There is not much action in the videos.

That said, if you are a Tour junkie, you might enjoy seeing just how massive the scale of the Tour is. I haven't counted, but I think there is probably 1 motorized vehicle for ever two bicycles that ride the Tour course everyday.

So here is the main video. It shows all the vehicles that proceed the cyclist, the cyclists themselves, and nearly all the team cars.

The actual cyclists come by around the 4:15 mark if you aren't a glutton for punishment.

The second video is very short, and just catches the tail end of the Tour, including the truck to carry any vehicles that break down en route. (I wonder what truck carries the truck that carries broken down vehicles if it breaks down?)

What I didn't capture was the team coaches that came a few minutes later. I don't think they follow the Tour route everyday like the other cars and trucks do, but I did capture some pictures:

Team Europcar heading out...

The Saxo Bank coach leading a bunch of others

I'm guessing the coaches took the road straight to Peyragudes, a very short (probably 20-30km) drive.

Random photos from the start of Stage 17 in Luchon

2012-07-22T03:01:00.001-07:00

I don't have time for a full post of the start of the race in Luchon, but here are some random photos to tide you over:

Maxime Bouet

Nibali or Sagan (or both) are probably in there

Federico Canuti

Name that rider!

Francis De Greef (Lotto) and Dries Devenyns

(OPQS)

Rein Taaramae (Cofidis) and
Sabastien Minard (AG2R)

Sergio Paulinho (I think)

Ivan Basso

Stephen Cummings

Maxime Monfort (I believe)

Peter Sagan (coming)

Peter Sagan (going)

Now I'm going to see the finale! See you later!

Sorry for the delay in posting

2012-07-22T02:02:00.001-07:00

Following the Tour and seeing Paris is taking most of my time. I'm still getting lots of great photos and stuff, but i need some more time to get them posted. Apologies...

Stage 16 Finish - Bagneres-de-Luchon

2012-07-20T15:18:00.001-07:00

This year, stage 16 is considered the queen stage of the Tour, which means that it was the hardest stage. The stage had two HC (hors categorie, or beyond classification) climbs and two category 1 climbs: the Col d'Aubisque (HC), the Col du Tourmalet (HC), the Col d'Aspin (Cat 1) and the Col de Peyresourde (Cat 1). In addition to having the toughest mountains to climb, it also was the longest mountain stage of the Tour, running 197 km. Finally, the weather decided to clear up and the temperature rose about 10 degrees C, to 35. Everything was conspiring to make this stage an epic challenge.

We woke up Wednesday ready for the stage. I made eggs and toast for the two of us, then went down to the office of Tourism to use their Internet and send a few messages, check Facebook and post a blog post or two. Then we went on a little walkabout to see how the town had been transformed overnight.

First, we saw that they had put up the flamme rouge:

The flamme rouge on Allee d'Etigny in Luchon

We wandered down to the finish area to see what it looked like. They had the finish line all done:

The finish line in Luchon

In addition, they had set up a stand right on the finish line to get dramatic footage of the sprint probably wouldn't happen today.

A great camera angle for the finish line!

We also saw where they put the TV trucks, including the NBC Sports Channel truck where Phil and Paul work:

They apparently sit in the bumped out part up top!

Finally, with the walkabout complete, we went back to the apartment to actually watch the Tour on TV since it would be hours before even the publicity caravan arrived.

One thing that is interesting about watching the Tour in France is that it is covered by two stations: France 2 and France 3. We were happily watching France 2 when the telecast just stopped and went to back to back commercials. We were puzzled until we thought to tune to France 3 where sure enough the Tour was playing!

We watched the two HC climbs on TV then headed out to the street. We found a great location where we could watch the race from the front row (unlike in Pau where we were way behind the barricade and loads of people). In addition, the place was very close to a television in the Aussie bar nearby that we used to monitor progress. When things got really exciting, either Nathan or I would run to the TV to see what was happening since the French announcer of the PA system wasn't helping us.

We say yet another appearance of the publicity caravan and got some more swag, including the ever elusive PMU green hands:

The Kleber driving tire

A giant chicken advertising something!

Nathan with his prized PMU green hands

I took very few photos of the riders coming into Luchon as I wanted to make sure I showed them my appreciation for their hard work by cheering wildly for them as they came in. This was especially true for Thomas Voekler who is becoming an absolute deity in Luchon having won the last time the Tour finished here as well winning this year. Oh, and he's French so that helps with the popularity thing too!

I did get some pictures of the stragglers coming in, and here they are:

That's Cav in the very back...

Most of these guys were just happy to be done soon.

After the race, we hung around the apartment a bit, then grabbed a sandwich on the main street for dinner. Following dinner, we went back to the apartment and I absolutely killed Nathan in Mille Bournes. (FYI: he did the same to me the night before...)

We did a bit of reading and then were off to bed in order to be up and fresh for the start of stage 17.

Rest day

2012-07-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was a rest day for the Tour, and we used it as a rest day as well. We slept in, and got out of bet around 11:00 or so. We basically had a wander around Luchon, grabbed a sandwich at a cafe on Avenue d'Etigny (the main drag in Luchon) and then went back to the apartment for more resting. (I said it was a rest day, right?!)

Here is the one photo we took on our wander:

Apparently Luchon is proud to be a Ville d'Etape

(start or end town for a stage of the Tour)

We were having difficulty finding a breakfast place, so Nathan and I decided in the afternoon to go pick up some supplies at the small grocery store on the main street. We got some ingredients to make eggs and toast with jam, as well as a few additional essentials (Diet Coke, baby!) With that major task out of the way, we went back to the apartment for some more resting!

We had decided to take the rest day to drive down to Spain so Nathan and I could say we had been there, so that's exactly what we did around 5:00. We figured we would go to the first Spanish town inside the border and have dinner there, so off we went over the Col de Portillon. This was a really cool col in that it had houses, restaurants and lots of other stuff on the way up. This is not to say that they hill was covered with buildings, but there were some things here and there to make the mountain seem a bit friendlier and less intimidating.

More Pyrenees

A switchback on the Col de Portillon

Another peak on the way to Bossast

More Pyrenean views

Bossost off in the distance...

Another view of Bossost down in the valley

An awesome view (in my opinion) up a valley

in the Spanish Pyrenees

When we got to the top, we realized that we'd not brought our passports, but there was no need; there wasn't even a sign that said we were entering Spain (literally!) let alone some border guards.

We came down the mountain into the Spanish town of Bossost. It was very cute just like the French towns, but had signs in Spanish instead of French. We looked around and decided that we really didn't see anything that we wanted to eat, so we just drove back to France and our apartment (where we rested some more!)

Here are some photos of Bossost that I took while we are there:

The town hall of Bossost

A nice restaurant in Bossost

A windy street in a Spanish town

A very cute little restaurant with the mountains

in the background

The central square of Bossost

A view of Bossost from the distance

That night we had pizza in a little pizza place on Allee d'Etigny and then went back to the apartment, rested and played Mille Bourne (in actual French!) Not a bad rest day!

The road to Luchon

2012-07-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

We left Pau and made our way southeast to Tarbes on the autoroute, then got our first taste of the Pyrenees. We turned south on a little road and after a bit of driving through valleys and small towns (there are ALWAYS small towns!) we got our chance to experience two classic Pyrenean cols: the Col d'Aspin and the Col de Peyresourde. These are both Category 1 climbs, and let me tell you: getting up them in a car was difficult. I can't imagine how tough it is on a bike.

The Col d'Aspin was the first col we encountered, and was by far the scariest to me. It is really in the middle of nowhere, and there are no buildings, towns, roads, or anything else to make it more interesting. It's just a twisty road with a steep dropoff on one side.

Eventually, you pass the tree line and it is just grass and rocks. It is really an uninviting place, and nowhere you'd want to go unless you had to be somewhere on the other side. That, or you were watching the Tour, in which case you'd drive up there two days before the Tour arrived, found a tiny spot of land where you could fit your camper and then parked!

We didn't really take many pictures on the Col d'Aspin because I was freaked out driving and Nathan was freaked out (I think) being driven by me.

The Peyresourde was a much "friendlier" col. While it still had some pretty hairy switchbacks and steep sections, there were fewer moments where you felt like a slight slip of the hand on the wheel would send you plummeting to your death.

On both cols, it was absolutely amazing when you get down far enough to see the bottom of the valley below you. In both cases, there were picturesque towns sitting at the bottom of the mountain on the other side, and seeing them from 1,000 feet up (or more) was really cool.

At the bottom of the Peyresourde, we arrived in our destination town of Luchon. We drove around a bit to find the main street where we were supposed to meet Madame Trichereau who would get us into our apartment, and eventually fond our meeting place, the post office (La Poste).

There was a bit of a Tour-related party going on when we arrived (around 9:30) and things on the main street were pretty lively. We called Mme Trichereau, and after a bit of chatting (she does not speak English!) we worked out who we were and were we were at.

About 5 minutes later, Mme Trichereau arrived and escorted us to our apartment which was just around the corner. She let us in, gave us the keys and showed us (with gestures and French with tiny bits of English) how things worked. For instance, she showed us how to operate the remote that opens the gate into the parking lot in front of the building as follows:

Say something about "voiture" (car, in French) and make an opening gesture with her arm
Point to one of the buttons on the remote and say "La"
Point to the other button on the remote and say "Non"
Repeat 2 and 3 about 6 times

Anyway, here's what our building looked like:

Home sweet home for the next few days (And, yes,

that is a Mizzou flag flying!)

Here are some photos we took on this part of the journey:

Approaching the Pyrenees with a group of

cyclists in front of us

Hopefully this captures how steep these

mountains are

Some nice farms right in the foothills of

the mountains

From one of the cols

Another photo from one of the cols. See the road

down below? We're headed there!

Not a great shot, but attempting to show the rugged

nature of the mountains

That's a big hill!

Stage 15 Finish - Pau

2012-07-20T01:22:00.002-07:00

We made our way to Pau in a mad rush. We had a paper that had printed out what were supposed to be the times that the riders would be going by each point on the course, and it said the riders would reach Pau around 3 hours later. This seemed super fast for the distance they were riding, but we didn't want to take any chances and spent no time dillydallying.

It was quite a drive, up and down hills in the foothills of the Pyrenees, but with me mashing gears in our manual transmission Corsa and Nathan navigating using the giant Michelin map and a map in the newspaper, we arrived in Pau around 4:00 or so, and immediately ran into barricades telling us the road was closed.

We didn't want to spend a huge amount of time driving around trying to find a parking space, so we just parked in the first place we found and started walking (with our backpack full of chocolate croissants!) We got out to the main street and found that it had been converted to the Tour route. There were barricades and signs all up and down the street and people were already packing both sides waiting for the ride.

We wanted to be closer to the finish, so we started walking. We were a bit dispirited when we saw the first distance marker said we were 3km away from the finish line, but we figured we just walk as far as we could and if the race came by we'd watch it from wherever we were. Fortunately, the timings in the paper we had must have been for the publicity caravan and not the race itself. We ended up having plenty of time to get to the finish line.

We stopped a bit when the caravan came by and got some new goodies:

Nathan in his sweet polkadot Carrefour hat

Me in my sweet Carrefour polkadot hat

Then we continued walking, past the flame rouge:

The marker showing the riders there is 1 km left

We found a nice spot where there was a restaurant with a TV right on a corner of the route. Here we could a) watch the race until it got into town, and b) see all the way down the street as the riders approached. This was nearly perfect, as it was hot and sunny out and we'd been doing quite a bit of walking.

We watched the race on TV and found out that several riders were on a long breakaway: Christian Vande Velde and Pierrick Fedrigo were among them. Side note: one downside to actually being at the Tour is that, unless you speak French, it's really hard to follow the Tour on the radio. Therefore, the entire time we were driving or walking, even though they play the Tour over loudspeakers along the route (at least in the finish city), it was nearly impossible for us to know what was happening, other than getting an idea that someone is doing something if they say his name a lot.

Anyway, pretty soon the breakaway came into town and were getting close, so we went outside to wait for them. Sure enough, the helicopter appeared overhead soon which is a sure sign the Tour is nearby. Then a single motorcycle came speeding down the road:

A harbinger of things to come

Then more motorcycles:

They are getting close

And then the two riders in the break, followed by cameramen, race officials, and team cars:

You may need to click on the photo to see them!

Here you can see Fedrigo and Vande Velde as they speed by:

Hey, baby! You're looking the wrong way!

Fedrigo went on to win the stage, with Vande Velde coming in second.

Since these guys were so far ahead of the peleton, we decided to move closer to the finish line to see if we could get a better feel for the bunch sprint. We managed to get to the 150m mark before we had to stop, and from here we watched the peleton speed by. I captured a video of the peleton as it came by to get a feel for the speed these guys generate:

Andre Greipel and his lead out man are in first, follow by the ever present Peter Sagan, then the rest of the peleton. I think Greipel came in third, but don't quote me!

One thing to notice is some of the stuff that is gathered around the finish line, included three giant viewing booths, stands, giant TV screens, awards stand, etc. These go everywhere the Tour goes, and get torn down and packed up every day to move to the next town. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the logistics of the Tour is incredible. Moving all this stuff around France every day has to be a monumental effort.

We moved to the stage where the trophy presentations were and got these photos:

Bradley Wiggins with the maillot jaune (best in

the general classification, i.e., the overall leader)

Peter Sagan with the maillot vert (best sprinter)

Fredrik Kessiakoff in the polkadot jersey (maillot ???

for king of the mountains)

Tejay Van Garderen in the maillot blanc (best

young rider)

Team Radio Shack Nissan Trek getting the

team general classification prize

After the prize ceremony, we headed back to our car. Unfortunately, two things happened: first, we realized that we'd managed to get a decent bit of sunburn standing outside all day and needed to stop by a pharmacy to get some sunscreen and some aloe (or the French version of aloe).

Second, we listened to me and tried to save a bit of time by not returning to our car the exact way we came. This was almost a fatal mistake as we got disoriented in the twisty streets of old town Pau and had a really hard time time recognizing the roads that we had been walking down. In addition, they are so fast tearing down the Tour (barricades, signs, etc.) that the road that we needed to get on looked nothing like it did when we walked down it the first time!

The good news is that we eventually did find the proper street, and with a minimum of extra walking, but with a maximum of extra stress! We walked and walked (remember it was over 3km) until we FINALLY found the car. I vowed next time to take my GPS and set a waypoint when we park. (Note: I tried to do that on my phone but it complained that it didn't have data service so it couldn't save the location. See, I'm not completely dumb!)

Next up, a little several hour drive to Luchon.

Stage 15 Start - Samatan

2012-07-19T02:23:00.002-07:00

The night before our first Tour stage (Stage 15), we looked at the map and realized that the way the course was laid out would make it pretty easy to see both the start in Samatan as well as the finish in Pau as originally planned. Therefore, we got up around 9:00 and packed up the car. Because of the kooky nature of the hotel, there was no checkout process; you just left and the locks stopped letting you in. Or at least I hope.
Believe it or not, we tried to go to another McDonald's for breakfast (much to Nathan's dismay, but a) it was on the way, and b) we didn't have to waste a bunch of time searching for it). We navigated directly to it (probably our best in town navigation of the trip) but it was closed. Therefore, we went to plan B: find a grocery store along the way and grab something to eat. This turned out to be a great idea as we found a nice Carrefour right off the highway and bought water bottles, orange juice, Coca-cola Light for me (I like my soda!) and a box of 12 chocolate croissants! The croissants were our best purchase of the trip: we at a couple each in the car and had several left over for carrying around and eating in Samatan and Pau.

We got back on the road to Samatan, and that's where things started to get weird. First, we were passed by a crazy red car with a big plastic bubble on the back containing what appeared to be a giant C cell battery. We didn't think much of it until a bit later we were passed by an AG2R team car. It turns out that the teams and the publicity caravan participants were all staying in Toulouse, and were making their way up to Samatan just like we were! In fact, there were signs at the highway exit and all along the route we were taking pointing the Tour people to the Depart (start line).

The area of France we were in (Gers) seems to produce two main products, one we saw everywhere we looked and one we just had to be told about. The product that was easy to spot was the sunflowers. Everywhere along the road were fields of sunflowers. They looked a bit like this:

Fields and fields of sunflowers

The product that we didn't see but had to be told about was foie gras. The town of Samatan apparently is very famous for their foie gras (fatty goose liver) prodution. In fact, as soon as we got to Samatan, we saw evidence of their goose heritage (along with some other Tour decorations):

Woohoo! Home of foie gras!

The locals made a nice bicycle for the affair!

Another vignette for our enjoyment!

A nice farmer flagged us over and let us park in his field. He didn't even charge us anything. I'm not sure if that is part of the agreement the Tour makes with the town (i.e., to not gouge people on stuff like parking) or if that's just the way people are in the south of France.

Either way, we parked and started walking toward the town center. As we walked along, we kept seeing Tour related vehicles making their way toward Samatan:

Those are publicity caravan vehicles

As we got closer to town, we began to see lots of staging areas, some already full of Tour vehicles and some waiting to be full:

The motorcycles of the video camaramen

The publicity caravan vehicles waiting to go

The parking lot where the team buses would park

The doctor's "Skoda" that's actually a VW Eos

As we crossed a small bridge and entered the town, we saw that it was decorated with little flags in the shape of geese, all in the colors of the jerseys of the Tour. I wonder if Flo could make some of those for me?!

Nice decorations for the Tour!

We wandered around the town and took in the pre-Tour sights. Some of the publicity caravan folks were already hard ad work handing out goodies, and four guys dressed as geese were wandering around, apparently excited that they were going to be turned into foie gras soon:

He looks pretty happy!

And dancing with a gendarme!

Soon the teams started to arrive in their caravans of cars and a giant coach:

Katusha's bus and bikes

Radio Shack and Lampre

A Katusha rider chatting with fans

Nathan with the Schleck-mobile

Me with the Jens-mobile

Here is the start line and the crowd that had already gathered about 2 hours before race time:

People are pretty excited!

Then the publicity caravan started in earnest. A few things about the publicity caravan: it is like a long parade, but it moves at high speed (probably 20 mph or so). As they pass by in their odd vehicles of all shapes and sizes, they hand out samples to the people lining the street. Well, maybe hand is a little gentle, it's more like fling or throw. Some of the flingers realize they are throwing potentially unsafe objects at people from a 20 mph vehicle and aim their trinkets low. Others just fling them willy nilly, and let the chips (or key chains as the case may be) fall where they may. If that is in your cornea, that's your problem!

Anyway, here are some photos from the publicity caravan:

Woot! Bread!

Nathan with our first swag: Bic pens!!!

After the caravan went by, the team cars started to line up, and the riders started to head to the starting line. It was absolute chaos on the road as cars, bikes, motorcycles, and pedestrians all mingled with one and other. It is hard to believe that there are not more injuries just from the craziness at the starting line, but I guess these guys are professionals.

A Liquigas rider heading to the line

Another...

Philip Gilbert (I believe) signing an autograph

Here's the girl who holds up the board with

the time difference on it!

Soon, riders were passing us in large groups, and the start was imminent. All the riders were standing in a giant group, chatting and waiting. I managed to get Chris Horner to give me a wave and Nathan did the same with Frank Schleck! Here are some photos of the start line:

Maxime Monfort waiting and chatting

Chris Horner was right by us

Frank giving us a look

Frank Schleck stands out in a crowd!

After a few minutes of sitting there, someone gave a signal and they all took off. The crowd went nuts, but then they all stopped again. Apparently, the riders don't initially line up right on the start line, and the signal they gave was just to move to the start line itself. I think they do this just to mess with the crowd, or possibly to let us get two shots at sending them off!

Finally, at 1:30 on the dot the race started. Of course, the first start is called the depart fictif, or false start. During this start, they ride as a big group through the town so people lining the streets can get a good look at them. (We were on the other side of the starting line, so we have no photos of this.) Ten minutes later, they have the real start and that's when the racing (and usually the breakaway attempts) start for real.

After the race leaves town, the team buses head out for the next town, and the Tour logistics team starts packing up:

On the way to Luchon!

And with our first Tour de France experience under our belts, we headed back to our car to make the drive to Pau.

Navigating in France

2012-07-18T11:29:00.002-07:00

Navigating in France is actually both easy and hard. It is easy to navigate across the country from one town or city to another. It is extremely hard once you get to the destination city to find something that is not a major attraction (like a hotel).

Basically, to get from town to town, you just need to know some of the larger towns in between where you are and where you want to go. There are signs everywhere that tell you what road to take to get to the next town. Follow those signs until you get to the first destination town, then look for the next town along the route. By hopping from town to town, you can very easily go from one end of the country to the other by simply remembering a few towns or cities along the way.

It is also very easy to find the major sites in a town once you get there because there are also signs pointing the way. Every city/town/village has a sign on the road pointing to the "Centre Ville" which is basically the downtown area. Also, if you are looking for major attraction like a cathedral, chateau, stadium, etc., there will be signs for those.

Where it is difficult is if you are looking for a hotel or god forbid a house. In this case, you are on your own, and the streets are so nutty it is REALLY difficult to get where you're going. The streets change names constantly, they change direction regularly, and go through round abouts all the time. The combination makes finding a particular address quite challenging.

The good news is that we've been successful to date, and every day we get a bit better at navigating. Who knows, by the time we return the rental car we might be experts!

The journey south

2012-07-18T11:27:00.001-07:00

After our day in the Loire Valley, it was time to make the long journey south. The drive was about 250 miles or 400 km. We didn't want to spend the whole time just driving, so we chose a route that would take us through Poitiers and Bordeaux. In addition, we also planned a quick stop in old town Tour to see the cathedral there.

We got up and had our breakfast at McDonald's again. Nathan commented that he had to come France to really start eating at McDonald's as he never eats there in the US. We mixed things up a bit and went the the McCafe part of the restaurant (it's a seperate part in France) and order some pastries.

Look familiar?

With breakfast out of the way, we headed down to the south part of Tours to see the cathedral. A short side note: by this time we were getting pretty good at navigating in France. We could generally get where we were going with a minimum of wrong turns, and had developed a strategy on the round abouts that if there was any question, take a test trip around to reconnoiter the situation before turning.

We got down to the old part of Tours and parked, then had a bit of a walk around. We found a number of interesting sights, including the picturesque narrow streets of the old town, a 600 year old cathedral and perhaps the widest cedar tree I've ever seen. We couldn't get a photo of the tree as there was nowhere to get a photo that did it justice but take my word for it, this thing was enormous.

Here are a few photos of what we saw in old Tours:

The public garden in front of the

Musee de Beaux Arts

More of the gardens with the cathedral

in the background

A view of the cathedral

Yet another twisty street. Ho hum...

Me trying out a nifty vending machine

on the street!

We could not get a huge number of photos in the Tours cathedral because a service was going on. I guess that shouldn't be surprising since it was Sunday morning. Oh well, maybe next time!

After a little while in Tours, we got on the highway for Poitiers. This was the shortest of the three legs of our journey, but still pretty long. Poitiers was actually a very nice city, with an old town up on top of a huge hill and millions of twisty streets and super old buildings. However, we didn't get out of the car there and didn't take an pictures. Sorry, Poitiers!

The next leg of the journey was from Poitiers to Bordeaux. This was a bit longer leg, but still not bad. We drove through the wine country of France, and were surrounded by huge vineyards in all directions. We had decided that we wanted to see the cathedral at Bordeaux as it was a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition, we had read in a guidebook that there was a huge bell tower right next to the cathedral that you could climb up in. We decided to do both.

We arrived in Bordeaux and followed the signs to the cathedral, the Cathedrale St-Andre. We found a parking space nearby (thanks for the free parking, Sunday!) and made our way to the cathedral. When we got there, we were blown away. It was huge (although not as huge as Chartres) and also super light and inviting inside. It was clear that the folks in Bordeaux had really put a lot of work into maintaining and restoring the building and it was without question the nicest cathedral we have seen so far.

Next, we went over to the bell tower (Tour Pey-Berland). Apparently, the bells were put in a seperate tower in order to keep the vibrations from the bells from damaging the cathedral. It was maybe 100 yards away from the cathedral, but apparently that was enough. It is interesting that in 1440 when the tower was begun, they already knew that the sound waves from the bell could damage the masonry of a building.

Anyway, you get to the top of the tower by climbing 232 steps in a super tiny spiral staircase. It was really tight in there (they only allow 19 people in at once!), but with a little squeezing by people coming down, we made up to the top and it was certainly worth it. You could see all of Bordeaux and look down on the cathedral nearby. It was very cool, and we took a ton of photos.

Here are several photos from our time in Bordeaux:

The Bordeaux Cathedral from the

top of the bell tower

Another view of from the bell tower

Nathan posing with our favorite gargoyle

Me and my new friend!

A view from the bottom of the bell tower

After Bordeaux, it was time to get the rest of the way to Toulouse. We had a bit of trouble finding the highway after we left the center of the city. We kept seeing signs that showed a ring and said "Rocade", and since the map showed a highway that went all the way around the city, I guessed that "Rocade" must mean "Ring" or something, and we made our way toward the Rocade. Sure enough, whether my guess was right, once we got on the Rocade, we found a sign pointing us toward Toulouse. Hooray!
The rest of the journey was rather uneventful, so I'll just end with a few random notes:

France's farm land just seems nicer than the farm land in the US. I've been all over the midwest in the US and seen a lot of farms, but none of them looked anywhere as nice as the ones we have been seeing in France
The autoroutes in France are awesome, although the are a bit expensive. The speed limit is 130 km/h which is 81 mph, and they have really nice service station/restaurants all along the route. Total is my favorite!
You see a lot of nuclear power stations in France.
The Opel Corsa could use a 6th gear. When you are cruising at 130 km/h, the little engine in the Corse is really working hard!
Gasoline is freaking expensive.

After arriving in Toulouse, we followed our directions as best we could to the hotel (the B&B Hotel Basso Cambo). We eventually arrived (we are good at long range navigation, but getting around cities is a bit tougher) at the hotel about 8:30 at night, and there was litterally no one there. The way the hotel works is that you use a touch screen computer to get your room key code, and then use use a keypad on the door to get in. The whole hotel seems to be unstaffed at night. Here it is:

Woohoo! Home for a night!

And that was it for Day 3!

Limited posting for the next few days

2012-07-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have no convenient access to the Internet here in Bagneres-de-Luchon (or as the locals call it, Luchon). I am currently sitting on the ground in front of the Office of Tourism to make this post. I will be able to try to post some new tomorrow and the next day, but expect the substantial stuff to be posted 2 days from now.

I will give you a taste of what we've been up to:
We drove from Tours to Toulouse by way of Poitiers and Bordeaux
We watched the start of the stage on Monday from Samatan
We raced the Tour to Pau and caught the finish and the awards ceremony
We drove to Luchon which entailed crossing over the Col d'Aspin and the Col du Peyresourde
We rested a bit in Luchon
We drove to Spain by way of the Col du Portillon

Anyway, it's been a pretty exciting past few days, and I will get the posts up as soon as possible.

Chateaux Hopping (Deuxième Partie)

2012-07-15T15:31:00.002-07:00

After Amboise, we visited Clos Luce which is located in the same town. This is not so much a chateau as it is a large house with an attached park containing some additional buildings. It is famous not because it was home to nobility, but because it was the house given by the king to Leonardo Da Vinci when he came to live in Amboise.

The house at Clos Luce is nice, but nothing compared to Amboise or Langeais. However, what makes it interesting is that it is filled with Da Vinci's drawings and models of those drawings. (Side note: The models were made by IBM, and I'm about 99% certain I remember IBM announcing these when I worked there back in the 90s. In fact, I believe I saw one or two of these models at the Management Development Center in Armonk when I went there for training.)

Anyway, the models at Clos Luce were the real stars of the show, along with a bunch of full scale reproductions of Da Vinci's inventions in the park. Unfortunately, I did not get any photos of these as they were hard to really capture on film, especially because the rooms with the models were quite crowded.

Nathan and I toured the house and the took a walk in the garden, but truth be told we were not super impressed with Clos Luce. Sure, the models and whatnot were cool, but they were not actual historical items, and there was little at Clos Luce that you could not theoretically see somewhere else. However, Nathan and I were of course suitably impressed with what a great mind that Da Vinci had and how he was cooking up things in his notebook that would actually be invented 500 years later.

As we walked through the park, Nathan and I had a very interesting conversation about whether someone like Da Vinci could exist today, dreaming up inventions that people would actually build hundreds of years in the future. I think we both agreed that it would be possible to have another Da Vinci (and probably already have had some), but the idea of someone coming up with a brilliant idea, writing it down in a book and then doing nothing with it is far less likely today than it was in the 16th century.

Anyway, here are a couple photos from Clos Luce:

A view of Clos Luce from the garden

The Chateau Ambroise as seen from the garden

at Clos Luce

Nothing against Clos Luce, but it was the low light of our day of chateau hopping. Perhaps it was just that the other places we visited were so awesome. Who knows?

Anyway, after Clos Luce, we drove to Chenonceau which was by far the belle of the ball. This chateau is actually built over the River Cher and is truly a site to behold.

You approach the chateau down a long boulevard lined with trees:

Nathan's already getting excited!

On the way, you pass a garden maze on the left, so we detoured and had a little fun there:

Nathan searching desperately for a way out

of the maze

Me celebrating conquering the maze for the first time!

I'm kidding about Nathan being lost. The maze at Chenonceau is awesome, but it does give me the impression that the French nobility had a low tolerance for being humiliated by a bunch of shrubbery; the maze was about the easiest thing to get through I've ever seen. Still it was very cool, and probably both Nathan and my first garden maze. If only I could have checked in on Foursquare!

After our maze adventure, we made our way to the chateau itself. In a word, this place is breathtaking. Don't take my word for it, here are some photos:

Chenonceau as seen from the lawn

A closer view of the front of the castle

A view from one of the gardens

In the last photo, you can see how long the castle is compared to how wide it is. This is because it is straddling the river, and boats can (and did) go back and forth underneath the castle. It is one of the most amazing thing that I've ever seen.

Chenonceau was known as "le château des dames" because it was primarily lived in and presided over by various wealthy and powerful women, including Diane Poitiers (mistress of Henry II), Catherine de' Medici (wife of Henry II!) and even Mary, Queen of Scots. Apparently these women had great taste because the inside of Chenonceau was just as gorgeous as the outside:

The first floor gallery over the river; it is filled with

statues and has amazing fireplaces at either end

The stained glass windows in the chapel

The mantle above one of the many fireplaces

Did someone say they needed a gold leaf fireplace? Check.

The ceiling on the third floor. The detail was amazing!

Chenonceau is not just about the building, however. The gardens were also gorgeous, both the formal gardens and the flower and vegetable gardens that are on site. I didn't get a lot of photos of the formal gardens (although you can see a bit of one in the photo above), but the flower and vegetable gardens were awesome, and I'm not a garden person:

Nathan posing in front of the haricots (or was it the

aubergines?)

The grounds are also immaculate:

Clearly someone takes keeping this place looking

good VERY seriously

I'm sure there are other castles that can rival Chenonceau, but it will stand at the top of my list as one of the most impressive places I've ever had the pleasure to visit.

After Chenonceau, we wrapped up our castle hopping adventure and headed back to Tours. We celebrated our day of taking in royal (and other) history by grabbing a take out pizza from the Tablapizza that was right next door to our hotel. And with food out of the way, we were off to bed.

Chateaux Hopping (Première Partie)

2012-07-15T13:36:00.001-07:00

Our first full day in France was spent chateaux hopping in the Loire Valley. We asked for some guidance from the person at the front desk of the hotel, and looked some things up in our guidebooks and decided on 3 or 4 chateaux that were relatively close by to visit. It turns out that Tours was an excellent HQ for our adventures, and we saw some truly incredible sights this day.

We were up fairly early (around 8:00) and got on the road by 8:45. First stop: breakfast, and the front desk guy basically told us our only option in the area was McDonald's. With little choice, we headed over.

When we got there, we found a the nicest McDonald's we'd ever seen. We still could hardly order food there, and accidentally ordered almost the entirety of Nathan's meal twice, but other than that we got a good start for the day.

Here are some shots of Chez McDonald's:

Look at that place! It's a thing of beauty!

Nathan eating his first truly French meal

The first stop after breakfast was Chateau Langeais. This was in a bit to the west of Tours and was a chateau that was in a bit more rustic condition. We arrived in Langeais and found an unbelievably picturesque town square with the castle in the background:

Could this be any cuter?!

The town hall, flying the colors on Bastille Day

A look up the street at the chateau

The castle itself is a bit on the rustic side (as castles go), but was a castle to start with as had we seen it last we might have been a bit disappointed. Instead, this castle gave us a taste and each subsequent castle just got better and better.

Apparently, it was at this castle that the king of France (Charles VIII) married Anne, the duchess of Brittany and unified all of France. Whatever the history, the chateau was very well preserved and looked gorgeous from the outside. Here are a few other shots of the castle to show what I mean:

Langeais as seen from the castle yard inside the walls

The original fortress built around 1000 years ago that

has since crumbled

Finally, here's Nathan as he'd look if he was a French solder 500 years ago:

Pretty menacing, huh?

After exploring Langeais, we drove back east through Tours to a town called Amboise. On the way, we passed some of the most amazing villages that were right on the banks of the Loire river. In many of the villages, because their was not much room, the houses actually had been dug into the side of the very steep hill on the north side of the river. I don't have any pictures, but I'm sure you can find some. It was absolutely fascinating how (and maybe more important why) they had gone to the trouble.

Before we visited the chateaux in Ambroise, we walked through the old part of the town and found a sandwicherie where we had lunch. I'm not kidding either; the sign over door said "sandwhicherie"! Apparently, in French you can stick "-erie" onto anything to indicate a place where they sell and/or make that thing. For instance, we saw a boulangerie (bakery), a patiserie (pastry shop), a saladerie (salad restaurant) and bagpiperie (bagpipe dealer). BTW, I made that last one up.

Here's a shot of the old town and our favorite sandwicherie in Ambroise:

A nice clock tower in old town Amboise

See the sign? I told you it was a sandwicherie!

The town of Amboise was significantly bigger than Langeais. This is probably because the aforementioned Charles and Anne made the Chateau Amboise their home after their wedding. This likely drew a lot more people to this town.

Where Langleais was beautiful if somewhat spartan, Amboise was just beautiful. It was huge, on top of a massive cliff overlooking the whole area, and filled with gardens and other comforts.

Here are a few photos of Amboise:

The view of the river Loire from the castle

Looking at the outside of the main building from the

castle yard

Part of the chateau as viewed from the inside

One of the gargoyles standing watch

over Amboise

The chapel at Amboise where Leonardo Da Vinci

is buried

See? I told you!

You may be wondering why Leonardo Da Vinci was living in a town in France. Apparently, King Francois I loved and appreciated Da Vinci and brought him to Amboise when he Da Vinci was 64 years old. He lived in Amboise until he died.

They say you should keep them wanting more, but I'm not sure what the first they say when the second they never really wanted the first bit, let alone more. Either way I'm going to stop here and finish up later. Au revoir!

The drive from hell

2012-07-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

We left Chartres around 2:30 in the afternoon and headed to Tours. Now a couple things you need to know that are relevant to this post: 1) we had been up for about 25 straight hours, and 2) I had to go to the restroom. (Note to those reading my other posts: don't think I have some kind of prostate issue going on; I actually never did use the restroom after my aborted attempt at the French rest stop.)

Chartres was actually close to Pairs: about 60km. Tours was actually about 130km from Chartres, and was over much smaller roads that had a lot more slowdowns and stops. We had a long trip in front of us and I was feeling pretty run down as well as physically uncomfortable because nature was calling.

We headed down the road looking for somewhere I could grab a Red Bull and take a "natural break". For some reason, even though we passed about 20 small towns and villages, not one of them had a small shop that would do the trick (at least as far as I could tell). I was trying to avoid driving a significant distance from our main route, but at Chateaudun I decided that break that rule. We drove quite a way to the center of the town which was a big square surrounded by shops and city hall.

I still could not find a Red Bull, but Nathan and I decided to eat lunch here. We found a brasserie and decided to eat there. We were met at the door by one of the waitress, I asked to the menu by gesturing and saying "menu", but for some reason, even though a menu is actually called "menu" in France, she still couldn't tell what I wanted.

Fortunately her coworker could speak English and seated us. We looked at the French menu, and unfortunately could not make out much. We recognized a cheese omelette (omelette fromage) and some kind of fries ("something" frites). We ordered those two items by pointing, and then waited for our food. We had survived our first food ordering process, and it was pretty successful.

Eventually, our food came and we discovered the word I did not understand was apparently "Hot Dog" as the plate of fries came with two giant hot dogs! Nathan and I were happy that the unrecognized word was not "live eel"! We ate our food, paid and headed out to the road, pleased that we'd survived our first restaurant experience in France.

We kept driving to Tours, still looking for a Red Bull purveyor and finally found one about 30km from the destination. I got some Red Bull and off we went again.

After driving for what seemed like forever, we arrived in Tours, just in time to realize that we had no idea where our hotel was. I had a brilliant idea of asking at another hotel, and sure enough they were able to help me find the Balladins Confort Nord. Now I just had to follow their directions. After mostly good luck with a little bit of bad, we eventually found ourselves in the parking lot of the Balladins hotel.

We checked in and immediately went to bed. It was the end to a long, mostly fun day.

Chartres

2012-07-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

Our first real tourist activity was to visit the town of Chartres, about an hour or so from Paris. Chartres is a very old town, and is the home to a famous cathedral. The cathedral of Chartres has its origins in the 4th century. The current building was completed around 1230!

We followed the signs to the cathedral (I'll probably have another post about navigating by sign in France) and drove around until we found a parking spot. We were struggling with the machine to pay for parking when a nice French woman walking by informed us that we did not have to pay around lunch time which is when we had arrived. Score!

We walked along a small river past some of the most picturesque houses I've seen. We finally came to a bridge and crossed over the river where we took a few pictures:

Nathan on the bridge to the old town in Chartres

A pond viewed from the bridge

Another view of the river

Once we crossed the bridge, we were into old Chartres proper. I have no idea how old the buildings were, but I can't imagine that some of them weren't at least 300 years old. Here is one that I liked a lot:

A nifty house in Chartres

This building appeared to be someone's house. I know this because I took a peek into one of the windows and saw some guy watching television!

Here are a few other photos of the old town of Chartres: In the first one, they took a super awesome old building and made it into a laundromat. In the US, this building would have been on the National Register of Historic Buildings.

You've got to wash your clothes somewhere!

Apparently I like the Tudor style

After going up a big hill, we arrived at the cathedral itself. It was ginormous and unbelievably impressive.

This is the SIDE entrance for

crying out loud!

This was a nice chapel in the church

Lots of saints and others holding up

the building!

One of the actual front doors; they are

moving in supplies for a renovation

A view from below

For some reason, the two spires on the cathedral are completely different. I didn't ask why, but it is quite interesting to see.

Anyway, I could have taken a million more photos in Chartres, but I was not quite fully into tourist mode yet. I can say that both Nathan and I were pretty psyched. We knew that Chartres was certainly a great stop, but we had many, many more quaint villages, historic sites, and architectural wonders to see during our trip to France.

Quest for Cash

2012-07-14T13:22:00.001-07:00

After getting on the road, we figured the best way to handle things was to try to skirt Paris as best we could (rather than going right through the middle of the city) and head straight to Chartres. After we got out of the heart of things and into the suburbs, we'd be able to find a bank and a phone store and get our final administrative tasks out of the way. Here's a hint: it didn't work out that way...

First thing was that it was about 8:30 in the morning and we were stuck in the middle of rush hour traffic in Paris. The second thing was that our map that covered the entirety of a large country like France was not suitable for detailed route planning in a city like Paris. The third thing was that the map, as bad as it was, was in the trunk.

With this set of circumstances, we figured we would try to find a sign to a town or city that we knew was to the west of Paris and follow it. We saw a sign for Rouen, and since we had seen our little animated plane fly over Rouen on the status tracker they show on the airplane, we figured that following the road to Rouen would probably not be a complete disaster.

With this plan in place, we decided to just enjoy the drive, and actually saw some interesting things from the road:

Our first sign pointing the way to Paris

The Stade de France where France beat Brazil 3-0

in the 1998 World Cup

Crazy motorcyclists everywhere!

I have to make special mention of the motorcyclists in Paris. These guys are a) crazy, and b) everywhere! If you've every driven in California, you know how the motorcyclists are there: they ride in between cars, they go on the shoulder, they weave in and out of traffic. Now take that and multiply that by about 1000 and you have some idea of the motorcycles in Paris. There was one point where about 20 motorcycles had queued up at a stoplight, pretty much creating their own motorcycle lane between rows of cars! It was crazy.

Things were going perfectly to plan (albeit slowly in the traffic), and we were following the signs to Rouen. Unfortunately, this is when I noticed that the signs for the highway we were following started showing the word péage next to it. I had a bad feeling that this meant a toll road. In addition, the fact that they started counting down the distance to something "péage"-related in 2km made me really worried. I was going to be at a tool booth, potentially with credit cards that don't work and absolutely no Euros in my pocket.

It was at this point I decided that I absolutely had to get off the highway and get some cash. We took an exit and ended up in an area of Paris called La Défense. I'd seen this name before, and eventually came to realize that this was where E&Y's Paris office was located. It turns out that this is a massive commercial area, and finding a nice place to park in order to run in and use an ATM was next to impossible.

We ended up driving around for at least 30 minutes trying to find a place to park and use a cash machine. We eventually found a market that had a parking garage and we pulled in. We found an LCL bank and got some much needed cash, then grabbed some chocolate croissants and some drinks for the road.

We returned to the car and got our giant map from the trunk. It turned out that going to Rouen would have been a terrible idea, and that we needed to get on some other highway. Of course our super scaled down map was little help in navigating through Paris, so we just had to get in the car, point it south and hope we'd eventually hit one of the highways that would go to Chartres.

Off we went. Fortunately, I'm reasonably good with getting my bearings, and soon we were retracing our path back to the highway. We eventually found a sign pointing us to one of the highways we were looking for. The funny part was that we had been on the right road all along, but going in the opposite direction! The other funny thing was that the road we were travelling on eventually turned into the Champs-Elysees, and we could see not only the Arc de Triomphe in front of us, but also the Eiffel Tower. So much for avoiding the middle of Paris!

After much maneuvering, we made it onto one of the "A" highways to Chartres. These highways are equivalent to the Interstates highways in the US. They are wide, divided highways with high speed limits (130 km/h, or roughly 81 mph). Needless to say, we were able to make good time once we had the proper road sorted. I also learned that my interpretation of "péage" was right on the money as I had to stop at a couple "péage" booths along the way.

One note on French rest stops: I thought I'd "rest" at one of them at a toll plazas we stopped at. It turns out that the rest stop consisted of two open air urinals and two toilets with doors for men. Not only are the urinals not inside a building, they are also pretty close to right out in the open, with not much (or really anything) to keep your business private when you are using one. I decided that I didn't have to go that bad and headed back to the car!

The rest of our trip to Chartres was rather uneventful, but Chartres itself turned out to be amazing. That, however, will have to wait for another post.

Escape from Charles de Gaulle

2012-07-14T12:26:00.002-07:00

Our plan for our fist day in France was to do the following:

Get some spending money
Get a SIM for the unlocked mobile phone we'd brought
Pick up our rental car
Drive to Tours where we'd be spending the night, with a stop on the way in Chartres to see the cathedral there

We were pretty excited to get off the plane after 6.5 hours, but we did see some interesting stuff on the way to the gate, including this retired Concorde:

The Concorde on its final landing...

We finally got to the gate and got off the plane. We followed the signs (and the rest of the herd) through the airport. CDG is a pretty interesting place, in that it seems to be laid out as one main circular terminal building surrounded by a bunch of smaller terminal buildings connected to the main terminal via underground passages. You get from the terminal buildings on a kooky moving sidewalk that goes down then back up. It's like riding a cross between an escalator and a regular flat moving sidewalk.

The moving sidewalk at CDG

After this we got to go through immigration. There were two lines: EU people and everyone else. Of course we got to stand in the "everyone else" line which was much larger, much slower and filled with mostly Americans.

The "Everyone Else" line

Here's what we looked like standing in the immigration line after all our travel:

Two everyone elses, one looking fresh, one looking a

bit worse for the wear

The immigration guy was my first opportunity to interact with an actual French person, so I was pretty excited. He called us over and I gave him a "bon jour" as I handed him my passport. So far, so good. He took a brief look at my passport, stamped it and handed it back. I thanked him with a "merci", so I was two for two. Then we put our passports away and I bid him farewell with a very pleased with myself "bon jour". This is like telling someone "goodbye" by saying "hello". Oh well, at least I was correct twice...

After immigration, you get to ride a more typical escalator, except for the fact that it is in a Habitrail plastic tube and there are about a dozen others crisscrossing the a large open area in the middle of the main terminal building.

I hear there's a hamster wheel somewhere too!

This took us to the arrivals hall where most people where collecting their luggage. We'd carried everything on, so we went straight past customs and out to the non-secure part of the airport. I must say the process was pretty quick and really easy.

After that, we needed to get some cash, get a prepaid SIM for the phone and get the rental car. As we were walking through the airport, we found the Avis counter and saw a sign that said we should proceed directly to the car park (since I am Avis Preferred). The excitement of finding the car rental place immediately pushed all our other to-dos to the back of the line; we had to get our rental car right then. Since the gentleman at the counter was busy, we decided to go to the garage and just try to find it. Surely there will be a sign, right? We followed the signs and found the elevator to the garage. Unfortunately, we had no idea which floor to go to, and nothing in the elevator seemed to give any indication. I'm sure it was there, but with our limited French we could not make it out. After choosing a couple floors at random, we decided we'd better go back to the Avis counter and ask the man where to go.

We got back to the counter and found the right floor of the garage with the Avis person's help.

The friendly Avis person who (spoke English and)

helped us out

We finally found the Preferred counter and a very nice lady helped us get our rental car (a manual transmission Opel Corsa). Here it is:

Our Opel Corsa parked in Chartres

At this point, we really had no choice but to take our car and leave. This meant that we could not get any cash or the SIM. We followed the signs out of the airport which seemed to entail going in circles about 6 or 7 times. Eventually, we found the exit toward Paris and were on the road.

We had successfully escaped from CDG (which was actually not that bad), but had no cash and no phone. Oh well, that's no big deal, right?...

The flights to Paris

2012-07-13T15:51:00.001-07:00

Our journey started bright and early at around 4:30 when we had to get up. Preparation was pretty quick, and since we were both already packed we got to the airport around 5:40 (thanks to my wife, Cheryl, and our two dogs who drove us to the airport!) and were through security by just before 6:00, an hour before our flight.

Normally, when I have some time to kill I go to the US Airways Club (one of the privileges of being a frequent traveller) and today was no exception. Well, one exception: it wasn't open yet. So opened up Nathan's laptop and started watching the live stream of the day's stage in the hall in front of the club:

Gotta get your Tour on!

The club opened at 6:00 at we watched a bit more Tour, then headed down to the gate to board. Here is a photo I took of the two of us on the plane (it's a lot harder to do this with a regular camera than with an iPhone!):

Nathan is excited (as am I, you just can't see it!)

We had an uneventful 4.5 hour flight to Philadelphia where we had about a 2 hour layover. We went to the club again and fired up Nathan's laptop, this time to watch the Tour on delay.

More Tour, this time in Philadelphia...

We got just about to the end of the stage when we had to head to the gate. Of course, the gate was much further away than I thought it was, but after a bit of hustle through the airport, we got there. After we arrived, we had some time to kill:

Nathan getting in a last bit of phone time

This would be a good time to add that every time I talked to someone from US Airways, I begged for an upgrade to business class for Nathan and me. This included the lady at the gate. Apparently, they all have their story straight: I was told each time that there are no complementary upgrades on flights to Europe. Oh well, can't blame me for trying!

This was the plane we took to Paris (this is an obligatory photo for all my international trips):

Obligatory photo of our A330 wide body

We got our seats and left pretty much to the minute. Here we are in the seats we'd occupy for the next several hours:

Still fresh and smiling!

Everything was going very smoothly (and indeed went smoothly the whole flight). We watched some shows on the little screen they give you (of course I couldn't see the last 10 minutes of The Descendants because we were landing!). Nathan took some time to solve some puzzles in the book we bought in Philly:

Keeping his mind sharp for France!

And that was about it for the next 6.5 hours. Since our bodies said it was only 3:20 in the afternoon when we left, neither of us could sleep, so we read, watch videos, and basically killed time for the whole flight.

We arrived in Paris pretty much on the dot at 7:30am local time. Unfortunately, it was overcast so we could not see anything until we were almost on the ground. That said, we did see this out the window while landing:

A tiny village right next to an international airport?!

That is apparently a tiny village surrounded by farmland. That's nothing unusual for France, except this village is about a mile or less from one of the busiest airports in Europe! This is when Nathan and I knew we weren't in Kansas anymore!

Of course Nathan's flight had mechanical issues...

2012-07-11T20:10:00.001-07:00

Nathan called me at 5:45 to tell me he was at the airport waiting to get on his plane. Of course, his plane was supposed to be leaving at 6:00, so I knew something was not right. Sure enough, 5 minutes later he texts me that the plane is delayed with a mechanical issue.
Now I've been around the block with US Airways and United flights from Portland and Eugene being delayed, so my first thought is that the mechanical issue is going to require major work and his flight is going to be cancelled. I immediately get online to see if there are any other flights that he could take if things get ugly. There is only one option and it costs $440. Fortunately for my mental health, about 6:10 he texts me to tell me they are boarding.

Always a little scare. Perhaps that is why they call it US Scareways...

Packing time!

2012-07-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Nathan should be getting on the plane in an hour to fly to Phoenix, and it's just about time for me to start packing. I'll be getting up in a little over 12 hours to start getting ready to head to the airport. It's just about the culmination of 8 months of thinking and planning!

Stay tuned for lots of (boring, but occasionally) exciting blog posts!

Stuff I'm taking to France

2012-07-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

It's getting close to packing time for France, so I guess I ought to put together a packing list. And since I've bored everyone with all the other insignificant details of my planning, why stop now? Therefore, here's what I think I'll be taking with me to France:

Clothes for 7 days, mostly consisting of shorts and t-shirts, but with a pair of jeans and one decent shirt with a collar thrown in just in case I have to get "dressed up"
A jacket (in case it gets cold in the mountains)
Umbrella (hey, it might rain while we are waiting for the race on the side of the road, and I don't want to be miserable!)
French travel guides
French phrase book
Books and magazines for the plane (both Nathan and I are currently reading Game of Thrones)
Unlocked phone (will buy a prepaid SIM card there to be able to make calls and send texts)
Electrical adapter and 3 way adapter (for charging multiple phones and laptops at the same time)
Mizzou flag (to wave during the race!)
Camera
Map (the previously mentioned giant Michelin number!)
Passport
Sandals
Tennis shoes
Toiletries
Laptop
Headset for laptop (for Skype calls)
Phone charger and cables
Spare batteries
Backpack (to carry food and water into the mountains)

There are a number of things that I will buy when we get to France:

SIM card for phone
Chalk (to write something on the road)
Food and drinks (for when we are waiting for the race on the road)

Nathan says he is going to try to pack all his stuff into a medium-sized gym back and the backpack he carries his laptop in. I think I should definitely be able to get this my stuff into a duffle bag. Therefore, we should be able to avoid checking any bags for the trip which will be huge. Of course, we will have to do laundry while we are there, but that's a small price to pay for being able to avoid the baggage carousel and being 100% certain our luggage arrives with us.