05.31.09
Into Paris
So here I am on a beautiful morning in Lyon and I figured that I’d do a bit of blogging. Lets see how much time I get.
I left the story off last time in Montreiul. From there the we headed to Paris and spent 2 more nights free camping. The wind slowly abated and the hills became slowly less nasty and our legs were getting a little stronger. The signs of tiredness were starting to show though as none of us had expected it to be as hard as it had been. Its amazing how much hard it becomes to ride a bike once you put 40 to 50 kilos of gear on it. I can do 100 km in my sleep on a road bike but the touring bike takes a lot of effort. As I was carrying the food for Nic and I my load varied up and down and I was trying to eat as much as possible to keep the load light. We’re generally buying food in the afternoons now. We stop in at a supermarchè and buy dinner breaky and lunch the next day. Its working well. Jen carried all her own food and gear and was tremendous at keeping going.
Our camping spots were interesting. Either there aren’t many unattractive places in France or we’ve been really good at picking the picturesque ones as we’ve had some beautiful fields and locations to sleep in. One night we contemplated sleeping under a graphitti covered bridge but instead Nic spied a cute little fishing spot down the river and so we slept there.
We also made a fun stop at a town that had turned itself into a giant, townsized garage sale for the day. Everyone in the place wheeled all of their junk out to the street and people came from hundreds of Km away to buy the junk. Jen even found some great burningman costumes and Nic found the french books that she’d been craving. I was just happy to taste some of the local wines.
The road into Paris, that we took was the N1 which is quite the large highway and so there was lots of traffic to escort us in. The roads so far had been the secondary roads and the french are pretty good about giveing cyclists room to breathe (please take note of that australia, you don’t have to try to kill the cyclists).
So into Paris we rode. We didn’t come in via a hill and so didn’t get a great overview of the city like we’d hoped for but after lots of twisting through the streets we popped out of the maze at the Place d’étoile and the Arc de triumph. This was paris and all its stunningness (I’m sure thats a word). We did a bit of sightseeing and the met with Alexis who had agreed to put us up for the few days that we were in town. He was awesomely hospitible and I can never repay him for how good he was to us. His cooking was excellent as well. I’m not sure if that is genetic with the french but I’m not losing any weight in this country despite riding millions of kilometres. Paris was a delightful blur of pastries, museums and random old stuff and once again I really enjoyed my time there.
Anyway time to hit the road again in Lyon so I’ll hopefully get another chance to update soon.
Tc
