I'm sorry everyone, I was supposed to be rooming with a friend who took his computer and I intended to update my blog with pictures and commentary daily. However, our coordinator messed up and had me with another guy and it became too much trouble to coordinate the use. In France, most of the hotels charge for internet use by the day and if you are lucky enough to have a hotel with a computer desk for public use, the keyboard is very different. They use a lot of different symbols and after looking for about 20 minutes one day, I still hadn't figured out how to type in the @ symbol. Actually, we were so busy pretty much from dawn till bed time that it would have been difficult even if I had my own laptop.
I arrived in Paris at 5:45am on Sat. 7/17. There were two other tour trippers on my flight that I knew about, Patty and Stan so we quickly passed through customs and headed for something to eat. The majority of the group were due in 8 something on Air France and with them was my bike box. Delta wanted to charge $200 each way for my bike where Air France was charging $55. Luckily I found someone whose wife was not riding and agreed to take my bike as part of her luggage. Well 8 turned into 10, 10:30 etc. and we found out that the customs officials decided to all take a 1 hour morning break about the time the group came in. Eventually, though we all hooked up, got our bikes and after a little confusion loaded our stuff onto the bus and bike trailer (enclosed Belgium bike carrier) and headed to what would be our final trip day hotel about 45min away. On arrival we assembled our bikes, stored our boxes, grabbed a bite to eat and waited for the remainder of our groups arrival from a later flight. The bus left Paris mid afternoon on our 2-1/2 day journey to Lourdes in the southwest Pyrennees region of France. First stop was Chatereaux, a charming small town about 3hrs south of Paris. I never realized that France is pretty much on the same lattitude as Maine so the weather was ideal and because of the earths axis it stays light there till about 10:30. Chatereaux as well as almost every other town and city we visited or passed through was beautifully landscaped and very clean. The roads in France are very well maintained, most all have wide bike lanes and there are NO BILLBOARDS. I don't know if that is true everywhere but I never remember seeing a billboard the whole trip. We had a group dinner at the hotel, talked a little about the upcoming days activities and some including myself headed out on the town for a little exploration. We would have breakfast at 8 then start our journey to our next layover city Toulouse at 9am.
No comments:
Post a Comment