2004
- If you plan a cycling trip to the Alpes, be careful. You do not want to go through the expense and hassle of coming here only to be stupid on a mountain descent, go down and hurt yourself. A decent number of people had accidents and in nearly all cases it was a lack of IQ and skill. Remember, you didn’t grow up descending alpine roads.
- Packing your bike and lugging it around is a pain in the neck and very heavy. We’ll be glad to drop them off at UPS today.
- The French are amazingly nice and considerate to cyclists. The only time I ever felt the pressure of traffic was a short jaunt on a freeway when we were lost on a ride. The drivers in the country and villages are amazing and even though there are no shoulders, you feel completely at ease.
- Seeing the Tour de France in person is amazing, but I missed OLN. The daily TV coverage is so much more informative. If you love the tour and do not at least read French, be ready to have very little information. While there is ten times the coverage here, it’s entirely French. (They show the tour live on three channels all day!)
- Bikestyle did a great job. The accommodations were fine, travel was well managed and Tammy and I both felt comfortable at all times.
Zurich and on to the mountains...
After our amazing train ride we arrived in Zurich. Switzerland is such a different place than France. It’s much more multi-national. A lot of different languages; almost all signs were in four different languages. We spent some time at the train station getting Euros changed to Swiss Francs and checking our luggage at the rail station since we were taking a train the next morning, no need to lug it all over the place. It’s nice to be in a currency that is less than one on the dollar, however things are pretty expensive so far.
Zurich is a nice town. Seemed very orderly, similar to the train station itself. We got a pass for the city rail system to get to our hotel but I don’t know that we really needed it since nobody ever looked at it and there was no device to run it through. Guess it was the honor system at work.
The Hotel Rigihof in Zurich was fine. Tammy observed it was the dirtiest of all the hotels we had stayed at so far, but it seemed fine to me. On the plus side it had relatively fast WiFi so I was able to send all my digital photos taken so far to the server at our house for safe storage (took about 10 hours while we slept!).
Some other items of interest…
Train Update - I went on and on earlier about how great the Paris to Zurich train was. I now know that not all rail travel in Europe is so great. Our train today from Zurich to Scuol was perhaps 1/2 of a step up from a Greyhound bus! Plus, we made the mistake of getting in a smoking car and not realizing it and then having to move. Did I mention that we have too much luggage? We do. We plan on sending some back to Zurich on the train tomorrow if possible. We are new to packing for a three week trip and definitely have more than we should.
Language - Switzerland is all German. Leave your French at the border. Zurich was very good with English as well, but so far the mountains are pretty sparse on English. For some reason I’m finding this easier to deal with but Tammy is finding it much harder.
Technology - I’m having terrible luck tech-wise. I brought three compact flash cards for our cameras along. Of the cards only the 1 gig card (thankfully!) is still working. The 512 mb and 256 mb cards have both decided to stop working in different ways. The 256 mb just corrupts anything you put on it. And the 512 mb won’t format and just gives an E50 error when I put it in the camera. This sucks and we’ve left Zurich now so I doubt I’ll be able to get anymore cards. Hope the 1G holds out. I even had to get a new card reader since my PCMCIA reader seems to have gotten loopy as well and freezes the laptop whenever inserted! I think this is what killed the 256 mb card. Argh! Tammy’s theory is that it has something to do with the power differences, who knows.
As you may have figured out by now we are in Scuol, Switzerland. This is a fairly small mountain town near the border of Austria on the upper side of the Engadine Valley. We meet our hiking group in a little over an hour for dinner and orientation. We hike 13 miles tomorrow on a fairly flat route only ascending 1,000 feet of elevation. The mountains are all around us. I’m looking to my left out my window right now in this converted Engadine hotel and can see two peaks well above the tree line with a saddle in the middle. Great stuff.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I’m sitting in the most luxurious form of transportation that I’ve ever experienced. We are taking a high-speed train from Paris to Zurich. I think we are in first class, it was required to get a reserved seat on the train and it turns out to be a fairly smart idea since we had room for our ample luggage that would have been pretty tight in the other cars.
The train is amazing! It’s silky smooth. The chairs are like miniature lazy boys. There are power connectors for your computer. We situated ourselves in one of these double units so we could face “the right way”. I was getting motion sick after only a few minutes so we needed to switch around. They served breakfast, a traditional hot chocolate and croissant kind of thing. Sorry, no WiFi on the train, I checked. 🙂
If something like this existed to get us from Minneapolis to Chicago, a distance I believe shorter than our trip today, it would just be great. Chalk one more up for Europe!
It was a little confusing getting on the train, as Tammy said because it’s just so simple. You just get on after all. Didn’t really know what to do with the luggage or where to go. Airport terminals are definitely more internationally friendly than train stations but we finally figured it out. I got a bit grumpy trying to figure out what to do but have no fears, Tammy kept me in my place. 🙂
Heft On Wheels
Most people that know me know that I used to weigh quite a lot. Then I weighed a lot less. Now I weigh a little bit more, but by no means quite a lot. I went through a bit of a learning experience later in life. I’ve often thought that if I were a good enough writer (something I’ve been enjoying doing on my blog by the way) I would write a book about the experience.
I just finished reading a book that I think would be very similar to the book I would write. Heft on Wheels by Mike Magnuson recounts his transference of his obsession with drinking and smoking to riding his bicycle. Magnuson’s book is a fun, quick read and I felt a kinship to him in reading it. We shared many experiences, while still clearly being very different people. For example, he finished at the head of the pack in the Cat V race he tried while I was shot off the back very early on!
I should think it would be interesting to meet him some day. Perhaps on a ride.
Last Call from Paris!
In my last note I mentioned how confusing Paris was to get around. Amazingly enough I think I’m starting to get the hang of it however, of course just as we are only a ‘wake up’ away from leaving on to Switzerland. We spent much of the last two days zipping around on the Paris Metro and doing a little more exploring. Tammy did a little shopping today, although the city doesn’t really fit her shopping tastes from what she can tell.
City of Light
Last night we hopped on the metro after dinner to do some night photography. I brought my little portable tripod (thanks REI!) and did some fun ‘bulb’ exposure shots. For those that are not aware, that means taking pictures where you leave your shutter open for a very long time. These shots were taken with 20 to 30 second exposures. I dig this stuff probably because it’s really easy to create a shot that looks so cool. I’ve put three above that I liked particularly well. Paris get’s to be both the City of Light and the City of Love! Pretty lucky, both light and love!
Anniversary Art
Some of you may know that Tammy and I decided when we got married that our wedding presents were going to be art, and that after that we wouldn’t get each other anniversary presents but instead together get a piece of art. As you’ll know from reading our site this is only our 2nd anniversary, but the tradition continues. We went out today to find a piece that we really enjoyed and came out even better than expected. The beginning of the search was a bit disappointing as we got excited about €15,000 paintings that we obviously weren’t bringing home. We then returned to a gallery we had visited shortly right by the Louvre called Art Club. We found a a piece called Allez Saute! that we thought was great – and now it’s ours! It’s by a young Parisienne artist named Corniere. She had a number of pieces but this one we particularly liked and it fit our budget.
Kilometers
We’ve decided that we like kilometers. Let’s get these in the states as well. They are great for bike riding. The numbers are so much higher and they just go by so fast! Plus you can use the abbreviations k’s which is just so cool. While we are at it, let’s chuck the pounds and ounces and go for grams as well. Although, I don’t find ordering a 240g steak nearly as exciting as a half-pound steak.
My feet and legs are tired from walking around the city all day lately. That’s maybe not such a great way to begin a week-long hiking trip in the Alpes! We head out on the train to Zurich tomorrow morning. I don’t expect to be online much, if at all, so you probably won’t see anything else from us until we return. See you all soon, when we have to return to reality!
The Stepford Wives
Oh boy, we did it again, went to yet another movie in Paris. This time the Stepford Wives. Fun movie, probably better to rent. This time the theatre had air conditioning, what a plus!
Paris Update
Yesterday was our 2nd anniversary. It seems like it’s been so much longer than two years, in a good way that is. We spent the first half of the day exploring Paris by foot. We walked around in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 2nd and 1st sections or arrondissements of Paris. You see, Paris is laid out in 20 of these arrondissements, I’m not going to try to get into a history lesson of the reasons or layout of this, you can read about that out on your own.
I find Paris to be an incredibly hard city to navigate. Nothing is at a right angle. Years ago I saw this TV show where they were studying the patterns of spider webs. They did a study where they gave some spiders a very small dose of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs. Sure enough, the spider webs lost their concentric patterns and turned into these jumbled up messes. If you overlayed one of these jumbled spider webs on a map, that would be Paris. Everything is named, no numbers, which adds a little bit more adventure to the challenge. At least in Manhattan you can rely generally on the street grid, no such luck in Paris.
Our hotel is great. We are staying at the Hyatt Regency Paris-Madeleine. This is definitely the nicest place we’ve stayed thus far. We intended it to be a little oasis in the middle of our two structured trips. The amenities are wonderful, however there broadband is horrible. I can only get around 12 kbps of bandwidth, no good. Tammy has decided that this is now her favorite hotel ever, dethroaning the previous holder of that position which was the Hotel Monaco in Denver.
We walked our way from our hotel through a variety of shops and got to La Sainte-Chapelle. We checked out the courtyard of the cathedral but didn’t go inside, the lines were terrible. We then went over to Notre Dame and walked through the inside of the cathedral. Amazing stuff. The effort that must have went into constructing these things. Wow.
After a lot of walking we got a pass on the Paris “yellow & green” open top buses and circled our way around much of the city.
Paris isn’t that hard to get around without knowing French. Tammy’s extremely rusty and fragmentary knowledge of French from school has been very helpful. Also, so many words are similar in English that it’s fairly straightforward to make your way through a restaurant menu or read signs. It also helps that many in Paris speak either very good English or enough to get through purchasing something.
We had dinner at the Latina Cafe on the Champs Elysees. It was wonderful food and great ambiance. It’s owned by a Latina or Salsa radia station and clearly there was some serious dancing going on at this place from time to time.
Today was a full blown tourist day. We slept in and made our morning voyage to the patisserie for some breakfast. We then headed to the Louvre.
Yes, that’s a picture where you aren’t supposed to take one. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa (which seems to be a popular place to head to right away). Going to the Louvre was like taking a bubble bath in art. It’s huge. Gargantuan. So big that it would take weeks to take it all in. We only had three hours plus or minus. We strolled through the museum as if we were soaking in a huge bathtub overflowing with bubbles. We didn’t take the time to question why the bubbles existed or what would become of the bubbles, we just enjoyed that they were there. We swam in art. And just like a bubble bath, it sticks with you after you get out. The power of art is almost hard to take at such high volumes.
After our bath in art, we perused some local shops and had our ugly American lunch in Paris. We went to what I must imagine is the American oasis for travellers in Paris. We visited the Hard Rock Cafe Paris. This place doesn’t even bother to put out French menus. The waitress came up and spoke near perfect English. The food was as normal as we would get in Bloomington. The water even came with ice! Didn’t have to ask.
Can you believe it’s taken me until now to put up a picture of the Eiffel tower!
After taking our temporary trip back to the states for some lunch we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We took a bunch of pictures and were bothered by some of the people that you run into at the super-duper tourist spots in Paris looking to scam you for something. The Eiffel Tower has only three floors: pretty high, really high and stupid high. We walked the stairs to pretty high. Both Tammy and I are scared of heights so really and stupid high were simply out of the question. I also have an extraordinary fear of heights when combined with open air stairs. Luckily the stairs were not the metal grates you can see through or there is no way I would have made it up. I was clinging the railing making my way up stair by stair. The tower is really neat, we are going to make a trip back tonight when we do some night photography in Paris.
That’s it for now, this has gotten long and we are going to get dinner. I’ll probably put up one more thing before we head for our hiking section in Switzerland and I expect there will be no Internet anywhere on that trip. Au revoir!
Spiderman Deux
Tammy and I went and saw Spiderman 2 this evening in Paris. I always think it sounds kind of wierd to go to a movie when you are on vacation, but it’s always a lot of fun. Anyway, movie was very good, better than the first. Luckily it was in english with french subtitles. The theater had no air conditioning and was rather a dump, and the tickets were only €9.50! Ouch! Paris is not a cheap city.
Fin de Course or Intermission, Act II
The thing that I liked most about coming to see the Tour de France in person were the sights and sounds that you never get to see on TV. The energy of the people on the roadside. The caravan coming through. The thrill of the peloton. Running the Tour de France is an amazing job. The race is assembled like a rolling caravan throughout the country and as soon as it goes by the roads are restored to normal circulation. One of my favorite things in watching the tour was the special truck that drives right at the end of the race behind everything. It’s a non-descript vehicle and on the back with red letters on white are the words
Fin de Course
I don’t know exactly why I found that so special. I told Tammy it was like a classic movie where they actually put “The End” on the screen before rolling the credits. It just seemed well suited.
If I can extend the metaphor, we have finished the first course of our trip and are sending off the hectic days of the Tour de France in favor of relaxing days of strolling the streets of Paris and visiting museums.
Before we leave the cycling, a couple of notes:
That’s all for that. We’re going to transfer to our next hotel and I’ll probably post some more frequent notes before we head off to Switzerland. I’ll try to get some photos up as well. I’ve been copying all the photos we’ve taken so far to the server at home but it takes some time to transfer 2.5 gigabytes even on the high-speed in the hotel.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 20 - Montereau to Paris (Champs Elysees)
Today we saw what we came here to see, history being made. Lance crossed the finish line on the Champs Elysees this afternoon to become the first person in the history of cycling to win six tour victories. We really wanted to make the Tour de France trip this year on the chance that this may happen. I was skeptical, but was proven very wrong with Lance’s commanding victory this year.
We had to leave early from Beaune and get back on the bus for the trip to Paris. The stage was the most attended by far. People were eight deep along the barricades on the Champs. Tammy and I tried to find a good spot but were unable to get situated really well. We ended up walking a few kilometers and got off of the Champs to a point where we could at least see over the barricades.
There was a break in the group but the peloton caught them. The speed of the group was incredible.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 19 - Besancon to Besancon
Today was the best ride of the trip. Tammy and I figured that while we had suffered up some mountain climbs we hadn’t really gotten any distance in. We decided that since today’s ride would be “flatter” (this is a relative term) we would do the 115km option. We left on our bikes straight from Beaune and rode to Besancon for the time trial. We rode with a fast group in a huge bunch for the first 70 k’s and then fell off the back. The speed kept getting faster and it was very hard to stay on. We’d get shot off the back and then have to kill ourselves to get back on a wheel. Then we realized that we were on vacation and I could stare at a rear wheel in Minnesota. Time to smell the flowers!
We let the group ride off. It’s amazing how fast they ride off, in minutes we weren’t even able to see them. We pedaled along and had a simply great ride along the valleys in rural France. We went through so many small villages, stopped at a bakery for some pastries, went along rivers. It was simply wonderful.
We ended up clicking off 125 km which is I believe 78 miles or so in the Queens measurements. That is the longest ride Tammy has ever done topping her previous 67 mile record. She’s now saying that she might do a century with me. She’s doing great on the bike. Clearly the running and workout out she’s done has paid in spades.
The time trial was great. Lance pounded a resounding fist of authority on the tour besting Ullrich by just over a minute. I was able to see the podium presentation for the first time. It was also the first time I heard any booing. There are many people who believe that Lance dopes and there were a number of boo’s as he received the stage victory.
We headed back to the bus and rode back to Beaune. After a banquet dinner in the hotel we took a walk in Beaune. I just couldn’t live with the idea we would be at this great village and not even see it! I wish we would have had a day to spend there as it looked like an incredible town.