We Biked France
France is a pretty big country. We were origionally hoping to bike the whole thing but, well, yuo can't have everything in life. Well, I kinda did get what I wanted. MY parents wanted to bike the whole thing but a little thing called winter stopped our "caravan." We biked into France from Belgium having just stayed in a horrible little campground with drunk directors the night before. We had a little meal of patries from the border town's bakery a couple of minutes after getting into the country. We spent a few days biking uneventfully. well, I say uneventfully, but really, we were all noticing a growing coldness and the decizingly gentle roll of hills under our tires. On the fourth day, dad had a work crisis and we "had" to stay in a mobile home for a week without biking. So sad. We had chosen to stay in a place that had apple trees everywhere so we ate more apples there than I've done in the rest of my life put together probably. Other than that, not much I can say about it. The whole thing was a little boring. We did, however, make a big, and life saving, decision (or my parents did anyway.) We were going to rent a car in order to get down to warm Bordeux. We had one day to bike. It was, coincidentally, quite a long day. We made it, however, to our destination. We stayed for a weekend in Bologne Sure Mer, the town on the edge of the English channel, and we woke up every morning with a good view of The White Cliffs of Dover. We walked on the beach and speculated on if we could bike down the Chunnel. On the second day, my dad went to get our van. My first impresion of it was that it had rather a lot advertisements for EuropeCar. It was big enough to stuff our bikes and bags in the back, and still have plenty of room. It was the first time we brought out our ipods on the whole trip. We stayed in mobile homes as we went down the country towards Bordeux. We went to Omaha beach, the american graveyard, and a bunch of museums about WWII. Omaha beach was very sad indeed. It was empty, and thankfully, most people had refraned from littering except for a few people whoes gum wrappers we picked up. There was a large monument to the troops who had died and nobody was sun bathing or swimming. We speculated on what we would find if we scubba dived far down in the sea around the beach. It helped us picture Operation Overlord, the fact that it was overcased the day we went. The next day, the day before we got to Bordeux, we took a pit stop in the city of romance (I think thats what they call it.) My parents went out on a date one night, and the next, we went into the city (We were staying in Versallies, next to the capital.) We took a RER train to the Eiffel Tower station. You'd except that it would be easy to spot but it's so tall that, when your right unde it, you can't see it until you litterally get onto it's road. It was soooo cold at the top however, that we stayed inside the museum area right below the viewing platform at the top and looked out over Paris stretched out below us. We searched for landmarks, finding Arc De Triumph, The Louvre, and the Seine ( that wasn't hard to spot.) We read about Paris in hushed voices. It was nerve racking, going up and down the elevators. It felt like you were about to fall right back down to the bottom. We had lunch at a cafe, and then, we had been up in the tower for a long time, it was time to take the train back to Versailes. We drove to Bordeux the next day. We stayed in Bordeux at a scuzzy campground for two nights, and finally, we biked out. We met some very nice people along the way. One night, it was pouring rain and we had no place to go because the only campground in the village was closed. A nice british woman told us about a B&B nearbye where she was staying and, when we got there, it was VERY fancy and the two rooms in the place were full. But they didn't make us go away. They gave us THEIR BEDROOM (the hotel was in their house) and made us an amazing dinner with the two other guests. Another time, we rode into this city called Langon, and these really nice people owned a little apartment that we stayed in. They made very good breakfasts. Another time, we met people who now are holding our bikes for us at their house. Their names were Bruno and Marie and they had 3 kids. We were standing in the rain one morning, having only biked about 20 km, when they drove up and asked us where we were staying that night. We said we were camping, and they offered to let us sleep at their house. We stayed at this really nice guest house in Carrcason, the city where we stopped biking, and the woman who owned it named Carol, was UBER friendly and made us great food. But then, we took a bus and 2 trains into Spain and our adventure in La Belle France was over.