Sur Le Pont D'Avignon On y Danse

The plan for today was a little bit longer than yesterday. I needed to get from Nimes to Avignon and just a little out of the way was the Pont Du Gard. It's a world hertiga heritage site consisting of a roman aqueduct crossing the valley. It sounded worth the short detour, so I figured why not. That would bring my mileage for the day to around 60km.

Heading out of Nimes, I took the northern route, which brought me up near Uzes. For the first chunk, it was a good long climb that was pretty much kicking my ass. However, at the top of the ridge it was so worth it. The picture's don't look great because of the overcast sky, but it was quite a picturesque little ridge. Not to mention a fun ride back down the hill :-). At one point, I even got to cross a medieval bridge that went into a medieval town.

Once off the ridge, I started seeing more vineyards. Not wanting to repeat a missed opportunity, I went into one of the first ones. The vinyard was actually a town and it was just a vin de pays. I have one word for their wine: atrocious. It was completely unbalanced and poorly made. It made me wonder if they knew what they were doing. So, suffice it to say, that was a dissapointment.

After getting close to Uzes, I started heading southeast to get to Pont Du Gard. This road was a lot flatter so I made good time, getting to the monument right at lunch hour. I started trying to look for a restaurant, but a lot of them were closed, so I just grabbed a couple of crepes from the tourist stall. The aqueduct itself was pretty impressive. It's in such great condition and pretty damn big considering it's 3 layers of arches. Apparently it's also incredibly precises so that the water is very consistently, and very slowly, flowing downhill. Very good piece of engineering.

After Pont-Du-Gard, I hopped on the road to Avignon and passed many more vineyards including the fringes of the cotes-du-rhone. I didn't stop because I wanted to get to Avignon before dark, (Note this is a common theme. If I were to do this trip again, I'd do it in September). Going along, the road got more and more intense, eventually becomming a 90 kmh 4 lane divided highway. Stupid GPS. It said that road was the same as the one from Nimes to Ules, which was definitely bike friendly. I wish it had proper information. Eventually, I pulled off at an exit where there was a fruit and vegetable stand and bought some apples. They were local and 70 cents a kilo, so I figured sweet. Unfortunately, they had been left in the sun too long and were quite mushy. Edible, but definitely didn't meet my expectations.

From there, I found some back roads to get into Avignon proper and went to the hotel. I had a room all to myself and the hotel was right on the main street for only 32 euros for the night. A pretty good deal if I do say so myself.

I knew that in Avignon, I had to explore and see the sights. In particular, I had to see the famous Pont D'Avignon that I remember signing about in school.

Sur le Pont D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse
Sur le Pont D'Avignon
On y danse
Toute en ronde

etc etc.

Turns out it's a broken bridge that's too small to actually dance in a circle on. Ah I love historic ironies.

Around town there was also the Chateaux Du Pape, where the Pope had his headquarters at one point in the middle ages because he moved it from Rome. Of course after he died, two popes claimed the title, one in Avignon and one in Rome so they had to have a war to figure it out. After that, the papacy went back to Rome and has stayed there.

I also explored the shops before they closed. I went into a bakery and tried one of their farrines. It was spectacular and I'm sure we could reproduce it. It was a shortbread cookie topped with a raspberry jam and a vanilla cream. The jam and cream were thicker though so that they held their shape when I took a bite out of them. mmmmmmm tasty. I also stopped into a wine shop that revolves around tasting the wines. You get a card with money on it and then put it in a machine and press a button to get your taste. Each taste costs from 0.80 to 4 euros depending on the wine. They only had stuff from southern france, but they had a good selection including some from the northern rhone and all the way to the languedoc. This made it easy to compare the different wine styles. I actually found a wine from Crozes Hermitage that was quite spicy and flavorful. I'm planning on buying it when I come back through Avignon on my way to drop off the bike.

For dinner, I was going to go to a place that my guide recommended. However, it turned out to be more expensive than advertised (probably because it got in the guide :-)) So I ended up at one of the restaurants beside it. This place was for a younger crowd as they had live music going, sung in English and it was decorated for Halloween. I had the menu and chose a zuchinni soup to start, followed by a shell pasta in cream sauce and shrimp. For desert, I'm not sure exactly what I got. He called it a souflee, but it was frozen like ice cream, yet lighter and then drizzled with Clementine and raspberry sauces. Everything was good except that the shrimp were slightly overcooked, but I was happy.

Beginning the Bike Ride

Well the day today started in Montpelier. It's a quaint little town alright. Palm trees in the square and streets so narrow you can only walk down them (well at least in the downtown part). There's all sorts of shops along the streets and as the day goes one, the street changes as restaurants will put out tables for their patrons. In the morning, it's the boulangeries providing a sumptuous breakfast. In the evenings, the other restaurants open.

Anyway, I didn't spend much time here this morning since I had to hope on a train to Lunel to pick up my bike. After a short 15min ride, I was in the heart of another charming town. After wandering around a bit (read getting lost) and buying some sunscreen I forgot, I found the bike shop and started loading it up. This consisted of ripping apart my pack and asking "do I need this" countless times. Of course, as is usual, the answer left all the bags completely full. Why does this always happen? On top of that I realized later in the day, this didn't leave room for some bottles of wine! I don't know exactly how this will work. I supposed I can rig something up on the rat trap to open some space in the saddle bags. Well, gotta find some wine first I suppose.

Before I left with my bike, I got the skinny on all the traffic rules, emergency numbers etc. Plus I got the GPS, which was supposed to help me navigate. Tom at the shop was incredibly helpful. Anyway, the GPS, it took me about 1/2 hour to realize the thing's on crack. Or at least the route finding algorithm. Well it doesn't help that the French maps on one hand are incomplete because they don't always have the street name (turn left on road), but on the other hand, they've mapped every little cow trail! Ok, not cow trail, but tractor trail for sure. Since it was in "bike" mode, it was avoiding the highways and going the shortest distance possible. This meant, you got it, I was shortly riding my bike through dirt and some mud. At least it was sunny. I was not impressed. Espeically when the highway even had a bike lane!

I was only going 45km today, but I wanted to make sure I got to my hostel in Nimes with plenty of time to spare so that'd I'd have time to see some of the town. It is supposed to have all sorts of Roman ruins including a very intact amphitheatre. So, I didn't stop the first couple of times I saw signs for wine caves. In retrospect I should have, but now I know. I need a bumper sticker: I brake for wine.

Also, it turns out that in Provence, everybody's on a fairly strict schedule food wise. Mostly because it's a huge part of life. Shops are open in the morning until noon. At that point, they close and the restaurants open until 2. Then the shops reopen until 7, when the restaurants open for dinner. Honestly, I kind of like the idea. Oh, and they won't serve you if you don't come during the right time. Of course, it's always possible to get food that's to western fast food expectations and McDonalds pushing in, or, I suppose the patisserie are open most of the day. But of course, you can always use a patisserie :-)

So, because of this timing, I missed lunch. I wasn't in the middle of a town at the right time and I would rather eat a bagel than McDonalds any day. When I eventually got to Nimes, I got a surprise. It turns out that I can't search for an address on my GPS. Probably has something to do with the fact that it doesn't have half the street names. Arrgggg. I need an android phone for this. So, I had the address of my hostel and no idea of how to get there. I finally solved the dilemma by going to the town center, finding a map and finding the street on that. Yay for low tech. To make it fun, the hostel was outside of town and it was up a ridiculous hill. It was a good way to end the day riding, but it's a lot harder going up hills with tons of crap on the back of the bike.


I got some time before it got dark to go back to town and check out the Roman ruins. The amphitheatre is crazy. It's so complete that they still use it for bull fights. It always amazes me to see this stuff that people put together 2000 years ago. Blows my mind. Other sights were the cathedral and the old roman gardens. In the center of town, there's a huge area of walking only steets and they're filled with restaurants and incredibly chique designer shops. Interestingly, they were all woman's clothing or housewares. Don't know what that means exactly.

For dinner, I went to a wine shop guide book recommended. Of course, I had to wander for an extra hour after dark until they opened up. It's the downside of it getting dark so early. The food was spectacular and paired with the local Cartier de Nimes wine. For an appetizer, I had smoked salmon on blintzes covered in a frothy mushroom cream sauce. The main was search duck with a olive gravy and sides of a garlicy potato gratin, some carrots and honey, and a eggplant grating. Desert was frozen nougat with a strawberry coulis. I didn't know you can freeze nougat, but it worked really well. I'm sure it only works if you have the light and fluffy kind, but it was spectacular and the coulis was so clean with it.

That's it for tonight. I need sleep :-)

Trains and Planes Oh My

Today has been a lot of time traveling. I'm writing this right now on the train from Barcelona to Montepellier at 6pm local time. I left pittsburgh at 2:30pm yesterday, so by the time the day's over, I'll have been traveling for over 24 hours. I guess I can get funny ideas sometimes about the best ways to travel. I guess I just assume that Europe is so small compared to the US, that you can get almost anywhere quickly. Of course, train and plane schedules mean that's not quite true.

So, when I left Pittsburgh, our flight was delayed for over an hour and a half. I was getting freaked because I didn't want to miss my connection to Madrid as there's only one flight a day. It looked like it was going to be close, but I talked to the gatekeeper in Pittsburgh and she said they had the same issue yesterday and that they just rescheduled everybody. Well I figured if they had the same problem yesterday, there's a good chance they'd have it tomorrow, so I figured that I'd risk it. Worst case, I'm stuck in Philly for the day. Well we made it, although I did get some excise running for the gate. It turns out that I was still on the plane to Madrid with plenty of time, but if you know the Philly airport, it can be a decent haul from terminal C to the international terminal A. Plus, I needed some exercise. Too much sitting would be happening way too soon.

The flight across the Atlantic was pretty uneventful. Bad food, but it went pretty fast and I got some sleep thanks to having two seats to stretch out on. It's definitely not a peak travel time. The plane was maybe 40% full.

In Madrid, I have to say that the customs is the easiest I've ever done. I literally didn't have to say a word. Just give the papers, he stamps them and off I go. And luck of luck, my bag actually made the connection too. I was a little worried that I"d have to buy new gear and then pick up my bag next week when I get back to Spain. It's good though.

The Madrid metro seemed pretty good. It was empty for a metro, but then, it was 10am local time. So, it was fast and efficient to get to the Atocha train station. That station is really cool. It looks like where they used to have the rails come in, they turned it into a gigantic tropical greenhouse. Very beutiful way to sit around reading a book waiting the 2 hours for my express train to Barcelona. While I was waiting, I also found a mobile shop and bought a SIM card. Check. One thing down.

The AVE (high speed train) to Barcelona was pretty spectacular. We made the trip in 3 hours and only stopped once in Zargoza. It was a supremely comfortable ride that got up to 300km/h at points. It sure didn't feel like we were going that fast. Of course, then again, most of the time, we were going through some pretty barren desert terrain. I had no idea that Madrid is basically in a desert. It reminds me a lot of the area around Tucson, but without the cacti. I'm pretty sure they're at the end of the dry season now, so I wonder if it actually greenifies with the rain? Even if it did, it was all scrub and rocks. Hardly a tree in sight. I can see why the Spanish colonized California and Arizona.

As we approached Barcelona, the scenery slowly got greener. There were more farms and trees showing up, making things look just like the San Francisco area. Once in Barcelona, I had another hour and a half for my train to Montepellier to leave, so I just grabbed a bite to eat and waited it out. Now, I'm on that train. In Montepellier, I'm staying at the HI hostel about 15min walk from the train station. Really, I just need a place to crash tonight since I'm quite low on sleep. I got maybe 4 hours on the plane another on the train to Barcelona. As for being able to get around, I'm getting frustrated with the Spanish. Yes, it's true that I don't really need it at all, but every time I try to use some simple phrases, my brain goes into foreign mode and french pops out. "Merci beaucoup"