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 :-)