Sore muscles and tasty mussels...

On Wednesday we decided to catch the underground up to Sacre Coeur and after poking around there head back down to our place on foot. Sacre Coeur is the highest point in Paris so we were anticipating a nice view. After lots of stairs...I'm getting sick of stairs...we reached our destination. It was beautiful as most of these buildings are. When we went in a choir of nuns were singing and it was very nice.




We decided to climb up into the tower to get the best view...only 200 steps this time...easy! They were a little tight and twisty but fun.

The view from the top was fantastic!

After we finished poking around the church from the tower to the catacombs we made our way down for lunch. We went to a place recommended in the Lonely Planet book and it was yummmmmmmmy! This pictures is from the window that we ate beside.

After lunch we made our way back down to the area we are staying in. We saw lots of nice shops and passed the Opera House...

...unfortunately nothing is playing right now...that would have been fun...and passed the Moulin Rouge...

Eventually we made it back home after a very long day of walking. I am sick of walking! Mike wanted to head over to the Eiffel Tower at night and after some coaxing I agreed. I am really glad we went. He took this picture that I think looks fake but since I was there I know it is not.

And another one. I think the Eiffel Tower was one of my favourite things on this trip...even though it was a tourist trap!

Today we headed up to Versailles to see how the other half lived...in the 17th century. It was beautiful but it is undergoing an extensive restoration so there was a lot less to see than we had hoped. All the public rooms were open but we really wanted to see some of the inner workings of the palace (kitchen, stables etc). Anyways, we were glad we went.

This is the Hall of Mirrors. I think I was born into the wrong family...but at least I still have my head attached to my body!The gardens were expansive but sterile. That seems to be the Parisian way though. Heather got a hankering to rent a row boat so here is a picture of her and Andrew rowing. Once she got facing the right way she was pretty good.

With sore feet and tired muscles we headed back to Paris and had a fun dinner of mussels. I have never had mussels and they were pretty good. We topped off the day with more gelato and are now going to bed...goodnight.

Museums, Architecture and Odd Run-ins

Yesterday, we decided to head over and tackle the Louvre. We walked over via the Grand Palais, Place Concorde, and the Jardin des Tuileries:

I thought that I.M. Pei's design for the pyramid entry to the museum was very cool; the contrast between the old part of the museum and the ultra-modern take on the pyramid just works. Somehow despite the huge amount of people there I managed to get this photo of it:

We saw tons of neat stuff, from Renaissance paintings:

to ancient Egyptian mummies:

to medieval stuff...which I don't seem to have any pictures of...

to gladiator armor - which is freakishly small:

Personally I enjoyed the architecture of the museum just as much as the artwork inside it:

In the evening, along with Andrew and Heather we went to Notre Dame for an organ concert. The singers and the organists were excellent. We thought about buying a CD of the music but figured that it just wouldn't be the same if you weren't sitting inside of the church. As most of you will already know Andrea and I aren't church goers, and probably never will be; however, I am a big architecture fan and you really can't beat the big old European cathedrals for that. They have the church quite nicely lit up at night so, after a bit of playing with the camera settings, I was able to get some great photos.

The walk back along the river at night was quite beautiful as well.

Since we hadn't had enough of museums yesterday we headed over to Musee D'Orsay this morning. Andrea was really looking forward to this since she hadn't realized that the collection of paintings at the Louvre was so one-dimensional and that there would be no Monee's, Van Goghs, etc. We headed straight for the 5th level which is where they were located. Andrea LOVED these. I liked them, but not nearly as much as her. I like sculpture better, I think that I like the three dimensional stuff better. Lucky for me, there was lots of sculpture there as well.

After having a seat outside of Musee D'Orsay for a little while to rest our feet and legs we headed off in the direction of Musee Rodin. While walking down Quai D'Orsay who should we run into but (TMI'ers take note) Evan Hurry and his wife. Evan and I used to work together at Trudell. We chatted briefly and then headed our separate ways. It really is a small world.

We eventually made our way over to the Musee Rodin which I really enjoyed. I'd been looking forward to seeing The Thinker for quite some time. I got a few decent pictures of it:

and then Andrea took this one of me contemplating The Thinker:

We had a simple salad/sandwich from the cafeteria in the gardens at the Musee Rodin, then explored the gardens and looked at the sculptures there. There were some neat sculptures there too; The Gates of Hell is just weird:

We thought these guys were kind of funny. Maybe we'd just seen to much art, but we thought that this guy looked as if he was saying "Dude!":

and this one was saying "What's your problem?":

After a brief stop off at 'home' we headed out for the short walk over to the Champ du Mars and the Eiffel Tower. The engineer and architecture fan in me was really looking forward to this. We decided to do the walk up the stairs to the second observation deck...all 690 steps up. It was actually much easier than we anticipated; we weren't even winded when we got to the top. The view from up there was fantastic. Here's a few pictures of the tower and the view:

I think I'll probably head back later on this evening to see it at night as well. I don't think I'll bother going back up though; I just want to get some photos at night.

Sneaking onto the Champs...FUN!

Today was one of the most fun days so far. We heard a rumour that you could sneak onto the Champs Elysee with bikes after they closed the road for the tour. It is the one time of the year that bikers can get onto the Champs without dying. We figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity so we unpacked our bikes (in our tiny apartment) and woke up at the crack of dawn to try to ride the Champs. We got there at about 7am and it was so much fun. The cobbles were really rough and I can't imagine riding over it at the speeds the pros do. We decided to dress Heather and Andrew up before we left with their bear Gooberette on Andrew's head and just married signs on the back of their bikes. They stole the show. Here are some selections of pictures.

Here I am riding away towards the Arc de Triumph.

There are a few cars but it's pretty deserted. Here we are standing the middle of the road of one of the busiest European cities...hee hee...FUN!Note the bear Gooberette on Andrew's head.

After we rode on the Champs we left Heather saving our spot and headed back for showers and breakfast. She found us a great location in the front row at the hairpin bend and we joined her by 9am. Then came the waiting...

Like my new hat?

And more waiting...

And shockingly enough...more waiting...approximatly 7 hours of it.One of the other highlights of the day is when I finally got my green PMU hands. I am very excitied in this pictures. We actually got an autograph from Ryder Hesjedal on one of them.The number of people was outragous. They slowly trickled in behind us until we were in a huge mass of humans. Mike put the camera in the air pointing behind us and this is what he captured.


Eventually the race came though and we have tons of pictues. Here is one of the eventual overall winner Alberto Contodor.

To finish the day the teams did a lap of honour and when the Canadian Ryder Hesjedal rode by with his team Heather yelled and he saw her Canada jersey and he came over and gave us his autograph...pretty cool. That is Ryder pointing at us before he came over.

We finished our day with a very French dinner...Pizza Hut...yummmmmmmm!

Nous Sommes Arrivés à Paris

We’ve just arrived at our apartment in Paris. It took a little while for the guy to show up to let us in so we walked down the street a bit and caught the last few kilometer of todays Tour de France stage in a little cafe. I had my first cup of espresso in Paris. One down 299 to go! The apartment is very nice, but also very small. It is literally smaller than our family room at home! Andrea and Heather have just headed out to get a bit of food for tomorrow since we'll probably be camped out on the Champs Elysees most of the day so that we can get good viewing space for the finish of the Tour.

We took the TGV from Lyon into Paris which was a good decision. We really need to get high speed rail in Canada. It was fun getting all of our luggage on though, especially all four bike boxes. It's a good thing we were the only ones in our car with bikes.

On Thursday we traveled up to Annecy (well nearby anyway) to watch Stage 17 of the Tour de France, which was a 40km individual time trial.
We parked in a small town to the south of Lake Annecy, Faverges, and biked down to the course. That’s definitely the way to do it, since the roads any closer than that were closed after 7:00AM. We were also able to pick up some pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) at a local Boulangerie/Patisserie which were excellent.
We searched out a position about 1.5 km from the 20km point on the course, which was on a downhill turn – made for excellent picture taking. I don’t have many pictures from the day because our camera batteries died fairly early in the day; thankfully Andrew’s camera lasted all day and he got lots of great pictures – we’ll be stealing a bunch from him later.
The stage starts with the publicity caravan which was great fun. There are tons of different cars and floats from many of the tour and team sponsors. Many of them throw free stuff; we got several hats, lots of ‘food’ (the sugar covered sugar was our personal favourite!), and various miscellaneous other items. Several riders were pre-riding the course so we got to see some of them then as well.
Thankfully the day started off a little cooler than it had been in Vizille the previous day (and night). It had been 36 degrees the day before and only cooled down to about 33 overnight.
Eventually the riders started to arrive at our location and the time passed amazingly quickly after that. We got to the course at about 9:00AM and didn’t leave until around 5:30PM but it seemed much shorter than that. It was very cool to see all of the pro riders going by; the camera helicopters flying over, etc. Also neat to be able to get so close, I think one of the riders just about took our noses off once when he passed so close!
We were somewhat surprised with the result – since when does Contador beat Cancellara in a TT? Andrew was happy to see Armstrong down the ranking a bit – without his having to use the beating stick or a rock to ‘help’.

Yesterday we decided that it was time to attempt to ascend L’Alpe D’Huez. We had a short 30 minute drive to get to Bourge Oisans, the town at the base of the mountain. Then we had a short ride, maybe a couple km, to the base of the climb. It’s just like you see on TV, you go around a turn and there is the wall that is the first pitch. I’m not sure what the gradient is at that point, I’ve seen anywhere from 10-12%. That lasts for the first few km, until after the third switchback. I rode with Andrea through the first switchback, and part way on to the second, to give her a hand to get past the really steep bit. Here's Andrea at the first switchback; if you look in the background you can see the switchback sign.

Unfortunately, the initial steeps proved a bit too much for her and she only managed to make it about 1/3 of the way to the summit before she decided that it would be smarter to turn back and have fun riding down. I’m very proud of her for trying though. After the third switchback it got a bit easier and was basically just a steady grind most of the rest of the way. It was quite fun arriving at switchback number ?6? (they count down as you go up) and you could finally see the ski resort above you; knowing exactly where you need to go gives you a bit of a boost. I had to laugh at a guy I heard cheering on his buddy with about 5km to go “looking good, only 2km to go… … …until the 3km to go point!” After about switchback number 2 it gets a bit steeper again for the final climb into the town of Huez. When you finally see the official completion sign it is a great feeling!

I searched for Andrew and Heather but didn’t initially find them; a few minutes later while I was on my way back down (around switchback #4) they called me from the top so I rode back up and we had some Coke at water at the top – Coke never tastes better than after a hard ride.

Then came the fun part, going back down! Heather and I rode down together, Andrew is a bit more tentative on the descents than we are. This is the view looking down from one of the switchbacks.

I loved looking down at my speedometer and seeing speeds well in excess of the limit! My highest speed was about 78 km/hr, on the final pitch into town - I think the limit was 50km/hr. We then searched out Andrea, loaded the bikes into the cars and wandered around Bourge Oisans a bit, looking through a couple bike shops and finding some drinks. We finished the day by heading up to Lake Laffrey for a very brief swim – it was one seriously cold lake; Andrea couldn’t get in past mid-thigh. It felt fantastic to me though.

Last night, to celebrate our last day in the Alps we headed into Grenoble for dinner at a restaurant, recommended in the Daily Planet book, called La Fondue. Simply put it was delicious. If you are ever in Grenoble I highly recommend it. We had salads to start, then got a beef/chicken in wine fondue and a cheese fondue to share between the four of us. We even managed to find a wine that Andrea and I actually liked! After La Fondue we got some gelato and coffee for desert.

After that was less fun since we had to head back to the house in Vizille to clean up and pack for today’s journey into Paris.