Marianne's roadtrips

I have been watching the Tour de France for quite some time now. Had it timed so that I could watch the first half of the race live, before I went to work and catch the replay right about where I left off, when I got home from work. Being there for one of the stages was definitely a bucket list item.

When I checked into my hotel in Colmar and was told that the finish line would be within walking distance I was thrilled. The morning of the race I went out early to check it out. The race doesn’t start until after 1:30 in the afternoon but the road had been closed since 4:00 in the morning. The side barriers were already up by 10:00 and the police and other security were already keeping an eye on everyone. They had just finished painting the finish line as I walked by. The official souvenir sellers already had their trailers open for business, so did the food vendors.

There were also a couple of other tents open. One was for promoting healthy rivers for fishing. I answered a quiz, with a lot of help and got a free t-shirt. The front says generation fish (in french of course) and on the back is the tour logo with one difference, the bike rider is carrying a fishing pole! Had to have it.

I also filled out a questionnaire, again with a lot of help as it was in French, about highway safety for bicyclists. I think the more questionnaires they completed the more funding they would get for the government. Happy to help, and got a yellow rubber wrist band where I could put my emergency contact info.

Last tent I visited was a children’s charity. They had a stationary bike set up in front of a monitor. You could chose the ride you wanted. Most of the guys in front of me chose mountains. I chose a ride along the Danube, in Budapest. The more miles people rode the more funding they would get. I knew I would do much better on a flat than on the hills.

The area along the finish line had grandstands along one side, for the VIP’s and the press. The also had a couple of large screens so you could keep track of the race. All of this, the side barriers lining the course for the last 1000 or more meters and all the charity and food tents and trailers are taken down and set up at the next finish line, in about 16 hours. The organization for this race, which lasts almost a month, is amazing.

My main goal that morning was to stake out my viewing spot. There was a traffic roundabout, that the riders would have to negotiate, about 400 meters from the finish. This was my spot, any closer and I would be 4-5 people deep and wouldn’t have a chance of seeing anything.

I went back to the hotel to relax for a bit and watch the beginning of the race. I had been given an itinerary for the race, with 3 different estimates of when the riders arrived, depending on their speed. I could watch the race and head down when there about 2 hours to go.

At about 2:00 I headed out, with a back pack full of camera, sunblock and room for souvenirs. I stopped at the official store and got my shirt and water bottle. Both have the map of France with all the tour stages on it. I grabbed some frites and a coke and watched the craziness that was already starting. I think the tour has about a million and a half sponsors and each one is out on the course at some point for each stage. Most are in the caravan of vehicles that head out about 2 hours ahead of the riders, more about them later. The rest of them are moving up and down the course for the last 400 meters, stirring up the crowd, teaching them how to make the most noise banging on the barriers. The loudest supporters are rewarded with hats, gummi bears and anything else that could be thrown. I got a little too close to the action and got pushed out of the way by an elderly man that just had to have a yellow baseball cap from TCL, one of the biggest sponsors. I have no idea what they sell, but apparently he was a big fan of theirs!

I headed down to claim my spot. Between the roundabout and the finish line, the opposite side of the road goes underground. That means there is a concrete barrier with a metal railing that edges one side of the course. I figured I could sit on the railing and when the racers came by I could stand on the concrete, be high enough to get some good shots. The gentleman next to me didn’t speak English but was kind enough to give me a heads up when the speakers announced the caravan was arriving in 5 minutes,

The Caravan. The best way to describe it is a Fellini film on wheels! Each sponsor has 4-8 vehicles in the Caravan so it winds up stretching out about 2-3 miles long and at the end they are going about 5-10 miles an hour so it takes about half an hour for them to go by. A very entertaining half hour. The vehicles range from ordinary cars to vans, trucks, 3 wheeled contraptions and vehicles that would be right at home in any parade. And all of them are have people throwing items out to the crowds. The throwers are all wearing 5 point harnesses that are attached to the vehicles with hugely thick ropes or cables. I don’t know if that is to protect them from over zealous souvenir hunters or from drivers that, when no spectators are around, gun it down some of these small, windy mountain roads and country lanes the tour uses. All of them look like they’ve been through a windstorm! The items that get tossed out included: hats, shirts, condiment packages, packages of cheddar crackers, comic books and a multitude of items I couldn’t recognize as they went whizzing past my head! I didn’t get a hat but wasn’t sad, they were a bright teal sailors cap like the kind that Gilligan wore. I did get one of the replica jerseys. (they are actually a nylon t-shirt made up to look like on of the leader jerseys) I got the green Skoda sprint leader, score!

I wish I had taken some photos of the caravan but I was too busy trying to duck UFO’s. The race organizers are very concerned about everyone’s safety. Before the caravan arrives and interspersed among it are vehicles with flashing yellow lights and electric sign boards warning people about the coming barrage.

About 50 minutes later we get the warning that the racers are about to arrive. A few latecomers had crowded in and when I stood up to check my sight lines I had to ask my recently arrived neighbor to my right, to make sure he didn’t obstruct my view. A simple tap on the shoulder, and my best “Mom face” got the point across. Anyway, here are the photos I took:

This is the view from “my spot” to the finish line, the last flag on the left is where the yellow banner crosses the road.

These are the stage leaders coming out of the roundabout. The best of the sprinters will gather at the front towards the end of the stage as there are points to be earned for each sprint finish.

The racer in red on the right has come too wide or is bailing out.

Peter Sagan is the best sprinter and usually wins overall, you can see him starting to make his move, he is wearing the green sprint leaders jersey, on the right.

The noise level at this point is incredible, you can see the folks on the opposite side beating on the sheet metal panels, those that can’t reach the panels are yelling and clapping their encouragement.

There can be quite a bit of bumping in the last few hundred meters. Riders are supposed to maintain a normal profile but apparently Peter felt an outward elbow would help him maintain his space. I can understand because they are really picking up the speed and coming off a turn can sometimes mean your neighbor has a tendency to drift into your space! No spoiler alert needed, this stage was over a week ago and Peter Sagan did pull out the win. If you get a chance, watch one of his finishes, he is a beast!

Colmar is in the northern Alsace Lorraine region of France. I chose to visit it as it was the finish line of one of the stages for the Tour de France. Seeing the Tour has been on my bucket list for some time. After looking at all the stages I chose Colmar because of the beauty of it’s Old Town. The buildings are mostly timber and mortar and haven’t changed much in centuries. It was fortunate to escape bombing by either side during WWII.

When I got off the train the bus stop was right across the street. When I showed the address to the bus driver, he said yes and said, “remember the Statue of LIberty”. Ok, made a little more sense when the video screen on the bus showed one of the stops to be named Statue of Liberty. Light bulb lit fully when I got off at my stop and found a 4 story tall Statue of Liberty in the middle of the traffic roundabout! Turns out the sculptor of the statue is from Colmar.

As you can see the Old Town is all decked out for the Tour!

I spent a couple days just wandering all over the Old Town. There are canals throughout this part of town, so much that it has the nickname of “Little Venice”. The tourist map I got from the hotel us pretty helpful once you get oriented. There isn’t any rhyme or reason as to how the town is laid out, maybe it was that way so invaders couldn’t get a straight run through town. I wound up backtracking a couple of times, but it was so pretty I didn’t mind.

The house on the left has some wooden storks as decoration. The stork appears to be the mascot of the town, they sell stuffed toy storks at all the tourist shops. I didn’t see a single stork while I was there, must not have been stork season.

I had to look twice at this restaurant. The trim around the door and windows is painted on, not actual woodwork.

This is the covered market with a little restaurant on the canal. The market inside is just like a farmer’s market and I got supplies for dinner here a couple of times. The restaurants specialty is Torte Flambe. It’s sort of like a pizza but not really. Thin savory pastry crust with a light cream sauce and then meat or vegetables on top with a little cheese. It was very good and paired well with the local beer. The whole restaurant sounded like everyone was eating toast! The floor of the restaurant is wooden planking so I’m sure the fish below are big fans of the Tarte as well.

Not sure if the colors of the roof tiles are showing up, they are green and red. I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into creating and maintaining these works of art, but I really loved the look of them.

This is my first post with photos and it took me about 3 hours and 3 drafts to get it done. System wanted to autosave everything and it kept getting stuck! I am heading to the nearest trattoria to get a beer! Tour de France will be next.

(This entry is going to be light and dark, it’s the way I experienced Lyon and couldn’t think of a different way to write it.)

I was joined in Lyon by brothers Sam and Max O’Rourke, they’d been in Europe for a couple of weeks and when I mentioned I would be in Lyon with thousands of young women who were soccer fans and they decided to join me. I think if they had known how hot an muggy Lyon was they may have changed their plans!

I had chosen my hotel as it was near a stadium at which I thought they would be playing the World Cup games. Didn’t do my homework, wrong stadium! Oh well, real near a Metro Stop and there were a couple of nice looking restaurants nearby. It was in a business park type area, lots of office buildings. Got there fine, except when I checked in they said no AC. Quite warm but windows opened to a breeze in the evening. The boys joined me later and we headed out for dinner. As we were walking to dinner we noticed these panel vans parking near the offices, we thought they were maybe homeless folks. We ate at a pizza and beer place, Zappos, both were very good. Am noticing some US craft brews in town too. No AC here either, am sensing a trend.

On the way home the panel vans were still there, but each single occupant now had company or was at least advertising for company. It was very much out in the open and I couldn’t help but wonder how this would play out in the Denver Tech Center.

The next day we hit the FIFA Fan site about noon and wound up spending most of the afternoon before the finals there. They had all sorts of games you could play, pool soccer, dart board soccer, 6 v 6 soccer on a good sized pitch and others. The first one we tried was an enclosure with about 8 small goals arranged in a circle. Once the game started one of the goals would light up and you would have to kick a ball into that goal. It usually was the goal behind me that lit up so I had to keep turning in circles. Wound up a little dizzy but the swag bag was worth it.

Wasn’t as successful kicking a velcro soccer ball at a giant velcro dart board but it was fun.

Spent most of the next hour or so watching Sam, Max and four female college players kick the ball around and then take on another team on the 6 v 6 field. 2 of the girls were from Spain and 2 were from Germany and all were playing on scholarships at US colleges. This WC really showcased how much the game has grown. We have many foreign players on US scholarship and many of the US team members have played professionally in Europe.

The American Outlaws, a fan group that follows the US Women’s team around the world, hosted a watch party for the 3rd place game. It was at a sports bar near the hotel so we headed over.. It was packed with American’s and most were rooting for England. I found some girls that had an extra ticket to the game, but their friend sold it to someone else before I could close the deal. Sam and Max headed back to Paris that night, they’d had enough of Lyon’s heat and humidity.

The finals weren’t until 5 so I had time to hit a few museums before then. The Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon is 2nd only to the Louvre in stature. It was amazing! It wasn’t crowded at all, had some galleries completely to myself. Had to keep picking my jaw up off the floor, the paintings were just incredible. To be able to just take my time looking at these artworks, without having to dodge any camera toting tourist groups was just fantastic.

I met a couple of Aussie ladies outside the museum who had tickets to the final game. They checked a couple of websites that had tickets earlier and no one was selling. At this point I decided a sports bar would be just fine for me.

Next stop was a little different; the Museum of Resistance and Deportation. It is housed in the former headquarters of the Gestapo. It is fairly small and I only got through the main exhibit in about 2 1/2 hours. It was started in the 60’s when the folks of Lyon decided they needed to start gathering artifacts and interviews before they were lost forever. One of the things that struck me was that many of those interviewed, who were teenagers and young adults in the 40’s said the same thing. “We didn’t believe he would do what he was saying, he was like a clown, a buffoon, no one took him seriously,” They do a good job of showing what the resistance member went through to keep the publish an underground newspaper, how they forged documents, sabotaged trains and whatever else they could do to save their Jewish residents. They were able to save 75%. The last part of the exhibit has a book that names all those that were lose. A video scrolls these names on the wall. The video is not fast or slow. I was going to say you could read the names easily but you can’t, it is very hard to watch the names go by. The video takes over 21 hours for all the names to be listed.

Time to switch gears again, it was close to game time and I could use a drink. Hopped the Metro for my stop Stade de Gerand and the Ninkasa event center. Got there a few minutes into the game and found both American and Dutch fans. The place wasn’t overly packed so everyone had their own space and could cheer on their own team. The screen covered one wall so the view was great and beer was cold, best place to watch the game, if you couldn’t get into the stadium.

Next day was a travel day and the railroad station was packed. It appears a lot of Americans didn’t think to make reservations for getting out of Lyon after the Cup was over. This time I had done my homework and had my tickets in hand.

Next stop Colmar, France in the Alsace Lorraine region and the Tour de France!

I have always heard and felt that travel will give you the opportunity to see interesting places and meet interesting people. However, did not expect that to include the trip to the airport.

My lift reservation said to look for butterfly in 2018 Jeep Renegade. Was a bit confused as they usually give the driver’s name. When the jeep pulled up there was a large purple and pink decal of a butterfly on both back doors, confusion cleared up. When I opened the door the seat back was covered in hot pink faux fur, the walls, dashboard and ceiling were covered in fabric flowers and butterflies and small mirrors. Very festive. There was also a sign asking me to smile as I was on camera.

Never got the driver’s name but did get quite a bit of her history; daughter a yogi currently traveling in Thailand, son a techie who is more of a homebody, and herself, formerly from the Bay area where she was a dominatrix for 12 years. Wasn’t a bad driver and we made it to the airport safe and sound.

At the gate I saw a group of young men in plaid vests and suit jackets and thought we had a singing troupe along for the ride. Wrong, Norwegian Air just has a different fashion sense than the rest of the airlines, these gentlemen were the flight stewards.

Can’t wait to see what other interesting people await me.

So the itinerary is set:

July 4 – land In Paris, France

July 5,6,7,8 – Lyon, France

July 8,9,10,11 – Colmar, France

July 12, 13,14,15, – Cinque Terra, Italy

July 16, 17,18,19,20 – Florence, Italy

July 21, 22, 23, 23, 25 – Milan, Italy

July 26, 267, 28, 29 – Venice, Italy

July 30, August 1, 2 – Budapest, Hungary

August 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – Vienna, Austria

August 8, 9, 10, 11 – Salzburg, Austri

August 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 – Cologn, Germany

August 17, 18, 19, 20 – Bruges, Belgium

August 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,26,27 – Paris, France

August 28, return to reality in Colorado

I’m starting my first road trip on July 3, 2019 so stay tuned.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.