The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

(or how I ended up with three tandems in my garage)

Di2 Back story

After we got back from the Danube I focused on riding and didn’t spend a bunch of time or money on bike projects.  When the chain gauge said it was time, I took the Fuji and the Centurion in for seasonal tune-ups, without addressing the seized seat post on the Fuji.  I bought a pair of Paul Component Engineering Touring Cantilever brakes for Odette’s Stellar, but I kept procrastinating on installing them.  I kind of had this idea of a blog post poking fun at the MAGA / America First guys by describing my American-made bicycles – but somehow when I thought about it some more I realized that it wasn’t actually funny.  Mainly I was just waiting – for the weather to change, for Amazon to deliver, for the bike shop to finish up, for Odette to agree to a ride, for every day to bring one more card.

The fall shaped up to be pretty uneventful, a trip to Long Beach (memorable mainly for squirrel bridges) being the only excitement.  I went out to the garage on a Monday after lunch to put fenders on the Ibis.  Odette likes to ride on Tuesdays and the forecast was wet.  The fenders went on easily but at some point the bike fell over and although I caught it and it didn’t hit the floor, it did make contact with the stand.  I finished the installation (stripping out the socket on the head of one screw on the front fork) and went for a ride around the block to prove that there were no rubs.  And… the bike wouldn’t shift up.  I kept trying and it “gave” – the shifter moved further than it should and then had no resistance at all.  I got back to the garage and removed the hood – the cable was broken and the lever was no longer ratcheting.

I was really upset about this failure.  For one thing, it was the fourth or fifth time the right-hand shift cable had broken on me and I don’t feel like I can ride very far from home for fear it’s going to break on the road.  For another thing, we’d only ridden the bike two or three times since taking it in after the last failure.  I don’t really blame the Polkadot guys but I don’t feel like they fixed what I asked them to work on.  Finally, I was pretty close to getting the Di2 tandem and if I were to sell one of the three it would be the Ibis – only I can’t really sell it if it’s broken and I’m upset about spending money that I won’t recover on a bike I want to sell.

I spent a bunch of time thinking about options and preferences and decided that I’d take one of the handlebar sets from my bar-swap project and mount  Rohloff twist-shifters on them.  I kind of remembered getting a pair of twist-shifters in the process of converting either the Franklin or Ibis, but I wasn’t certain.   If I already had the bars and the shifters I could probably hook them up  myself, and if I needed to go to R+E or Polkadot it wouldn’t be for a big deal project.  I was suspicious that the bars wouldn’t be the right diameter but I knew that I had mounted thumbies on them, and those ought to be the same size as a twist grip.  I scoured my parts boxes and found some Rohloff parts, but no shifters.  I figured that I could go to eBay or Amazon for shifters, but I’d need to know what else I needed to switch back to Rohloff.  I spent some time online reading Rohloff installation guides and realized that it was probably beyond my level of competence.  I also realized that the Rohloff twist-shifter moved the gears both up and down so that you only had one shifter, not a pair.  I dug out those handlebars – butterfly bars and Velo Orange crazy bars – and remembered that I didn’t really like the way either of them looked when I had them on the Fuji.  I remained upset and continued to try to figure out a plan.

On Tuesday (10/28) R+E was open and I needed to drop off the brakes for the Di2 tandem that had arrived while I was focused on the ibis.  I stuck the brakes in my handlebar bag when I went for my daily ride and stopped at the shop on my way home. The Di2 bike looks great – they were done installing the Di2 hardware and said that they just needed the fork to finish it up.  The battery mounts to bottle cage rivnuts on the stiffener tube.  The wires are taped to the down tube and are almost invisible.  The 40-T big cog in the cassette is huge.  The BCD on the FSA crankset was too big to mount 50/34 chainrings so they went with 52/38 – and I’m guessing that a 38-40 granny gear will be fine.  They had already taken off the chunks of housing hung on the brake cable to protect the top tube, replacing it with cable doughnuts. That’s probably a better approach than the housing liner I was proposing.  They were familiar with the ProblemSolvers downtube shifter boss covers and offered to order them for me but I took them up on the offer to remove the barrel adjuster from the outriggers – I think that will be lighter and look just as good.  I got to see the Zipp bars with no tape.  Alder said that there was no need to update the belt drive until it broke.  I asked Alder about timing and he said “a couple of days – maybe a week” which was pretty exciting news.

As I got ready to leave I told Alder about my Ibis dilemma.  He told me that he had a box full of Rohloff / Gebla parts because the Gebla-modified shifters broke a lot and a bunch of people ended up deciding to remove the Gebla and go back to straight Rohloff. He said to bring the bike in and he’d see what they could do.   I told him that I was pretty sure I wanted to go back to the Rohloff twist-shifter that the hub was made for.  He offered to order a shifter for me and said that they could fix me up with a doohickey.  I said that I’d gone with Gebla to be able to keep the drop bars because I didn’t like the way the doohickey thing looked (that plus bad memories of twist shifters on cheap mountain bikes.)  I said that I had a couple of sets of handlebars at home from a previous project and that I was thinking about mounting the shifter on one of them – and I mentioned the butterfly bars.  Alder said that he also had a bunch of butterfly bars because people migrated to them when Gebla was an issue and then decided that they didn’t like that style of bars.  He said that they often ran into issues of cable clearance between the bar end and the stem.   I mentioned my other option and he pulled me over to see an extreme travel bike he was finishing up – S&S, Rohloff, heavy duty tubes – and a Jones bar.  I don’t exactly like the dimensions of the Jones bar but it validated my thinking about moving away from drop bars.  I told Alder that I needed to think about it some more but in fact I pretty much knew where I was headed and just had to figure out some details.

While waiting to go on my ride on the red tandem on Wednesday I took the crazy bars and held them up against the rando bag I use on the Ibis.  They looked like they were made for each other and I knew I’d made my choice.  When i got back from the ride I removed the bar tape and bar-end shifters from the crazy bars.  (I dropped one of the bar-ends and didn’t get it back together right but it’s just going to sit in the parts bin for a while anyway.)   I had to change stems because the one on the bike wouldn’t clamp down tight enough for the crazy bars.  They are from the same manufacturer (Profile Design – the one from the crazy bars has a longer reach) and they’re supposed to have the same clamp dimensions, but only one of them works.  The straddle cable attached to the bars was for a narrow 700C wheel while the Ibis has a wide 26-inch wheel. I had to replace the straddle cable to hook up the front brake, otherwise that cable was ready to go.  The crazy bars were set up for a single bike and the cable for the rear brake wasn’t long enough.  I had trouble getting the stopper out of the reverse lever and had to remove the pivot screw and take the lever out to remove that cable.  The new one went in just fine and after some fiddling with the cable splitter I decided that it was good enough. I replaced the stripped fender screw and tried (without success) to manually shift the Rohloff into a higher gear.  In order to make sure the cables got split I wanted to attach both pieces of the cable splitter to both cables – but they split in different places so I had one long and one short cable under the keel tube.  I put a short cable end into the shorter splitter and then matched it with a very short cable end in the longer cable.  I wrapped a piece of velcro around the tube to hold both cables in place.)

My plan was to take the Ibis (now sporting crazy bars with no tape) with me when I went to pick up the Di2 tandem. Despite the fenders I figured I would put it on the car because without a shifter it isn’t rideable. (That’s actually not true, I’ve ridden it home with a broken shifter more than once – it would be rideable, just not shiftable.)   If Odette drove me over I could drop off the Ibis to get a doohickey and bar tape, have her take the parts that came off the Di2 bike and I could ride the new bike home.  If I rode the crippled Ibis to get there I would just need a knapsack to carry the redundant parts home on the Taliani.

I wanted a quick lesson on Di2 shifting (somehow I’ve got to learn about automatic progressions vs. the left-hand lever, etc)   and I needed to figure out charging and displays and probably ten other Di2 secrets, but I figured that  I could ride it home more easily than I could connect with Odette on Ravenna – and maybe I could  even sneak in a lap around Green Lake.

I ordered a Brooks Sprung Flyer for Odette and will hold off on a fitting.  Amazon shipped the wrong saddle – a sticker on the box said “flyer with suspension springs” but inside was something with a short nose and no springs –  so I filed for a return and waited for a replacement.  The replacement from Amazon was also the wrong saddle – the same error as the time before.  The leather on the side was stamped “B 68” so I assume that’s what got put in the flyer box.  I returned that one too, but this time I requested a refund not a replacement.

It cost almost $50 more, partly because of shipping, but I ordered a flyer with suspension springs from Rivendale.  After really unhelpful tracking information from USPS, the Rivendale saddle showed up two days earlier than expected – they got the right one and I’m confident that it will fit.  Odette thought that the saddle on the Tuscany (that she doesn’t like) was a Brooks and we had a conversation about that.  If she hates the Flyer there are several versions (carved, soft, etc.) that we can try which might make her happier. Meanwhile, it’s been over a week and Alder still hasn’t called to say the bike is ready.

I waited another week and then (11/11) called Alder to check in.  He reported that the bike was basically done and I said I’d be right over.  I grabbed a stuff sac / backpack and set off on the broken Ibis.   I walked up the hill at 73rd and rode down the other side and around Green Lake as if single speed was the new normal.   When I got to R+E I realized I still had the frame pump and the tool bag on the bike so I stowed them in the backpack and went on in.

The Ibis was dispensed with very quickly – “I want a doohickey and a Rohloff twist-shift and some kind of grips on the bar-ends.”  Alder noted that the bar-ends had been cut down.  I didn’t ask him to adjust the brakes, but they seemed to do just fine coming down the hill on 73rd.  (I had a bag of Rohloff parts from th original conversion in my pocket but I forgot to give them to Alder – I expect that he already has plenty of similar ones.) I also forgot to explain the cable splitter thing to Alder and I imagine he’ll think I clipped the two cables instead of opening the quick releases.  .Without shifters to worry about I’m thinking about experimenting with other bars:  (Rivendale Albatross or Choco or maybe Bullmoose would be interesting) or maybe going back to drops.

The Litespeed, however, was more complicated:

Taliani spec sheet: original vs. Di2

Here are some notes from after I picked up the Litespeed:

• Alder says not to worry about synchronized shifting – people always come back and have it removed because you have to shift all the time in very small increments.
• You need to charge about every 150 miles or once a month – there are lights on the battery to show that it’s charging and lights on the front stem that show how much battery you have left.  (Those are the only displays on the system.)
• The battery should have been about half way charged coming out of the shop.  I left it plugged in for three or four hours and the lights didn’t seem to change.
• I forgot where the charger port was (but figured it out the next  morning.)  I pushed the shift button to see the battery light, and learned that the shifters move even when the bike is hanging on the wall.  I never did figure out how to interpret the battery light.
• They installed a body float which I wasn’t expecting.  The thud buster on the red tandem was always set in the lowest position and it looks like the body float on this bike will similarly be as far down as it can go.  (If it doesn’t work I’ll put it on another bike and we’ll start the process of getting a version of the Brooks saddle that she likes.)
• The body float works with springs and R+E says it’s better than polymer discs.   I adjusted it down to the lowest possible position and the distance between the center of the crank bolt and the nose of the saddle is about the same as on Odette’s Stellar.  That means it can go up by at least the distance that it compresses. so there is a little room for adjustment.
• One of the cantis was stuck to the post when they went to replace it, so they replaced the post, too.  Evidently the posts screw in.
• I didn’t get the old free hub body back – oh well…
• The chainrings are Specialties TA rings (130 BCD) 52/38.  They couldn’t use the rings that were on the bike (FSA 53/39 because the big one was too big for the Di2 presets.)
• Alder warned me to be careful about shifting in the front until I’m experienced with it:  it will shift even under load and you may be in a situation where you don’t want to shift up.
• R+E felt that I needed wider brake pads than what came with the neo-retros.
• I needed to get the bike on a scale before we weighed it down with stuff  – Odette got me a new battery for my portable scale and the Taliani weighed between 30 and 31 lbs with saddles & pedals.  After I weighed the bike I removed the body float for a net weight reduction – maybe as much as a pound.  Cutting down the steerer would reduce weight a little and the charger and front wheel stabilizer strap were on the bike when I weighed it – so 30 lbs is probably about right.
• As I mounted the new pedals I noticed that the cranks are 172.5.
• R+E didn’t see a serial number (but they weren’t looking for one.)  I need to give it a good going over, maybe with a pencil to do some rubbings.   Then we’ll think about paint remover.
• The shifters have two narrow buttons – the lower one seems to shift up, the smaller upper one shifts down.  Left is front, right is rear, just like on a mechanical bike.
• Shifting too fast seems to cause the chain to grind.  It only happened once (while starting out across Aurora at 83rd) and I’m not really certain why it happened.
• I’m not sure what to do about the steerer tube – I either want to raise the bars or cut off the excess tube because the stump on top of the bars isn’t a good look.  First, it appears that putting the stem at the top of the stack would be about the same height as the red tandem; as they came from the shop they are about the same height as the litespeed classic.   Second, it appears that only the front brake is going to be an issue (i.e. it looks like  there is enough slack in the rear housing.)  There is likely enough extra inner cable on the front brake  so that I wouldn’t need to replace the cable, and with a double-ended ferule I ought to be able to add three or four inches of housing without unwrapping the bars.  (I would still have to undo the brake and reset them afterwards.)  I’ll probably live with it for a while and maybe wait for the first tuneup to fix the steerer.
• Alder asked what I intended to do with the parts that came off and I told him about the Tuscany.  (I’m not sure if he was just curious or if he was interested in some of them.)  My current plan is to do the cassette first (like, right away) and then the derailleur, followed by the brakes on the Stellar.  I’ll replace inner tubes (at least on the Tuscany) while I’m at it. I would like to have both bikes done before R+E finishes the Ibis.  Then I’ll take the Litespeed to Recycled Cycles for a seasonal tuneup and somewhere in the process I’ll need to clean and lube the bikes I’m riding in the rain.
• I shifted way down to climb the hill on 83rd (but I don’t think I went  all the way down) and it felt like I had lots of room.  We’ll have to see how it feels with Odette on the rear.
• Based on my ride home, triple vs. double won’t be an issue.  I want to lay out a traditional gearing chart comparing the blue and red tandems but that will mean taking the rear wheels off to count teeth on the cogs in the cassette and that will need to wait for a day when I’m not nursing road rash.
• Dan Toole recognized the Ibis (and said that he was just looking at a photo of it)  and then went to interview a cleaning service, saying that he had many fewer workers and that they didn’t have time to clean like they used to.
•  I need to experiment with the carbon saddle I mounted. Maybe we won’t do  a fitting, but I need to fiddle with saddle height both front and back.  I’ve got to figure out what saddle will work for Odette (probably not the Sprung Flyer) but after  discussing it with her we’ll start out with that raggedy padded Serfas.  I kind of hope she ends up liking the Flyer – if that happens I’ll get myself a B-17 or something (and a Brooks saddle bag,) and cosmetically the bike will look better.
• I wonder if we should move to different bars for Odette –  some kind of upgrade for the Prima TTT 220 bars on there now?  Maybe a Rivendale Wavie (or maybe those cut-off FSA Wing-pros?) or maybe some bullhorns would give her a more upright position than the drops do, and there’s no reason to carry around a handlebar section that she never uses.
• I wonder if hanging it up by the wheel is a good idea with the carbon spokes.  (It seems to make contact with the hook on the rim only and it doesn’t touch the spokes at all.)
• Eventually I will want to replace the blackburn bottle cages with something sexier.  I know that there are bottle cage mounts for mini-pumps that might make the battery look more symmetrical.

Odette agreed to a short ride on Wednesday to try out the Taliani.  Then, after breakfast, it was raining and we blew it off.  This was the second time we bailed out on a ride around Green Lake on the new tandem – we talked about it the day before I first took the bike in to R+E but ended up deciding not to ride then, either.

After lunch on Thursday I swapped the rear derailleur and cassette on Odette’s Tuscany for the titanium parts that came off the Taliani.  The exchange was uneventful – the chain from the tandem needed a quick link so I kept the chain from the Tuscany and it seemed to work fine.  I needed to fiddle with the barrel adjuster to get it to go into the largest cog but no real problems.  The inner tubes I got have a 42mm valve stem which turns out not to be long enough for those deep-section rims.  I ordered some more with 60mm valves and will use the others on the Stellar.

I took a day off after hitting a pothole in the rain and messing up my face.  On Saturday it was still raining and I didn’t feel like riding so I installed the Paul Components Engineering touring cantis on Odette’s Stellar.  The install was easy and the brakes are much easier to set up than the Rodriguez “big squeeze” cantis that I’m used to.  (I don’t have the hang of the eccentric washers that you use to adjust the toe-in and pad angle, but trial and error got me close.)  I replaced the inner tubes on that bike with new Continental 650C tubes so the bike should be good to go. Those 42mm valve stems really don’t work very well with my floor pump.  (I exploded one tube probably by trapping it under the bead even though I manipulated it all the way around before pumping. )

Here are the details on Odette’s bikes:

I spent the afternoon cleaning and organizing the garage. and really didn’t make a dent.  I found some more Rohloff parts – including a shifter.  I discovered that I have a lot of old cantis.  I found some smaller outriggers and I may try to combine one of those with a light stub.  I didn’t find a side-loading mini pump bracket. I wasn’t able to rotate the right hand shift lever on the Centurion, but it still works despite the crash and actually may not have been twisted at all.  I still need to swap out the front derailleur on my Litespeed for the one from the Taliani and clean the three bikes with fenders.

Tuesday, I swapped the front derailleur on my Litespeed Classic for the one that came off of the Taliani.  I think that I need more tension in the cable but it shifts up and down and doesn’t make any chain noise while on the stand.  (I’m not certain that the old one was broken, but it was way   out of adjustment and I couldn’t seem to get it back in range.)  I found the springs for the body float and spent a little time trying to figure out how to replace them. I finally gave up and downloaded their instruction sheet.

Early in the morning before a ride I changed the body float springs to two purples.  The procedure was not as easy as I was led to expect and the instruction sheets were not exactly clear, but it seems to only go together in one way and it compresses like it is supposed to.  Odette can straddle the frame with both feet flat on the floor but if she sits on the saddle she can only touch with her toes – so as far as she is concerned it doesn’t work.  I mounted the sprung flyer and we took our maiden ride – a couple of laps around Green Lake.  We came back to the garage and adjusted the nose of her saddle so that it didn’t point down quite as much and we raised my saddle a couple of inches (and moved her handlebars up as far as they will go on my seat post. ) The second two laps felt a little more comfortable so we did two more. Climbing up the hill on 50th with Odette on the back feels remarkably like it does on the red tandem. I’ve got to get the saddles sorted out (that carbon Selle Anatomica isn’t going to work for me this time, either.)  I need to raise the front bars and I need to find a set of stoker bars with more rise.  I need to order bottle cages and set up a tool kit.  Otherwise, the Di2 bike is coming together.

After Odette got me more new batteries, I measured the clamping diameter on the rear stem on the Taliani and got numbers that didn’t make any sense at all.  I finally figured out that it helps to zero out the caliper before measuring and determined that I need 26mm bars.  I plan to order a set of flatish bullhorns and we’ll take it from there.   I finally got 650C inner tubes with a 60mm valve stem and I installed one in the front of Odette’s Tuscany and put the other one in her saddle bag.  I replaced the carbon Selle Anatomica saddle on the front of the Taliani with a beat-up old Selle Italia, (a Mundialita, I think.)  I don’t know where it came from but it must have been on some bike that I got used, probably the Centurion.  That will hold me until Odette figures out whether or not she can live with the Flyer.   Ordering the bottle cages means a call to Peter White and I’ll deal with that in the next few days.

I raised the front bars up to the top of the steerer tube and I’ll figure out where I want them before cutting housing or cable or the steerer.  I figured out that what determined the length of the housing was the position of the hanger, meaning that if I left the hanger the same distance below the clamp I wouldn’t have to add any housing.  I end up with a hanger that is really too high and a long exposed cable segment, but it will work for now.  The first time I have it serviced I’ll need to cut the tube or add some housing to the front brake cable.

I got a pair of Origin8 bullhorns and got Odette’s buy-in to try them on the blue tandem.  The weather turned wet and we weren’t going to be riding any time soon so there was no hurry to install them.  The bar tape came off the Prima bars intact, so I wrapped the bullhorns with the old tape just to have something to hang onto while we adjusted their position, figuring that I’d save the new tape until I was sure the bars were going to work.  The bullhorns were the occasion for a conversation about saddles – I read Peter White’s comments to her and we talked about cut-outs and shapes.  Here are the links I gave to her:

• https://www.peterwhitecycles.com/bersaddles.php
• https://www.brooksengland.com/en_us/flyer-carved.html
• https://www.brooksengland.com/en_us/b17-softned-short.html
• https://www.brooksengland.com/en_us/b67-softened-short.html
• https://www.brooksengland.com/en_us/b135.html
• https://selleanatomica.com/products/x1

Eventually we’ll select another saddle and give it a try.

Before riding on Black Friday, I had Odette sit on the bike and tell me if she was okay with the position of the bullhorns and to make sure that they weren’t bumping her knees.  She wasn’t really into it but said they were fine.  After lunch I replaced the bar tape on the bullhorns with a different  used tape – and I moved the posts a little further around the bend and tilted them back a bit.  It’s still a work in process but I think that they’ll be okay when we get done.  While I was in the garage I looked at cassettes and was able to find the number of teeth marked on most of the rings. Here is a basic gearing chart for the red and blue tandems.  As I expected, even with a 2-by setup, the range on the Litespeed is comparable to that on the Rodriguez (3.78 on the Litespeed vs 3.74 on the Rodriguez.)  At 0.95 the Litespeed granny gear is actually a little lower than the Rodriguez’ 1.07.

The Specialites TA bottle cages from Peter White came the weekend after Thanksgiving – I mounted all of them except the one that will fit over the battery.  I wanted to mount a Zefal side-loading mini-pump mount on there too, and even though it’s coming from California and even though I ordered it in mid-November, it’s not expected to get here until Christmas!  I hauled Odette’s Tuscany upstairs and put it on her trainer.  I’m not betting that it will get much use but I know she won’t ride it if it is out in the garage, and maybe it will help her decide on a saddle.  I’ve been taking short rides because of a couple of atmospheric rivers – which leaves me extra time for waiting.  I mounted clip-on fenders on the red tandem hoping that we’ll get out for a ride eventually.  There isn’t any clearance in the front with the current tires (30s) so I mounted a 23 on a spare rim and figured I’d ride with that until spring.  The front fender mounts with a single bolt through the fork crown and I’m not very confident that I’ll get away without rubbing, but there’s one way to find out.

The little mini pump bracket I ordered back in mid-November finally arrived – two weeks early.  The real story is that I didn’t realize it was actually coming from the UK, but  I wouldn’t have had to wait so long if it hadn’t gone in and out of the Seattle distribution center so many times.

Here’s what it looks like after mounting the bottle cage and the mini pump bracket on the same riv nuts as the battery:

 

The 15th of December was a Monday and R+E wasn’t open, so I planned to call that Tuesday, figuring that after a month I’d waited long enough that it didn’t look antsy and that I ought to check in to see if they could tell me when the bike would be done.  After a wet ride I was scanning email when the phone rang and it was R+E saying that the Ibis was ready for me to pick up.  Odette gave me a ride over and I rode home in almost dry  conditions.   The bike shifts really well.  It has always been geared too low and that is even more noticeable now, but with Odette on the back it likely won’t feel as light.   Its started to rain as I pulled into the driveway but I decided to take some photos anyway.

Now I need to take the Litespeed in to Recycled Cycles and take my trashed glasses in to Eyes on Fremont – two things I’ve been waiting to do until the Ibis process was over.

Here’s my “made in America” gallery:

 

Here’s a gallery of Di2 bike photos:

 

From August 23rd to September 10th, 2024, Jerry and Odette rode a couple of loops on the tandem in Denmark and visited Copenhagen with Will.

• why Denmark

Odette and I had talked for years about a trip to Scandinavia.  She’s never seen the northern lights and I’m curious about the fjords.  Last winter we started thinking about another european tandem trip, maybe starting from Berlin.  We thought about riding to Munich and maybe on into Italy.  We thought about Austria and Poland.  There is an established route from Berlin to Hamburg and a lot of options to loop back from the Baltic coast.  Eventually we realized that we needed to look at what we could get from a commercial tour agency, and the on-line places were selling trips on the Baltic coast from Hamburg, but not from Berlin.  If we were going to visit Denmark / Sweden it made more sense to start in Copenhagen than in Berlin.  So… we agreed to arrange a two-week ride in Denmark followed by a week off the bike in Copenhagen.  That would be all new territory for us and it would meet Odette’s requirements about distance and elevation during the bike portion.  We ended up settling on two off-the-shelf loops from ActiveScandinvia which let us see a lot of the island of Zealand but not much of the rest of Denmark:

• boot story digression

A year before the pandemic I gave up on boot covers and gaiters and bought a pair of Louis Garneau biking boots.  They had a Boa closure covered by a zippered gusset covered by a velcro flap.  They were warm, they were fairly dry, and there weren’t a lot of pieces to keep track of.   About three months after I bought them the Boas stopped releasing.  (Later I figured out that the ratchet mechanism  was fine and that I’d kinked the wire where it exited the guide-noodle.)  I could only open up the boot to take it off by pulling really hard on the gusset and eventually I broke the wire.  I knotted it and it worked well enough, but when the second one broke I pulled out the Boas and the wires and riveted in old fashioned boot eyelets.  As lace-ups the boots worked just fine (the snowboard boot laces I used looked like they were made for them) and I got three seasons of daily winter use.  This spring the zippers started to fail and the boots just felt wrong when the zippers gaped open.

I went shopping for new bike boots, looking for something without Boas.  (Odette has a pair of Shimano lace-up M-5 boots  that she likes, but they are six or eight years old and don’t seem to be available anymore.)  I decided to get a pair of Shimano EX-900 boots with Boas because they were marketed for touring and claimed to be designed more for hiking than for biking.

They come with two Boas on each foot – kind of doubling down since I started out looking for zero Boas.  They’re really light, about the same as regular bike shoes and much lighter than my climbing boots or even than my old Nashbar bike sandals.  They don’t have leather, the uppers look like really short pile carpet.  I liked them.

In preparation for the trip to Copenhagen Odette monitored the weather there and got increasingly anxious about rain.  We both packed full rain gear and planned to take our boots, but the question remained about what other shoes to  take?  I decided that the boots were the only bike shoes I needed and that since I wouldn’t have brown leather low-cut bike shoes I could bring brown leather low-cut street shoes.  The boots worked great for biking – we didn’t really get rained on so I didn’t test the water proof claims, but I didn’t have any complaints on the bike.   They were also great for walking – I wore them in a dozen towns and for a couple of days in Copenhagen and I walked a bunch and was really happy. The first day out I wore them with a pair of below-the-ankle socks and got a hot spot on my heel but I think that would have happened with any shoes.  I might not select them for really hot weather, but for touring I think that they’re a really good choice.

• tire story digression

Last year, in preparation for Portugal, we got the tandem serviced.  It had Schwalbe Marathon tires on it that had seen maybe 3,000 miles and which had lots of tread left.  The shop suggested new tires and I said I thought that the Schwalbes still had some life left in them.  When we picked up the bike after the service, Odette, true to form, wanted new tires and I didn’t want to argue with her in front of the shop guys so I said OK.  They  didn’t have Schwalbe Marathons in stock so they ordered them and we made a special trip back down the Leschi to get them installed.  (I made them fish the old ones out of the dumpster for me and I’m still riding them on my Fuji.)

This year the tires on the tandem also had about 3,000 miles on them, but the rear one looked “squared off” so I didn’t object when the shop suggested new tires.   They installed Vittoria RideArmor which were a lot lighter than the Schwalbes but promoted as very puncture resistant so I figured we’d be okay.

On the ride to Helsingør (the first real day of the tour) we got drizzled on and in the middle of a shower we realized that we had a flat!  I don’t exactly like changing tires in the rain, but I’ve done it a lot of times and it isn’t really a big deal.  However, this time I was simply unable to get the bead to unseat.  I guess that it was something about being tubeless ready but the tires just wouldn’t detach. I finally resorted to laying the wheel flat on the ground and standing on my toes next to the rim which broke it loose.  I found a granule of glass – not a sharp shard – in the casing and a matching puncture in the tube.  I replaced the tube and was pleased that it went on easier than it came off.  Unfortunately the standard length valve stem was a little shorter than the depth of the rim would have indicated and it was difficult to get our frame pump to latch on securely.  I got it inflated enough to ride and we made it to the hotel.  The next day the rear wheel felt soft so I pumped it some more and then obsessed for the rest of the loop about low pressure and puncture resistance.  I didn’t go to the trouble of swapping out the tube for one with a longer stem (under the theory that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”  (I figured that I’d wait for a flat at which point I’d have to take the tire off anyway.)  We got back to the hotel in Copenhagen without issue and I borrowed a floor pump and, still without switching tubes, pumped the tire all the way up.  (I had a gauge that I carried with me for the whole tour but I didn’t bother to dig it out and just relied on my fingers.)  There were no tire issues during the second loop, but when I got home and wanted to reassemble the bike I couldn’t get the rear tire off the rim! to install a tube with a longer stem.  My toe jam technique didn’t work at home.  I broke two tire levers and pinch-flatted a couple of tubes but I finally got the tire onto the rim and it now has a tube that has a longer stem.  I think I’ll buy new tires before we go on any long rides.  Now I need to patch a bunch of tubes…

• tour agency digression

The first indication that this was not your usual bike tour outfit was when they tried to tell us that the hotel wouldn’t store our bike cases (“liability reasons”) and insisted that we were locked in to a contract even if the case storage was a dealbreaker.  Odette called the hotel directly and the problem turned out to be the agencies imagination.  They didn’t do one-off routes – their only suggestion was to pick two of their standard routes and ride them sequentially.  They gave us GPX files, a printed tour book and a digital tour book for the first loop.  They also gave us an app with points of interest and turn-by-turn.  They insisted that we couldn’t have anything but the GPX files for the second loop, but actually gave  us a printed tour book as well.  Most of the time they got our luggage to our hotel in the early afternoon but when we came to count on that they didn’t deliver until dinner time.  In the end, it’s a case of “you get what you pay for.”  We thought that the cost of the tour package (routes, hotels and luggage transfer) was reasonable in Danish Kroner – but it was actually quoted in Swedish Kroner which made it much less expensive.

I kept telling Odette that this was the consequence of dealing with a big company instead of the “sole practioner” places we used in Spain and Portugal.  She is correct in pointing out that having the local rep be the person who drives around moving luggage kind of defeats that argument.  She  thinks that there were actually two agencies involved, one in Sweden and its’ parent in Austria.  (ActiveScandanivia and Radreise, respectively.)  I suspect that somebody just dropped the ball on the second loop.

• colonialism  / slavery digression

So,  last year in Amsterdam we noticed how preoccupied the  Dutch seemed to be about slavery and the role the Netherlands played in colonialism and the slave trade.  (Every museum we went into seemed to have an apology and to acknowledge that the wealth and cultural heritage on display came, in part,  from human trafficking.)  Then, in Portugal, it was interesting to see how the museums there put a distance between their colonialist history and the present day.  (There was no denying the slave trade, but no apologies and a subtext that there was an equivalence between life under authoritarian rulers and life in a colony.)   Maybe this is somehow connected with our impression that Portugal was more like third world country?   Danish museums seem to pretty much skip over the issue.  There apparently isn’t an automatic connection between colonialism and slavery in the Danish experience – the colony in Greenland was about resource extraction,  the one in India was about trade (likely including the slave trade, but we won’t dwell on that) and the colonies in the Caribbean, those got turned over to the US.  The vikings raided English and Baltic villages for slaves  (thrall) and much of the Asian and Turkish treasure on display must have been a product of the slave trade. Slavery happened in Denmark as recently as in the US (up until the 1850s.)  Perhaps the Dutch feel guiltier because they were more successful?  There is an opportunity here for someone to write a book about blind spots.    Meanwhile it’s amusing to note the little oblique references that are almost hidden away in the Museum placards.

• the flights

We flew Delta / KLM to Amsterdam and then on to Copenhagen and vice versa.  We checked our luggage all the way through at the first airport.  We had priority status thanks to Will.  We got to the airport in Seattle quite early and spent a couple of hours in the lounge.  We went through customs in Amsterdam and had plenty of time for our transfer.  I started to use the fully reclining bed position but got claustrophobic and reverted to the medium recliner.  I brought my wireless headphones and listened to music the whole flight.  We got to the airport in Copenhagen way too early and had trouble figuring out which desk we needed to line up for.  Once we got situated the process went very quickly and we had a couple of hours to kill at the gate.  We both checked our backpacks in addition to our bike cases.  We only had an hour and a half for the transfer in Amsterdam and we had to go through passport control but it worked.  Our luggage was nearly the first on the belt in Seattle, the Customs line was short,  and the Lyft ride home was uneventful.  (The driver was Venezuelan and wanted to warn us about the dangers of socialism in the US.)

• the loops

We got to Copenhagen at lunchtime and put the bike together that afternoon in the hotel courtyard.  There was no secure storage so I took the front wheel off and locked it and the frame to a low bike rack while also putting a U-lock through the rear triangle and rim.  (It was less of a risk than it sounds since there were probably 50 rental bikes also lined up in the courtyard.)  The hotel had two storage rooms that were accessible to anyone with a room key – we saw some full size bike cases in the storage and felt better about pushing the agency on that issue.  We had dinner at a restaurant close to the hotel called Sanchez.  The next day was a layover so we rode the first six or eight miles of our Day 1 route as an out-and-back.  Central Copenhagen is busy and not a simple grid and despite the extensive bike network and GPX files we found it hard to navigate. We had some arguments about curb cuts and advance warnings, but for the most part the city riding was out of the way quickly and the more suburban riding was easy.  We had lunch at a neighborhood place on our route and dinner at restaurant called Gorilla in the meatpacking district.

The first day of the tour was cloudy and moist.  Odette wore rain pants.  The route was flat and without too many navigational issues.  We lost some time dealing with the flat tire but got to the Louisiana Modern Art Museum before lunch.  This was a really good museum with an outdoor sculpture garden and a couple of temporary exhibits.  We got to our hotel early in the afternoon. The GPX files took us to the ferry and the tour book expected us to use Google Maps to get to our hotel.  We understood that we needed to get across the railroad tracks and found the station we were looking for, only to discover that to cross under the tracks meant going down and up a flight of stairs.   It wasn’t that bad (some of the locals laughed at us) and we rode on up the hill to the hotel where we followed the signs for the bikeway.  We continued up the hill and couldn’t figure out where the entrance was – we ended up cutting through an apartment parking lot  because we could see the hotel building on the other side of a fence.  We took a dirt path that should have led to the back side of the hotel, but there was a fence between us and it.  We walked the bike a block or so on the trail before admitting that we were in the wrong place and heading back to the street, riding back down the hill, and taking the driveway next to the bikeway signs.  The hotel was nice, no bike parking but we could lean it up by the front door and immobilize it with bike locks.  Our room was great and the restaurant was very good.

The next day we rode to the ferry (avoiding the stairs under the railroad track) and rode a loop in Sweden.  Helsingborg is a relatively big town with impressive buildings and wide streets.  We started by riding up the coast to Höganäs – impressive views, sandy beaches and lots of cozy little houses.  Then we cut inland for maybe five miles and rode a big road back to Helsingborg.  When we got back to the Ferry terminal Odette was certain that I was heading to the wrong booth and got us into an exit lane and the attendant came out and redirected us.  Odette still couldn’t believe that we needed follow the bike signs and got us into a lane behind the wrong camper and the attendant had to come out and intervene once again.  The third time was the charm and we were the last vehicle onto the boat, just barely squeezing on and parking at the back of the pack.  I stayed with the bike for the sailing while Odette went up to the passenger cabin. Back in Denmark we found yet another way to the hotel and were not fooled by the bikeway signs at the entrance.   We ate at the hotel again and both the service and the food were as good the second night as the first.  When we left the next morning we forgot a pair of water bottles advertising Bike Holland.  Odette was certain she had also forgotten her underwear, but she later realized that it was all right there.

Third day we rode up the Danish coast a little past Munkerup and then cut inland to Hillerød.  The ride on the coast was pretty but we encountered a bunch of construction on the road.  The ride to Hillerød was mainly forest / farm land and was beautiful.  It was, however, mainly unpaved and neither of us had really anticipated ten miles on gravel.  The farm segments were more difficult than the forest segments.  There were a lot of railroad crossings – and a couple of trains – evidently commuter rail not freight.  The route eventually took us through the gardens of Frederiksborg castle which we returned to for a visit.  (There were lots of paintings of guys who looked like Frank Zappa, I was more impressed by the gardens.)  We had some navigational issues getting to the hotel which turned out to be a Best Western.  They had us park the bike beside the main entrance.  Odette was looking forward to dinner because the hotel restaurant was highly rated.  In fact, it was what you’d expect at a Best Western.

Fourth day we rode to Roskilde.  Much less gravel.  Still pretty country with big fields of grain and leafy vegetables.  On the way into town we stopped at the Viking Ship Museum for lunch and to see the boats.  The tour book took us to the Cathedral but we didn’t go in.  I sat with the bike while Odette tried to figure out how to get to our hotel.  I noticed that the housing for the disc brake was out of the cable stop and in the process of fixing it the bike fell over and put a scrape (and another dent) in the top tube.  It also stabbed my knuckle.  I got the brake back in order and realized that I probably ought to think about having the bike repainted – it’s been over ten years!  The hotel was a Scandia, they had covered (but not secure) parking and a decent restaurant.

On the last day of the first loop we rode back to Copenhagen.  We basically rode over to the coast and then followed the water back to the city.  We found  sand on the trail for a ways, but the ride was mostly paved.  There were some impressive underpasses and bridges by the airport but we managed the navigation in good form. We saw a lot of people in swimsuits (but not too many in the water.)  The route into Copenhagen was much easier than it had been on the outbound leg.  We stayed in same hotel (Absalon) and ate at the fish bar in the meatpacking district.

We had a two day lay over in Copenhagen so the next morning we rode a loop around Amager Island.  Odette selected the route from the public routes on Ride With GPS because it was about 30 miles long and because it was flat.  We found it to be both.   It revisited the final leg of our ride the day before – which would see again on our way out of town for the second loop.  It also had a generous helping of airport and related activities.  However, the bottom end of the island was spectacular.  We rode for several miles along a seawall that was pristine and wild (Odette thinks she saw otters.)  The villages on the return segment were picturesque.   We grabbed lunch at Tivoli Gardens and visited the Rosenborg Castle (more Zappa look alikes but this time with jewels.)  Dinner was at a place called NR.30 which left me with absolutely no impression other than remembering that it was in a former butcher shop.

The next morning we walked all the way from our hotel to Refshaleøen, cutting through Christiania on the way.  Christiania would likely be more interesting later in the day.  We sat on a bench and watched floatplanes and boats and bungie jumping from a crane.  We visited the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Museum where we saw an exhibit about light and color that was pretty disorienting.  The guide was amused by my boots / Boas.  We had lunch at the Refshaleøen food court and then walked back to the København Museum.  I connected with this museum as much as with anything in the city – the exhibit about small business on Amager Island was really on point and we sat through a documentary about squatters and alternative communities that put Christiania into perspective.

We started the second loop by returning to Amager Island and the complicated underpasses and bridges from our way into town a couple of days earlier.  We rode the sand along the beach again but didn’t wait for the Arken Museum to open.  In Køge our hotel was outside of town, beyond the miniature city attraction.  It did offer secure bike parking.  The hotel restaurant wasn’t open either for lunch or for dinner.  We walked to the harbor area and bought grapes and cookies in a grocery which we ate in the square.  The center of town is really attractive with a lot of handsome buildings.  The harbor area was where the action was, through.  We ate there in the evening at a place improbably called “Bossa Nova.”

The next day we rode to Næstved,  This was the day with the most climbing and the most miles of the whole trip.  Just before town we saw a herd of deer, presumably on a game farm.  We got to Næstved at lunch time and stowed the bike before eating at a restaurant a couple of blocks away.  (The bike storage involved passing through an elevator with doors on both sides to access a garage full of spare furniture.)  The town had a lot of impressive old buildings and twisty cobbled streets – we walked it twice.  There were half a dozen big churches that we didn’t go into.  Hotel Kirstine, where we stayed, featured a very nice modern room and a huge ancient lobby.  We ate dinner there and it was excellent.

Our ninth day of riding took us from Næstved to Korsør – except that we stayed in a hotel a few miles outside of town.  The hotel was weird – two parallel single-story arms stretching out from a two -story area with reception and restaurant in a mono-color beige brick.  (There were at least 100 rooms in each arm so our room clear at the far end was quite a walk from the front desk.)  The restaurant was not open for lunch but the front desk said we could get a burger or a salad at the bar.  Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any staff around the bar (Odette offended a woman in a business group by assuming that she worked for the hotel.)  We got lunch although Odette had to compromise her vegetarian principles.  We were staying in what was probably a suite – our room was incredibly small and there was a similar room off a common hallway.  Further up the hallway was a living room / kitchen with glass doors out to a patio.  The other rooms seemed to be full of furniture and stuff and the patio was overgrown (and littered with an abandoned bikini) so our room must have been the only active bit – it should have been a great price given the size and position. Being at the end of the arm we did have a view out to the brush and the water beyond – and we had a great vantage point to watch the lightning during the thunderstorm that evening.  We parked the bike on the patio under the eves for partial protection from rain.  We put shower caps over the saddles for the only time on the trip.  For some reason I was nervous about the bike all night.  We walked down to the beach but it was pretty rocky and there were too many people for us to stay very long.  We walked a short trail to a dolmen in the woods.  We ate at the restaurant which had almost nothing on the menu apart from a burger and a salad.

In the morning we rode on to Korsør and then to Sorø.  We didn’t see any of the interesting part of Korsør since our route took us through the industrial district and the rain was threatening enough to limit our interest in side trips.  We did make a trip out to Trelleborg to see the Viking ring fortress, a really interesting museum without a lot restoration stuff.  Much of the rest of the route went through the same forest that we encountered on the ride to Hillerød.  This time we took a route requiring less navigation and no railroad crossings.  If Sorø had an old part or a downtown we missed it.  Our hotel was very nice and had a very good restaurant but the primary attraction was the reconstruction of the thatched roof that was in progress.  

The ride from Sorø to Roskilde was interesting in that we approached Roskilde from a different direction than before.  There was one section of unpaved trail where we stopped to inspect another dolmen.  That trail put us back on pavement at a golf course where we got held up for a few minutes by a motorcade with a very large motorcycle escort.  Odette thought the GPX files took us to the hotel and seemed surprised to end up at the cathedral again.  This time I waited with the bike while she went in.   We eventually made our way back to the Scandia where we had stayed a week earlier.  We parked under the covering again and dinner at the restaurant was about the same  (they didn’t have the brown ale that seem ubiquitous in the places we ate, so they gave me red ale which they claimed was about the same.)

For our final day of riding we headed for Copenhagen, but unlike the previous ride from Roskilde we avoided the coast and headed straight for the city.  The first part of the ride was bike trail next to a busy highway.  Then we picked up the C99 – a bike superhighway.  I was less than impressed by the C99.  At best it seemed like a standard trail and at worst it was obliterated by construction.  We made some wrong turns and  had to backtrack but eventually found the suburbs of Copenhagen and ended up on downtown streets we knew.  We parked the bike in the courtyard of the Absalom again and went around the corner to have lunch at a cafe called Apropos.  Our luggage showed up and we were able to get boots and non-essential stuff into the bike cases.  Will arrived late in the afternoon and we walked along the water at Peblinge So and had dinner at a neighborhood French place.

I loved the countryside and the coast.  The national park / forest was not super impressive.  My biggest take away was our navigation coordination which worked better than it has on most of our trips.  Basically Odette had the GPX file with turn-by-turn and I had the tour book with a higher level description.  (The turn by turn would have three operations ending with “left on Falligsvej” while the book would just say “go left at the church in Magley”.)   The tour books fit just right into the map holder on my handlebar bag. I think we finally got the conversion into RWGPS figured out and we agreed that if the two sources disagreed the route book would prevail.  .  We shared what was coming next in our respective queue sheets and if we missed on one source we would usually recover on the other.

• Comwell Hotels Digression

Comwell is a chain of about sixteen hotels in Denmark and a couple in Sweden.  We stayed at Comwell Borupgaard in Snekkersten the first couple of nights we were riding.  It was a really nice hotel with a big modern room and a really wonderful restaurant.  We noticed that we were booked in a couple of other Comwell hotels and that made us happy.  The Comwell Køge Strand in Køge was different.  While Borupgaard might have been a chalet in a previous life, Køge looked like it was designed to be a hotel – one story tangled arms, etc.  There were construction tools piled in the hallways and the restaurant was not open.   The Comwell Klarkskovgaard outside of Korsør was a step further down – interesting but impractical architecture, a room in an abandoned suite, and a barely functioning restaurant.   There is probably a story, but if you didn’t know better you wouldn’t think they were part of the same chain.

• Here are the maps:

8/24 – Copenhagen test ride – Vesterbro to Skovshoved OAB.  here’s the map.  16 miles

8/25 – Copenhagen day 1 – Copenhagen to Helsingør.  here’s the map.  31 miles

8/26 – Copenhagen day 2 – Helsingborg – Höganäs loop (in Sweden) .  here’s the map.  45 miles (approx 6 miles on the ferry)

8/27 – Copenhagen day 3 – Helsingør to Hillerød.  here’s the map.  37 miles

8/28 – Copenhagen day 4 – Hillerød to Roskilde.  here’s the map.  31 miles

8/29 – Copenhagen day 5 – Roskilde to Copenhagen.  here’s the map.  31 miles

8/30 – Copenhagen day 6 – Amager Island loop.  here’s the map.  30 miles

9/1 – Copenhagen day 7 – Copenhagen to Køge.  here’s the map.  36 miles

9/2 – Copenhagen day 8 – Køge to Næstved.  here’s the map.  38 miles

9/3 – Copenhagen day 9 – Næstved to Korsør.  here’s the map.  38 miles

9/4 – Copenhagen day 10 – Korsør to Sorø.  here’s the map.  39 miles

9/5 – Copenhagen day 11 – Sorø to Roskilde.  here’s the map.  38 miles

9/6 – Copenhagen day 12 – Roskilde to Copenhagen.  here’s the map.  29 miles

• Here are the tour documents:

First loop

Second –  loop

• Copenhagen

We spent three days with Will exploring Copenhagen.  It rained the last day.  We visited the National Museum (a big exhibit on colonialism and not too many Zappa look alikes) and the Architecture Museum (featuring a four story slide) the Cisterns (more light and color, this time with sound) and the botanical gardens.  We walked out to the Refshaleøen district again and walked through the meatpacking district a couple of times.   We noted the fancy  bridges and bike parking structures in various places, infrastructure that would have made Amsterdam proud.  As in Amsterdam, most of the  bikes on the street were not locked the way they would be in Seattle.  We saw lots of cargo bikes, including a lot with the Christiania nameplate.  We saw bikes with the Centurion nameplate – evidently a Danish brand and not related to my vintage Centurion.  We saw several  brands of rental bikes, some of which we recognized and some of which  seemed  Copenhagen-specific.  It seemed like every hotel had rental bikes with their name on them – something we didn’t see in Amsterdam.  We ate at La Bodega and at CoFoCo (both in Vesterbro, not far from our hotels) and at Alchemist.

Alchemist was maybe a little over the top.  They are clear that it is not the right place for an evening of business discussions or for a first date. The experience involves 50 food “impressions”, a drink pairing (chosen from a variety of price levels) and a lavish multi-media show.  It lasts four or five hours.  The foods served include sheep brains and insects – mainly for the bragging rights I suspect.  They have a large staff and don’t seem to be in any hurry to move diners along.  Will arranged it for us and treated us to something we would never have done for ourselves.  I got carried away and ordered an expensive champagne at the start, but I controlled myself the rest of the evening.  Truly once in a lifetime for us – and I totally enjoyed it.

• thoughts:
  • we do okay with the S&S cases as long as it is just to and from an airport
  • it works well to check our backpacks on the return flight
  • we need to work on lunch on the bike
  • we need to venture out from the hotels for dinner
  • we can probably do more than 30 miles a day
  • you can’t assume that every hotel in a chain will be up to the same standard
  • the biggest Parkinsons issue was having to carry a bunch of pills
  • I’m more likely to get dizzy on stairs than on the bike
  • the places in Copenhagen that we liked the best (Refshaleøen, and the Meat Packing district) were repurposed industrial zones
  • maybe instead of repainting the tandem I’ll just get a new bike

Here are the photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From September 26th to October 17th Jerry and Odette rode the tandem on a loop in Southern Portugal, followed by a week of sightseeing in Lisbon 

Odette wanted to go to Portugal.  It seemed like everyone we knew was going there this year.  She settled on Elsewhere (the Lonely Planet product) based on their website and reviews and a referral from a friend of Will’s.  The “local expert” that she worked with was a guy named João Daniel who evidently is an independent guide using their tools and getting referrals through their service.  There was some negotiation about degree of difficulty and about highway bridges before he sent us GPX files of the route.  I had no problem importing those files into RidewithGPS, converting them to routes and tracing them so that we could get turn-by-turn.   Here’s the full trip we planned:

We hadn’t really ridden the tandem that many miles since we’d had it serviced for Amsterdam, but I prefer to take it in before any serious trip and returned to PolkaDot Jersey in early September.  I asked them to take a look at the tires and they didn’t think it needed new ones.  When we picked up the bike Odette got upset with the old tires and the shop was only too happy to order her a pair of new ones.  We stopped in to have them installed and they dumpstered the old pair (which pissed me off because they still had plenty of rubber left.)  In any event, I broke down the bike and packed it and the helmets and shoes and we flew out on Air France using tickets that Will had gifted us in the spring.  The flight to Paris was business class and even through I didn’t sleep much it was pretty comfortable. Customs was quick but we departed from a different, distant, terminal and from the gate we took a bus out to the plane.  Paris to Lisbon was economy plus, but not a super-long flight.

We met João, at the airport and he drove us across the bridge to Palmela (a rural suburb of Setubal.)  The place we stayed (Biovilla) was interesting with a steep dirt driveway, a bike washing station, and decor featuring OSB plywood.  I reassembled the bike with no issues, Odette helped mount the bottle cages.  We used João’s floor pump to inflate the tires.

When he dropped us off João discovered that Biovilla had discontinued their dining room so he volunteered to take us someplace for dinner. Odette wanted a couple more water bottles and she had forgotten her gloves so Joao took us to Decathlon in Setubal.  The restaurant we headed to next turned out to be closed, but the one down the block was really good.   The next morning, after breakfast at 9:00 we headed out on a test ride which was cut short by a road closure.  We rode an unanticipated climb and walked a long section of dirt road to get back to Biovilla. João took us out to dinner again that evening, going to the old part of Palmela for a look at the castle and a meal in a traditional place.

The next morning we set out on what was supposed to be the longest day of the trip – Palmela to Escoural.  Breakfast wasn’t until 9:00 so we didn’t get out until about 10:00 then we lost an hour with navigational difficulties in Setubal (Odette was only seeing the route, not the surrounding map.)  About half way through the planned ride Odette felt bad so we pulled over and rested for an hour.  Then she called João who came and collected her.  I rode on (solo on the tandem) for another 20 miles, finally giving up and accepting a ride at 6:00 in the evening with five miles left to go.  The main memory of the ride was that it was hot – in the upper 90s – and that while relatively flat the road had a lot of small ups and downs through farm lands.  I did a cool section of rail-trail alone.  After Setubal navigation wasn’t an issue.

Accommodations in Escoural were interesting – a very small bedroom with bath connected with several similar rooms to a communal living / kitchen area.  We couldn’t find the remote to operate the AC (Odette had piled stuff on it when she arrived) and we couldn’t figure out how to open the roll-up shutters, so opening the window didn’t accomplish much.  We walked a couple of miles to the only available restaurant and were the only diners (although there were a bunch of guys at the bar watching football.)  We locked the bike inside of the pool fence.  Breakfast was at the gas station next door, where we left the key so that João could pick up our luggage.

The ride from Escoural to Evora was scheduled to be our shortest day of the trip.  Mid-ride the front brake started making a horrible noise and when I went to adjust it I found that the spring was broken. I disconnected the brake and we rode on to our hotel (a Hilton Garden Inn) where we met João and explained the situation.  He took us to a couple of bike shops before we found one that was open on a Saturday.  They had similar springs, but not one that would work so I bought a V-brake and some cable and housing and figured that I could rig something.  We spent all afternoon disassembling the cantilever and mounting the MTB unit before remembering that the pull ratio on flat-bar levers is about twice that on regular drop bar levers.  I got the V-brake installed and re-wrapped the bars but even with the lever mashed all the way it didn’t have any stopping power.

We finally got out to see the town that was in some ways the high-point of the tour.  We saw churches and palaces but didn’t go in.  We admired the peafowl.  The narrow streets were really attractive but we hurried through them.  We had missed lunch but stopped and got a beer in the central plaza.  We had dinner in a hotel restaurant that was quite good even if not very innovative.  The two women next to us got lectured about cork trees.

The next morning we got out early and rode carefully.  Evora to Cuba was routed mainly on a busy highway and about halfway there bikes were prohibited and our route took to frontage roads.  Unfortunately those frontage roads were mostly dirt or really deteriorated surfaces.  In one case the road shown on the map just didn’t exist and we had to backtrack and hope for the best on the other side of the highway.

In Cuba we stayed in a big old house that was gorgeous on the inside.  We walked to a park for lunch and then spent the afternoon in the pool.  Dinner was in a wine cellar where we got too much food and Odette ate beans that later disagreed with her.

The ride from Cuba to Castro Verde was mainly forested with some fairly significant climbs.  Once we got to the town we got lost getting to our B&B – which is difficult to do considering how small the town is.  The B&B was operated by a couple that organized bike tours and birding expeditions.  (The guy was out on a trip but we spent some time with the woman who was very cool.)  We spent some time walking around the town admiring the view and the old church.  The restaurants recommended in the roadbook were both closed but the place we went to instead was really good.

From Castro Verde we rode to Salir.  The ride was again a mix of forest and farm. We saw lots of wind turbines.  Near the end of the ride I realized that I wasn’t going to make it up a switchback and hopped off the bike to rest for a while.  We stayed at a place called Casa da Mae which was really attractive and which had a nice pool.  There were only a couple of other rooms with guests, all of whom seemed to be women hikers.  We had quite a long walk to a kebob place for dinner, but it was well worth the trouble.

The next morning we had trouble finding breakfast and afterwards rode from Salir to Silves.  This ride was another highway / frontage road route but after a couple of unrideably steep pitches we dispensed with the frontage roads, ending on the wrong side of the river and having to ride back to our hotel.  The hotel was across the river from the town, looking at the cathedral and castle on a hill on the opposite bank.  Our room looked out at the parking lot.  We spent all afternoon exploring the town, visiting the archeological museum and the castle.  The moorish influence was obvious and the castle was impressive.  Somehow everything seemed to focus on cisterns and water supply. We ate at a seafood place that was incredible.

The next morning we set out from Silves to Monchique.  This day was arguably the best ride of the whole trip.  We got out early and the day was relatively cool.  Most of the ride was a gradual climb, not steep enough to get us out of the  big ring.  Unlike most of our rides, we saw a lot of other cyclists on this route – it is evidently a “classic” ride and we saw some big pelotons.  We had smoothies at Velochique and then poked around attempting to head back down without climbing some more to get out of town.  (It turned out not to be so bad, but the way out of town did involve another climb.)  We missed the sign for the turn to the thermal resort and ended up at the piscine and a different hotel.  We backtracked and found a sleepy collection of hotels around an old square.  We spent some time in the lukewarm thermal pool and did a quick session in a very hot sauna.  Dinner was at the resort but we discovered that the restaurant had been converted to a buffet which lacked not only service but character.

We started the next day with a speedy downhill as we headed from Monchique to Sagres.  The descent from Monchique was the first time ever that we’ve engaged the drag brake for significant distances.  As we approached the coast the road flattened out with little climbs over dunes.  Our map had us on frontage roads but we didn’t even try.  Sagres was busy but we didn’t have any trouble finding our place.  We spent the afternoon in the fort, a pretty good museum about the exploration that originated from the southernmost point in continental Europe.  (It was striking how differently the Dutch and Portuguese deal with their historic involvement in the slave trade.)  Dinner was at a newly-opened seafood place which was very good although the women at the next table were bullied into ordering green wine.

Sagres to Odeceixe was mainly headlands.  Much of the forest had been burned a couple of years before and much more recent damage was evident close to town.  We walked down a really steep pitch to get to our place in the bottom of the valley.  We headed to a grocery store for snacks and didn’t find the main downtown until we went out looking for a restaurant for dinner.  (It’s actually a pretty cool town with a lot of restaurants.)  We ate outdoors, the food was good, and the waiter told me that his dad had Parkinson’s.

From Odeceixe we rode to Sines.  Near the start of the route there were two places where the road dropped to sea level.  Both up- and   down-slopes were very steep and cobbled.  We walked.  (We admired the zebras part way down the first one.)  The route had us following smaller roads near the water but to get there involved dirt – or rather deep sand – so we bailed and rode the highway.  Sines is a large town with a substantial port and a castle in the center.     We stayed in a fancy hotel with a view of the water from our room.  We looked at the roman ruins (a fish factory) walked around town.  We had trouble finding an open restaurant but the one we chanced into was really excellent.

The next morning we set out for Palmela and a return to Biovilla.  Sines to Palmela is along the coast, just a little in from the water – mainly featuring tree farms.  The highlight of the ride was the ferry and the spit we rode to get out to the ferry terminal.  Setubal was much easier to navigate coming than it had been going.  It was the hottest part of the day when we got to the climb up to Biovilla, but we persevered. João caught us when we stopped to regroup just before the dirt driveway.  The hotel was exactly as we remembered it (both rooms we stayed in had standard kitchen exhaust units paneled in OSB over the vanity,  but no stovetop?)  This time they were planning to feed us (so that João didn’t have to wait around) but we were the only ones in the dining room.  Nobody said anything about the meal of stirred tofu costing extra, but the next day João called to say that they’d complained we’d left without paying.

From Palmela we rode to Costa de Caparica.  First we had to climb up to the castle in Palmela, then we got turned away from a gated community, after negotiating a stretch of dirt and fresh gravel we found a park trail and finally emerged at the beach.  Costa de Caparica is evidently one of the beach areas most accessible to Lisbon – lot of sand, lot of surfers, lot of beach town stuff.  We stayed in another fancy hotel and ate in their restaurant ( we were the only ones in the dining room again, but this time we paid.)  The next morning I disassembled the bike and packed it into the cases.  We had to check out by noon but we stored our luggage and settled down in the lobby with a youth soccer club from Toronto until João picked us up a couple hours later.  The bridge we went across to get into Lisbon was impressive and clearly not a bike route.  Our hotel was outside of the old part of the city but really central and close to a bunch of other hotels.

The first evening we walked to A Venda Lusitania, a restaurant that was top-rated on Google maps, but it disappointed us as pretty much a tourist trap.

The next day we walked the old downtown and and the central waterfront and visited the castle and its museum. We visited the  resistance museum (the victors write history) and tried to go to the  zoo  (we turned the wrong way at the subway and decided to just walk back to the hotel. ) We ate at Taberna do Lopes, a “steakhouse” where the meat wasn’t bad but wasn’t special, either.

The third day we took the bus out to Belem and visited the museum of art and technology (a low-slung modernistic building next to a decommissioned coal power plant.)  Will joined us that evening and we ate at Otro – a traditional Portuguese place that was much like the places we’d gone to while on the bike only classier.

On day four we went back to castle and walked around the the neighborhood on the hill next to downtown, managing to arrive at time-out market at lunchtime.  Will took us to eat at Al Taho where we had an exceptionally good steak outdoors.

The next day we went to the aquarium  and the greenhouse in the park near our hotel.  That evening (or really late that afternoon – Will got us a coveted reservation at 5:00) we at ate at Ramiro, a famous seafood place where we had some of the best and biggest shrimp I’ve ever eaten.

On the last day we were picked up by Joel, an associate of João, for a van trip to  Sintra.  This is apparently a mandatory activity for tourists and Joel had a well rehearsed itinerary with stops for coastal villages, rock formations, viewpoint from the westernmost point of Europe, etc.  It rained – the first time on the whole trip.  We had lunch at a seafood restaurant after walking on the beach for a while and it was a really good meal. Joel hit a pothole while driving us up the last section of the road to the Sintra palace so we walked the last bit and ended up blowing off the inside of the palace because our timing was wrong.  Joel had to have his car towed so he got us an Uber back to our hotel.  That evening we ate at Cevicheria which was good and a really cool spot.  A stand-in for Joel picked us up at 2:45 in the morning for 5:30 flight to Paris.  Customs were slow but better than we’ve seen on other trips. Economy plus seats on the long leg of the flight were fine even if they didn’t recline.

Our cases came off the conveyer with no problems and customs in Seattle was pretty good (they could still improve line management.)  The first cabbie in the line at the taxi stand couldn’t fit our cases in the back of his prius.  The second had a minivan but he didn’t want to take us – the dispatcher yelled at him and he opened up the car but made me load the cases – and unload them when we got home.  Odette felt that he wasn’t doing his job and stiffed him on the tip, something we remembered a few days later when somebody used our visa at Lowes.

We got home mid-day on a Tuesday,  got unpacked , organized ourselves and tried to get over our jet lag.  Wednesday morning Odette developed a pain in her torso which she tried to ignore but which ended up prompting a trip to the hospital and surgery to remove her gallbladder.  We consider ourselves lucky that it happened at home and not while we were in the air!

Thoughts:

• Southern Portugal felt more like a third world country than did Southern France or Spain.
• Lots of english speakers, even in rural areas.
• Who needs a front brake?
• My training was about right – I had dizzy spells but I think that was the medication I’m on, not conditioning.
• Odette should have ridden more hills and more hot days
• I did okay without drinking very much alcohol, but it is hard to imagine traveling in Europe without eating fatty foods
• We didn’t understand that João would be personally performing all of the luggage transfers.
• For us this was the closest thing to a  supported tour since the Yukon.

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O_BATIK ROADBOOK

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0/10 – Costa de Caparica.  Here’s the map.  29 miles

10/9 – Sines to Palmela.   Here’s the map.  53 miles

10/8 – Odeceixe to Sines.  Here’s the map.  54 miles

10/7 – Sagres to Odeceixe.  Here’s the map.  37 miles

10/6 – Monchique to Sagres.   Here’s the map.  41 miles

10/5 – Silves to Monchique.   Here’s the map.  25 miles

10/4 – Salir to Silves.   Here’s the map.  27 miles

10/3 – Castro Verde to Salir.    Here’s the map.  37 miles

10/2 – Cuba to Castro Verde.     Here’s the map.  42 miles

10/1 – Evora to Cuba.   Here’s the map.  38 miles

9/30 – Escoural to Evora.   Here’s the map.  18 miles

9/29 – Palmela to Escoural.   Here’s the map.  52 miles

9/28 – Palmela loop.  Here’s the map. 18 miles

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Here are Odette’s photos

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On July 19th Odette and Jerry flew to Paris and caught a train to Strasbourg. After touring for seven days they took another train from Frieberg to Berlin  where they stayed with Will, rode for another six days and then caught a train to Amsterdam for an eventual flight home on August 11th.

At Christmas last year Will offered to get us tickets to Germany using his Delta status so that we could experience business class, lounges, etc.  It took us a while to get comfortable with the idea of traveling again but we finally settled on a self-guided tour in Alsace followed by a visit with Will in Berlin.  I rode pretty hard (7,000 miles in the first six months of 2022) – not exactly in preparation for travel, but remembering some of our past experience.  Odette prepared with extensive duo lingo  sessions.

I’ve previously written about my tandem service issues.  To make a long story short, I ended up taking the Ibis to The Polka Dot Jersey in Leschi.  They did a really good job on the Rholoff – but they took over two weeks longer than promised.  While waiting for them to accumulate parts I had them order a new Rolf wheel set for the Rodriguez and then got a complete service and had the new wheels installed.  They got me a center lock rotor on the drag brake, the front wheel has a disc hub, and they used regular brake pads instead of short blocks – but the bike worked fine and the creaking/clunking that had me worried went away.

A couple of days  before our flight I packed the bike.  I found that the 24-hole paired spoke pattern of the new wheels made packing much easier.  (Handlebars now fit inside the rim, I put both sets of bars in the same box!)  I didn’t have the tool to remove the center lock rotor so I left it on the hub and packed it with spare inner tubes and a roll of paper towels.  We were worried about lost/delayed luggage so we didn’t pack our helmets.  The flight to Paris was uneventful.  Delta business class is a whole lot better than coach.  (One could get used to the legroom and the reclining seat.)  In a first, customs in Paris was a well-managed line with almost no waiting.  We were early enough to catch a train to Strasbourg  originating at CDG, but after traipsing all over the terminal (with two big bike cases) we couldn’t figure out how to exchange tickets and decided to take a cab to Gare de l’Est.  (The first cabbie didn’t want to go downtown and turned us away because our cases were too big. The second guy, with a smaller car, didn’t hesitate…)  We waited there for two or three hours but figuring out which platform and which car was pretty straightforward.

There was no luggage storage rack at the entrance to the car so I managed to jam one case behind the seats there and we took the other one to our seats and fit our legs around it.  A couple of stops later we were able to claim a space on the rack at the other end of the car and the rest of the ride was easier.  We hailed a cab and checked into a very nice hotel, the Regent Contades.  The next morning I put the bike together in front of the hotel and had issues with the tires.  First, I was installing brand new Schwalbe Marathon Plus which would be difficult even at home with tools.  Second, once I got the tires on the rims I found that our pump was missing a piece of the head and couldn’t connect to the valve stems.  Odette went out to a bike store and came back with a Lezyne mini-pump that allowed us to determine I’d put pinch flat like punctures in both tubes.  Off came the Marathons and then on again, breaking a tire lever in the process.  We couldn’t get enough pressure into the tires with the mini-pump but it was rideable and we went back to the bike store and used a regular floor pump and bought a couple of new tubes.  (When I broke the bike down in Freiburg a week later, I realized that the stems on the new tubes were too short for the Rolf wheels – luckily we didn’t have any flat tires on the whole trip.)  We rode in circles trying to avoid cobblestones, had lunch, and ended up back at the hotel confident that we had a bike that worked.

That evening we had the customary meeting with the local agent for Discover France.  We didn’t realize that the meeting was set for a different hotel until he didn’t show up at the appointed time.  We weren’t looking for anything from him and it didn’t take him very long to run through the required warnings so it worked out fine and we still made our dinner reservations on time.  There was no discussion about the deposit on our Covid-aborted trip, though.

The next morning we rode to Obernai – about 30 miles.   The first part of the ride, through Strasbourg, wasn’t as complicated as Odette had feared.  The next section followed a canal and was cool and shady.  We saw a lot of farm land and didn’t have any big climbs – we got to Obernai in time for lunch,  We stayed at a place called A la Cour d’Alsace which was very nice except that there was a heatwave in process and we were in the part without air conditioning.  We ate at their restaurant  which was relocated out to the lawn and was quite pleasant.  It turns out that there is not a lot to do in Obernai in the summer.

The next day we did a loop  out to Mt. St. Odile and back to Obernai – only 21 miles but with a couple of significant climbs.  We saw a lot of pretty villages and impressive churches.  The monastery / retreat had an interesting back-story and picturesque architecture and the twisty descent was fun.  We had lunch in Obernai again and then walked out to a wine store and tasted Alsatian wines.  The store was friendly and able to ship wines – although like the wineries in Bordeaux they felt that their wine was too inexpensive to justify the amount of duties and tariffs levied on shipments to the US.  We bought a case of wine for shipment to Will in Berlin and the host insisted that we do a birthday / thank you card to put in the box as she couldn’t grasp an unprompted gift.  They also sold a variety of eau d’vie and a Ratafia – the first time I’ve been able to find that since my student days.

That evening Odette had a restaurant in mind but couldn’t connect with them on the phone or internet.  She got the front desk to call and they weren’t any help either, but a few hours later they called back to say that they had an opening in the hotel restaurant for us.   Odette declined (she was holding out for torte flambé) and we ended up at a place with more of a street-food vibe.

On the third day of riding we went to Riquewhir, revisiting several of the villages we’d seen the previous day and  navigating a climb on a narrow farm road just before the end of the ride.  We stayed at the Hotel du Schoenenbourg – a standard Best Western set down in a medieval village.  There was some confusion about the date and time of our reservation but we got a wine tasing at a winery and we were impressed by the wines to the extent that we bought another case and had it shipped to Will.  We ate at the hotel and it was surprisingly good.

The next day we rode on to Colmar, noticing (but not visiting) a bunch of Chateau on the way – 21 miles and we took the “long” option.  We saw more villages, more farmland, and a lot of wooded edges to the river valley.  The hotel, Hotel Turenne, was modern and quite a ways out of the center of town.  We ate at a restaurant on the church plaza and were happy with the food.  the next day we followed up with a 25 mile loop, retracing the way into town but seeing some different villages and vineyards.   Lunch was at the same place as the previous day (Les Tanneurs) and dinner was at a Brasserie in the old part of town – actually just on the other side of the church from the place we’d eaten a day earlier.  We found a winery in Colmar, tasted, and shipped another case to Will.

The final day of the planned tour was a 40 mile ride to Freiburg in Germany. The route was neither as complicated nor as hilly as Odette had feared.  We started with a long stretch along a canal, and eventually climbed a hill that got me down into the middle ring.  The main excitement was when we missed a trailhead on the left of a busy road and discovered that the next crossing didn’t go through – leaving us staring at a vacant lot with knee-high weeds next to a railroad.  We backtracked and got across the tracks and the  rest was much calmer.  We stopped at a Doner place for lunch and an old lady commented on our bike, then on her return pass (with groceries) she told us that her younger self had owned two tandems.  We stayed at a very nice place, Hotel Bierhausle, which was a 20 minute tram ride out of the center of town. (We went downtown for lunch the second day and couldn’t find the ticket machine so we rode back out to the hotel without paying.)  We ate at the hotel both nights we stayed there.  The next morning we rode through the old part of town and out to a ski area.  Odette didn’t turn on her cyclometer but it was a 16 mile ride that was impressively alpine in appearance.  The bike storage area (which had a full workbench) also had a bunch of snowboard stuff which should have been a clue.  After the ride I broke down the bike and packed it into the cases.  A guy in a wheelchair watched almost the entire process before he got rolled away.  In the morning we got a cab to the train station (back in the middle of town) hoisted our cases up to the second level  of the station, and caught a train to Berlin.

We didn’t have any luggage problems on this train segment.  We saw a lot of hilly farm country, really quickly.  Even so, the train got to Berlin an hour later than scheduled and Will had us get a cab instead of guiding us on the subway.  I had a brie & baguette sandwich which is apparently what one eats on German trains.

Will’s place is a conversion of a Berlin Roof on a pre-war East German building.  It is big and comfortable and modern – but the new elevator was still under construction so we got to walk five flights of stairs each time we came or went.    (When we showed up with the bike cases Will and Ian did the honors.)

I put the bike back together and Will and Ian led us out to Weissensee for lunch.  Odette and I spent the next few days on Museum Island.  We started with the topography of terror exhibits and then visited the Pergamon, the Bode and the Neues, topped off with the DDR Museum.  I was struck by the degree to which the narrative was focused on West German-centric concepts and institutions.  I guess that the victors really do write the history…

We followed our museum visits with bike rides to Muggelsee and Potsdam on the R1 (EuroVelo 2) bike route and then with a ride to Oranienberg on the D11 (EuroVelo 7) bike route.  Odette and I did a short ride through the Tiergarten (no squirrels) and Will led us on a ride along the Berlin Wall trail and across Templehoff.  The bike infrastructure in Berlin is impressive with signaled and well-marked lanes on most big streets and left-turn boxes at every intersection.  The downside is a lot of cobblestones and smaller pavers.

We ate out several times, mainly in the Samariter neighborhood (particularly around Boxhagner Platz.)  One night at a Japanese place was especially memorable.  I spent a lot of time in Will’s egg chair trying to make sense out of the buildings across the street.  (I think that most of the apartments in those buildings had four windows making them relatively large.)  We walked to a couple of grocery stores and to the Vietnamese market.  We bought 9€ all-you-can-ride subway passes.

The trip ended with a cab ride to the central Bahnhof.  We fidgeted around until they posted the track and positioning of the train and then got on the wrong car.  It didn’t matter, though, since there was no luggage rack by either door.  I got rushed and hoisted the cases into the overhead rack instead of trying to fit them under the seats.  They were too big for the rack and balanced precariously right over Odette – but they stayed up there all the way to Amsterdam.  The dining car was not in operation that day so we subsisted on a bag of vending machine chips.  After Hanover the train became a local and our compartment filled up.  It was a long day.

We caught a local train to the airport in Amsterdam (we were the only ones in 1st class) and found the Sheraton Hotel a few hundred feet from the platform.  Check-in was easy and the front desk agreed to store our cases.  Dinner was a buffet but it was surprisingly good.  We slept well.

We got up early for a 10:00 flight.  The woman at baggage drop off decided our cases were oversize and although she didn’t charge anything she made us take them to the oversize desk which we had trouble finding.  The flight back was uneventful and the food was actually quite tasty.  We deplaned in the new international terminal in Seattle.  Our cases came out right at the start of the flight – at which point we discovered that the line to passport control filled up the mazes and snaked around at least three of the luggage carousals.  An hour and a half later we were trying to figure out where the Lyft waiting area had been hidden since it clearly wasn’t where the arrows pointed.

Observations:

• S&S cases are for checking, not for carry-on.  That’s as true for trains as it is for airplanes
• Trains are easier than they were in the mid-’70s but they are still confusing and work a lot better if you can communicate with people
• the 9€ monthly subway pass made it much easier to get around and should be widely copied
• Urban cycling on the tandem is a challenge if you don’t know where you’re going
• If I bring the tandem to Berlin again I need to make sure I comply with the light/reflector rules.
• Berlin is amazingly flat
• It will be interesting to see what Schreinerstrasse looks like five or ten years from now
• You forget how much energy there is in a neighborhood where you can walk to a practically unlimited number of bars and cafes
• Delta business class is nice but you still have to deal with Karens – not sure I’d pay their list price ($12K?) for the upgrade.
• Seattle really needs to fix the customs process for international arrivals

 

travel book

 

Shakedown

Alsace day 1

Alsace day 2

Alsace day 3

Alsace day 4

Alsace day 5

Alsace day 6

Alsace day 7

Berlin 1

Berlin 2

Berlin 3

Berlin 4

Berlin 5

Berlin 6

 

 

 

0/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Custom (No Cue Sheet)
Date of Stay / Services Provided: October 2 – 17, 2019 duration: 16 days

Address 1st Hotel: Hotel du Palais, 3 rue du Palais St Guilhem 34000 Montpellier Orientation: In person in the hotel lobby
Orientation Time: Friday, October 4th at 9:30am
Your Local Contact: +33 6 27 81 75 52

Travel Book

period: 10/2019 main nationality: American

Category: Custom Trip

Group Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT

Montpellier to Girona loop

Available: From 9am to 7pm
Please make sure to check our useful links below before your departure. They contain valuable information about cycling in

France, your destination, how to pack, and so much more:

Insurance : World Nomads Bike Tour Packing List Biking Guide
France Guide

Paris Guide

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Useful Tips and Information and Bike Maintenance Videos (How to fix a flat tire/how to remove the battery from an e-bike)

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Country You Will Visit France

France is the world’s top tourist destination, with 83 million foreign tourists. Spread across the entire country, each of the main cities in Metropolitan France has its own international dimension and charm such as Bordeaux which is the world capital of wine, or Marseille which is the European capital of culture. France offers landscapes of exceptional beauty and amazing diversity in which there are 38 UNESCO-listed World Heritage sites ! But don’t forget leisure activities and prestigious cultural events that take place all over the country featuring the oldest and the most prestigious cycling race in the world: the “Tour de France”.

Spain

Spain is a beautiful and diverse country located in the southwest of Europe. This country of large geographical and cultural diversity, is often a surprise for tourists who are expecting to find a country mostly known for beach tourism. Travel to Spain and you will find everything, from green valleys, hills and snowy mountains in the Northern regions to almost desert zones in the South. Food and wine are national obsessions in Spain, and with good reason. You may experience the best meal ever over tapas in an earthy bar where everyone’s shouting. This is a country that lives very much in the present and there’s a reason why ‘fiesta’ is one of the best-known words in the Spanish language. It’s because life is itself a fiesta here and everyone seems to be invited. Perhaps you’ll sense it along a crowded post-midnight street when all the world has come out to play. Or maybe that moment will come when a flamenco performer touches something deep in your soul. Whenever it happens, you’ll find yourself nodding in recognition: this is Spain.

Madrid

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Region To Discover
Languedoc Roussillon / Midi Pyrénées

Located in the most southern part of France on the Mediterranean coast, the province of Languedoc is an area rich with scenic landscapes and a beautiful climate. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the east and the Pyrenees Mountains to the south, and Provence to the northeast, the region provides visitors a lovely contrast of terrain to explore and countless activities in which to partake. There are rivers and lakes, with amazing thermal springs, ancient abbeys and cathedrals, castles and fortresses and so much more to explore, not to mention the incredible coastline with its gorgeous beaches for those seeking beauty and relaxation. There truly is something for everyone in Languedoc.

Climate

“Protected from oceanic disturbances by the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, Languedoc and Roussillon are under Mediterranean influence. However, the effects of the Atlantic can be felt as far as the Lauragais, the upper valley of Agout and Aubrac. The Pyrénées-Orientales and the Cévennes have a mountain climate.”

Culinary Specialities

“Authentic, Languedoc-Roussillon gastronomy offers spicy dishes, in which olive oil, vegetables, garlic and herbs are found, for typical Mediterranean dishes.
At the seaside, seafood pla ers topped with oysters, mussels and clams delight the taste buds. The other countless Mediterranean fish, sought after for their flavour, do the same: tuna, sea bream and sea bass.”

Catalonia

The spectacular beaches in areas such as the Costa Brava, its world-class gastronomy, and the works of famous artists such as Gaudí and Dalí all make this region one of Spain’s most popular destinations. You’ll find so many interesting examples of culture that you won’t even know where to begin: unique buildings in Barcelona (known as “the capital of Modernism”), the outstanding archaeological site at Tarraco, the churches of the Boí valley in Lleida… all declared World Heritage sites by the UNESCO. What’s more you can opt to enjoy a whole range of events thanks to the programme of world-class museums like the National Art Museum of Catalonia and the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. The fact that this region is home to some of the best restaurants in the world is guaranteed to leave you with a delicious aftertaste. Why not try some of the traditional recipes such as “pa amb tomàquet” (bread with tomato) ?

Mourèze

Casa Batlo – Barcelona

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Ile-de-France

Île-de-France is a region in north-central France. It surrounds the nation’s famed capital, Paris, an international center for culture and cuisine with chic cafes and formal gardens. The city’s landmarks include the Louvre, home to da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” the iconic Eiffel Tower and Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral. Outside Paris, there are forests, grand châteaux and farms, including dairies that produce milk for Brie.

Climate

“The climate in the Île-de-France region is described as altered oceanic due to these more pronounced annual temperature differences and lower precipitation compared to the ocean rim. It is fairly homogeneous over the region but impacted by the presence of an urban heat island in Paris for the minimum temperatures which are thus softened (+2°C on average annually compared to forest areas).
The Ile-de-France region has a mild, temperate and maritime climate.”

Culinary Specialities

“When gastronomy became the 8th art, the great names in French cuisine had their addresses in Paris. Parisian cuisine is world-renowned and widely valued. Some restaurants look for the finest and freshest ingredients. Many products sold in the city’s grocery stores and markets and on menus grow on the rich cultivated land surrounding the capital.”

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Places You Will Visit Montpellier ¬

With its elegant buildings, private mansions and stately boulevards, Montpellier is a quietly stylish metropolis with a hint of Barcelona about its old quarter and shady backstreets. Unlike many southern towns, Montpellier has no Roman heritage. Instead it was founded in the 10th century by the counts of Toulouse, and later became a trading port as well as a scholarly centre (Europe’s first medical school was founded here in the 12th century). Walking through Montpellier’s historical center is like travelling through 1,000 years in time. The Place de la Comedie is Montpellier’s main square crowned at its southern end by the elegant 19th century Opera house. This is the place to sit and sip a coffee in one of the main cafés which line the place. From natural sites to ruins to regional product factory tours, there’s plenty of things to do and places to see in Montpellier ! Among the sites not to be missed include The Arc de Triomphe, Royal Peyrou plazza, Place de la Canourgue, Fabre museum, St Pierre Cathedral …

Villeneuvette ¬

Villeneuvette was a former 17th century royal sheep factory whose mo o was “honor in working” ! Nowadays, Villeneuvette is an atypical and timeless village. Take advantage of this atmosphere to visit the village, to stroll around under the shade of the plain trees, and discover the old hydraulic network, and the bridge of Love and its legend.

Trèbes ¬

Trebes was an ancient roman military camp that became an agricultural village. Have a look inside the church, the roof top is simply amazing, the structure uses 320 painted oak trees ! These paints were made in the 14th century and are still visible because the church uses to have another roof underneath this one.

Cucugnan ¬

At the foot of Quéribus Castle is the picturesque village of Cucugnan, enhanced by its se ing in the vineyards. You may dawdle along the alleys and steep streets leading from the windmill to the fortified door, passing by the church to the Achille Mir Theatre. The visit holds many surprises, as for example the windmill still active, St Julien church and what is particular about Ste Basilisse is the surprising 17th century statue of the virgin, represented as being pregnant, and also another history of the Cucugnan priest.

Town hall

The relics of the Old Royal Factory

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Olot ¬

Olot is the city of volcanoes, located in the protected Natural Park of the Volcanic Area of La Garrotxa, the most important of the Iberian Peninsula and one of the main sites in Europe. The medieval buildings that made up this town were destroyed in the 1427 and 1428 earthquakes. At present, the most remarkable feature of the city is its intense cultural and artistic life. Olot still preserves some interesting monuments, like the parish church of Sant Esteve, from the 18th century, which has the Baroque altarpiece of El Roser; the sanctuary of Mare de Déu del Tura, from the late 18th century; the cloister of El Carme; and the old hospice, which is the present site of the Regional Museum, with a magnificent Modernist painting collection. The town also has many noble mansions, such as the houses of Solà-Morales, Vayreda, Trinxeria, Bolòs and Ventós.

Sant Feliu de Pallerols ¬

In the south of La Garrotxa, right in the middle of La Vall d’Hostoles, is the municipality of Sant Feliu de Pallerols. It is split by the river Brugent, a tributary of the Ter, and the area also has more than 40 springs. The north of the municipality forms part of the La Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park and it is full of woods of holm oaks and common oaks. The south forms part of the Collsacabra Area of Natural Interest, with woods of Atlantic and Central European types of trees (beech, common oak, birch, chestnut, etc). Sant Feliu de Pallerols’ highlight include its parish church, the chapel of Nostra Senyora del Roser, Sant Iscle de Colltort church, Sant Miquel de Pineda church, Ntra. Sra. de la Font de la Salut sanctuary, the chapel and the medieval bridge of Sant Sebastià, the chapel of Santa Cecília, Glaç well, the river Brugent and the old centre of the village.

Girona ¬

Girona is a city on a human scale with all the charm of a larger city. Take a leisurely stroll through the old town, visit the museums and the historic buildings, wander through the streets and squares, and discover the tourist a ractions, festivals, restaurants, cultural events, etc. Enjoy it at any time of year and, if you can, come back again and again ! This lively city will always hold something in store to delight you. Girona offers spectacular images of steep alleyways, porticoed streets and squares and, above all, the brightly painted façades of the houses overlooking the Onyar (the river that crosses the city) which provide the most emblematic image of the city. One of these houses is Casa Masó, which is open to the public. Of particular interest among the bridges that span the river are the slender and lightweight Gómez bridge and the Palanques Vermelles bridge (1827), which was built by the Eiffel company. Places of interest : The Museum of Cinema Tomàs Mallol Collection ; Old Quarter of Girona ; The Art museum of Girona ; The Cathedral and The Devesa Park which is one of the largest in Catalonia. The Municipal Theatre located in a 19th-century coliseum among the most interesting in Catalonia.

Cassa de la Selva ¬

Only 12 km from Girona, the provincial capital, and nestling in the foothills of Gavarres, the old town boasts a sixteenth century Gothic Church, and the centre of the town itself is characterized by neoclassical, modernist and eclectic styles built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The adjacent hills, in the past an area of intense livestock and forestry work, is now an area where residents and visitors go hunting, collecting mushrooms, mountain biking or hiking.

Place of interest : The Parc Art ( h p://www.parcart.net/ ) Specific and sculptural works are presented in this Art Park, within the privately owned grounds of Cassa de la Selva. Artists are invited to choose the locations of their own works. Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11am to 2pm and from 4pm to 6pm. Sundays and holidays from 11am to 2pm. Admission fees are 7€ for Adults, 4€ for children.

Girona Nightlife

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Llagostera ¬

Llagostera offers the tranquillity and beauty of a natural environment among the protected areas of the Gavarres and the Cadiretes Massif. Llagostera has an important architectural heritage part of which, as it is the case of the Wall, has been listed as Item of Cultural Interest. A walk through the old quarter of Llagostera allows visiting a number of buildings of historical interest as the parish Church of Sant Feliu, the Castle and the viewpoint of the Plaça del Castell, from which there’s a panoramic view of Les Gavarres and the pre-Pyrenees. Along the streets of the centre of Llagostera there are many Modernist and Noucentist style buildings, as well as others built during the economic boom derived from the cork industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Sant Feliu de Guixols ¬

Sant Feliu de Guixols is an old fishing village and still preserves an important historical heritage. The Benedictine Monastery is the most important heritage site in the town. It preserves important features such as its 10th century Romanesque Porta Ferrada, which has become a symbol. Mare de Déu dels Àngels church and Fum and Corn towers are also part of the building, which houses the History Museum of the town. Sant Feliu de Guíxols grew up around the monastery and was developed later at the other bank of the Monastery stream. Apart from the monastery, the history of the town left an important architectural heritage, which was based on the cork industry. We find examples such as the Modernist houses at Sant Pol beach or the stately homes at the seafront promenade, like Casino La Constància or Sant Elm Hermitage because of its spectacular viewpoint over the Costa Brava. Sant Feliu is characterised by its peaceful population and its quality of life. The town is full of identity, which we find in its special corners, like the local market. It provides fresh and quality products and offers a local trade in a welcoming atmosphere.

Figueres ¬

Figueres is the birthplace of Salvador Dali and home to the Dali Museum, one of the most visited Spanish museums. Not surprisingly, it is the place for the lovers of fine art. Close to the border with France, this Catalan city offers great food, wine, and beaches. Figueres is just 15 minutes by car or 25 minutes by train from the beaches of Costa Brava. Not as touristy as Barcelona, the city offers a relaxing atmosphere, quiet cafes, an historic Old Town and square, and even a castle.

Valras Plage ¬

This traditional fishing village located at the mouth of the River Orb has preserved all its charm of yesteryear with the sea front, its beautiful villas from the early 20th century, its traditional covered market and casino.
Valras-Plage is now a modern seaside result with first-rate tourist facilities, a wide range of sea sports and numerous events. Far from the concrete tourist megalopolises, Valras-Plage remains a harmonious and lively town and a great place to stay.

While fishing and swimming in the sea were dear to the Duchess of Berry here in the 19th century, and made the name of Valras-Plage, leisure activities have helped it develop.

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18

© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap

Itinerary Map

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Tour Manager: John Sessa

– SUMMARY –

DAY 1: Montpellier	02-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel du Palais. Montpellier
DAY 2: Montpellier	03-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel du Palais. Montpellier
DAY 3: Montpellier – Villeneuvette	04-Oct-2019
Orientation: In person in the hotel lobby Orientation Time: Friday, October 4th at 9:30am Our local guide (French native & English speaking) will meet you at your hotel according to the time we will plan with you. He will bring your road-books, GPS and touristic information. An expert of the region, you can ask him all the questions you have about your trip.
Hotel Night at Hotel de la Source. Villeneuvette
DAY 4: Villeneuvette – Siran	05-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Chateau de Siran. Siran
DAY 5: Siran – Trèbes – The citadel of Carcassonne	06-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Montmorency. Carcassonne
DAY 6: The citadel of Carcassonne – Saint Pierre des Champs – Cucugnan	07-Oct-2019
Guest house Night at the Guest House la Tourette. Cucugnan
DAY 7: Cucugnan – Amelie les Bains	08-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Grand Hotel de la Reine Amelie*** – Amelie les bains Amelie les bains
DAY 8: Amelie les Bains – Olot	09-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Can Blanc. Olot
DAY 9: Olot – Sant Feliu de Pallerols – Amer – La Cellera de Ter – Anglès – Girona	10-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Historic – Girona. Girona
DAY 10: Girona	11-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Historic – Girona. Girona
DAY 11: Girona – Cassa de la Selva – Llagostera – Sant Feliu de Guixols	12-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Barcarola. (Your hotel is located in the municipality of Sant Feliu, few meters from S’Agaro) Sant Feliu de Guixols
DAY 12: Sant Feliu de Guixols – Llagostera – Cassa de la Selva – Figueres	13-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Ronda. Figueres
DAY 13: Figueres – Le Barcares	14-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel de la Plage** – Barcares Le Barcares
DAY 14: Le Barcares – Valras Plage	15-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Albizzia*** – Valras Plage Valras-Plage
DAY 15: Valras Plage – Montpellier	16-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel du Palais. Montpellier
DAY 16: Montpellier Roissy	17-Oct-2019
Hotel Night at Hotel Ibis Paris CDG Airport – Paris. Roissy

Wednesday 02-Oct-2019 : Montpellier

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Bienvenue en France,
We are delighted to be a part of your adventure ! Enjoy your trip.

Arrival in Montpellier (transfer on your own to the hotel), you will visit by foot some of the most beautiful sites of the city. Essential city highlights include Les Jardins des plantes, Triomph Arc, Peyrou, the old town, which will illustrate the rich history.

Night at Hotel du Palais.

included: Emergency support, GPS included, Roadbook, Travelbook, Orientation with a local guide, bedroom

Hotel du Palais*** – Montpellier – Hotel – 3*

3 Rue du Palais des Guilhem, 34000, Montpellier, France latitude:43.611601 longitude:3.873903 http://www.hoteldupalais-montpellier.fr/

+334 67 60 47 38 Check-out : Midday Check in: From 2:00 pm

Thursday 03-Oct-2019 : Montpellier

Today is a free day to explore the town.

Night at Hotel du Palais.

• Restaurants

Napoleon Dynamite – 5 Place de la Canourgue

http://napoleondynamite.coffee/

MONTPELLIER

Trendy Coffee shop with a terrace on the most beautiful square of the city : Place de la Canourgue. Brunchs, Cakes & Superbowls. Brunch at 22 €. Open everyday.

Tamarillos -2 Place du Marché aux Fleurs h p://www.tamarillos.biz/ – +33 4 67 60 06 00

A charming table inspired by flowers and fruits exciting the taste buds, fluid from here and elsewhere. Philippe Chapon, double French champion of desserts , invites you to share his vision of creating desserts, which fulfills your heart. Menus from 19 € for lunch & from 44 € for dinner. Open everyday.

Maki Roll – 18 rue du Cardinal de Cabrières

http://www.makiroll34.com/ – +33 7 68 03 25 33

Makis, Sushis & Onigris. Assorted sushis pla er from 14.90 € (24 pieces). Eat-in, take-out or delivery service. Closed on Saturday & Sunday.

Les Fils à Maman – 2 Rue du Petit Saint-Jean

http://www.lesfilsamaman.com/ – +33 4 67 60 60 71

One of the best place to have a brunch in Montpellier ! Everything is homemade with fresh products Reservation advised. Open from Tuesday to Sunday for dinner. Open from Wednesday to Sunday for lunch. Menus from 18 € for lunch & Brunch at 22 €.

Le Tapas – 5 Rue des Trésoriers de la Bourse

http://letapas.fr/ – +33 4 67 59 21 52

Tapas bar. 100% homemade. Menus from 10 € for lunch and from 20 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

La réserve Rimbaud* – 820 avenue St Maur – +33 4 67 72 52 53

http://reserve-rimbaud.com/acces-et-contact

“La Réserve Rimbaud” invites you to take a gourmet break on a sunny terrace overlooking the Lez river. Lunch menu from 32 €. Tasting menu (5-course menu) from 90 €. Closed on Saturday lunchtime, on Sunday evening & on Monday all day.

L’idée Saveurs – 5 Rue Four des Flammes – +33 4 67 29 88 62

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Restaurant The idea Saveurs in the heart of the Saint Roch district. You will discover a market cuisine and evolutionary throughout the seasons. Lunch €€. Closed on Sunday & on Monday all day.

Le Pré Vert – 10 rue Saint Anne – +33 4 67 02 72 81 h p://www.restaurant-leprevert.fr/
Restaurant, brunchs, teahouse & snack
Menus from 11€ for Lunch and Brunch from 16 €. Open everyday

• Bakeries
  Lo Monaco – 8 Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau Closed on Sunday
  Des Rêves et du Pain – 10 Rue Eugène Lisbonne Closed on Sunday & Monday
  Boulangerie Teissier – 8 Rue Saint-Guilhem Closed on Monday

Market days

Greengrocer market – Place de la Comédie

Monday to Saturday from 9am to 4pm

Marché des Arceaux – Boulevard des Arceaux

On Tuesday & Saturday mornings

Farmer’s market – Avenue Samuel Champlain (Antigone district)

Sunday from 8am to 1:30pm

Flowers Market – Esplanade Charles de gaulle

Monday to Saturday from 7am to 7pm

• Grocery stores
  Monoprix Comédie – 4 Rue de Verdun
  Open MON-SAT from 8:30am to 9:45pm – Closed on Sunday afternoon Le Panier d’Aimé – 6 Rue du Plan du Palais
  Delicatessen shop – Closed on Sunday
  Carrefour City – Montpellier Saint Guilhem – 42 Rue Saint-Guilhem Open MON-SAT from 7am to 10pm – On Sunday open from 9am to 1pm

included: bedroom and breakfast

Friday 04-Oct-2019 : Montpellier – Villeneuve e

Our local guide (French native & English speaking) will meet you at your hotel according to the time we will plan with you. He will bring your road- books, GPS and touristic information.

An expert of the region, you can ask him all the questions you have about your trip.

Today you will ride from Montpellier, capital of the Languedoc region. Built in the 1040s, Montpellier quickly became known for its trade with the East, and its medical schools. With winding streets that date back to the Middle Ages and ultra-modern facilities such as the indoor Olympic size swimming pool, skating rink, planetarium, and tramway system, Montpellier has something for everyone. You will cross the department of Hérault, then you will go

Hotel du Palais*** – Montpellier – Hotel – 3*

3 Rue du Palais des Guilhem, 34000, Montpellier, France latitude:43.611601 longitude:3.873903 h p://www.hoteldupalais-montpellier.fr/
Check-out : Midday

Check in: From 2:00 pm

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up the Hérault Gorges to reach St Guilhem, a magnificent village classified as “one of the most beautiful villages in France”. You will head towards the Salagou lake and its famous red earth to reach Villeuneuvette, a little village with famous land formations reminding of the Italian Dolomites!



Distance : 75 Km (46 mi). Elevation : 780m.

Night at Hotel de la Source.

• Bakeries
  Le Fournil d’Helene – 20 rue du Bout du Monde
• Restaurants

SAINT GUILHEM LE DESERT

La Table d’Aurore – inside the Hotel le Guilhaume d’Orange

http://www.guilhaumedorange.com/

Traditional restaurant using fresh local products with a breathtaking view over the Hérault Gorges. Menus from 23.50 €. Closed on Wednesday during winter.

Restaurant le Val de Gellone – 3 Grand Chemin du Val de Gellone
h p://www.levaldegellone.com/ – +33 4 67 57 33 99
Pizzeria restaurant. Homemade pizzas & Traditional cuisine. Menus from 20.50 €. Open everyday for lunch. Open on Friday & Sunday evenings.

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Fantasia – 2 Rue de la Convention Boulangerie Mateo Jean-Luc – 28 Rue Voltaire Patisserie Thuro e – 42 Rue Doyen René Gosse Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day
• Restaurants

Les Remparts – 3 Place de la République

+33 4 67 96 33 81

CLERMONT L’HÉRAULT

A restaurant which offers fine cuisine tending to world food generously served in a warm and friendly family setting. Menu from 18 €. Closed on Monday.

Le Tournesol – 2 Allée Roger Salengro h p://www.letournesol.fr/ – +33 4 67 96 99 22

Traditional restaurant with a nice terrace which offers simple & refined cuisine. Wide range of : Salad, Grilled meats, seafood platters, Menus from 16.50 € for lunch & from 25 € for dinner.

• Grocery stores
  Casino – 17 Rue Doyen René Gosse
  Closed on Sunday
  Lidl – 18 Avenue de Montpellier
  Closed on Sunday afternoon
  Biomonde – Place du Lieutenant Marcel Gontier Organic shop – Closed on Sunday

Market days

Wednesday morning – Place du Marché

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Hotel de la Source*** – Villeneuve e – Hotel – 3*

Rue de la Calade, 34800, Villeneuve e, France latitude:43.609725 longitude:3.401607

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http://www.hoteldelasource.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=27&lang=fr

+334 67 96 05 07 Check-out : Midday Check in: From 3:00 pm

Saturday 05-Oct-2019 : Villeneuve e – Siran

Another day in the quiet back country of this region of Causse et Cévennes (UNESCO site) going to the village of Siran. From Villeneuve e you drop down onto a plain and can enjoy some flat riding and vineyard country. Then, you will drop further south and west toward the Canal du Midi (UNESCO site ). You will pass numerous villages dating from another time. At the end of the ride you are in the village of Siran.

Distance : 85 Km (53 mi). Elevation : 1050m.

Night at Chateau de Siran.

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Boyer – 1 Rue Jules Flourens Boulangerie Lopez – 2 rue Georges Durand Closed on Sunday afternoon
  La Fournée d’Antan – Rue du Pounchou

MURVIEL LES BEZIERS

• Restaurants
  Le Garde Manger – 5 Centre Commercial du Pounchou
  http://www.le-gardemanger.com/ – +33 4 67 94 09 58
  Traditional cuisine using fresh local products. Menus from 14 € for lunch and from 29 € for dinner. Open everyday.
• Grocery stores
  Lidl – Avenue de la République
  Open from Monday to Saturday from 8 :30 am to 7 :30 pm

Market days

Tuesday & Saturday mornings – Place Parech

• Restaurants

Le Relais Chantovent- 17 Grand Rue

MINERVE

Gourmet restaurant. Cuisine is prepared using fresh, delicate, and high-quality regional produce. Menus from 22 €. Closed on Sunday & Tuesday evenings and Wednesday all day.

L’Oie Trébuchante – Rue des Cabarets +33 4 68 43 99 69

Fast food restaurant. Pastries and traditional sandwiches. Homemade ice creams. D’Ame Crepe- 2 Rue des Martyrs
+33 6 60 12 09 25
Fast food restaurant. Real Breton pancakes in a simple setting.

http://www.relaischantovent-minerve.fr/en/ – +33 4 68 91 14 18

• Wine Tasting

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Domaine Tailhades Mauranne – Facing the church

http://www.tailhades-mayranne.fr/- +33 3 80 24 68 88

Delighted to present his wines, Régis Tailhades welcomes you! Discover over a drink a terroir, a landscape and a range of products that have diverse objectives. The family property has 22 ha classified AOP land, all located at the municipality of Minerve. With respect for his natural and native environment, Régis offers you wines bottled or bag in a box available in three colors.

Informations : Open on weekends in April & June. In July, August & September open everyday from 11am to 1pm & from 3pm to 7pm. We recommend you to call before your visit : +33 4 68 91 18 62

SIRAN

http://www.chateau-de-siran.com/en/table-and-cooking.html – +33 4 68 91 55 98

The Chateau de Siran’s table offers generous, friendly and tasty cooking that invites you to discover the authentic flavors of southern France. Gourmet restaurant using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Open everyday for dinner (on booking for Wednesday). Menus from 32 €

Bar Le Minervois – 4 Rue de la Poste
+33 4 68 91 43 07
A small traditional restaurant.
La Cave – 3 Route de Cesseras
https://lacavevigneronnesiran.com/ – +33 4 34 36 65 10
Wine bar with tapas menu – open from 12AM to 1PM and from 6:30PM to 9PM

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Sunday 06-Oct-2019 : Siran – Trèbes – The Citadel Of Carcassonne

While you are just a short distance from Carcassonne (UNESCO site #5), the eventual goal for the day, we invite you on a ride along the canal on the first part of your ride and finish by li le roads to Carcassonne. Or, you can choose a longer diversion to Fabrezan and Lagrasse before dropping back into La Cite where your hotel is situated just outside the fortress walls.

***Please note that if you rent a road bike you will not be cycling on the canal path. Instead you will be on roads nearby. Only the longer route option is possible if you rent a road bike.

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Lucia Michel – Rue du Porche
  Open from 8am to 12 :30pm & from 5pm to 7pm. Closed on Wednesday
• Restaurants

Le Cœur des Vignes – Inside the Château de Siran

Chateau de Siran**** – Siran – Hotel – 4*

1 Avenue du Chateau, 34210, Siran, France latitude:43.312378 longitude:2.662143 http://www.chateau-de-siran.com/en/

+334 68 91 55 98
Air conditioning in rooms: yes
Check-out : 11:00 am
Check in: Between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm
Restaurant: Please contact your Tour Consultant at least a couple of days before if you’d like to eat at their restaurant only if it’s not already included.

Distances : 47 or 73 Km (29 or 45 mi). Elevation : 325 or 595 m.

Night at Hotel Montmorency.

• Bakeries
  La Tougnoleraie – 13 Avenue du Languedoc
  Open everyday from 6 :45 am to 12 :30 pm & from 4 :30pm to 7 :30pm. Closed on Sunday afternoon

MARSEILLETTE

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



• Restaurants
  O Fil de l’O – 69 avenue du Languedoc
  http://www.o.fildelo.fr/en – +33 4 68 79 20 90
  Traditional cuisine made with local products. Menu from 14 € for lunch. Closed on Sunday evening & on Monday for lunch.

TREBES

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Cabrera – 47 Avenue Pasteur
  Open everyday from 6 :30 am to 1pm & from 3pm to 8pm Boulangerie Despeyroux Serge – 9 Route de Narbonne Boulangerie Doumenc Claude – 3 Avenue des Capucins Closed on Thursday
• Restaurants
  Le Moulin de Trebes – 2 rue du Moulin
  http://www.lemoulindetrebes.com/ – +33 4 68 78 97 57
  Restaurant located on the Canal du Midi banks. Regional cuisine. Menu from 17 € for lunch. Open from Wednesday to Sunday for lunch. La Poissonnerie Moderne – 8 Avenue Pierre Curie

http://www.poissonnerie-moderne-trebes.fr/ – +33 4 68 78 26 72
Seafood restaurant located on the Canal du Midi banks. Menus from 18 € for lunch. Open everyday.

• Grocery stores
  Contact Marché – Le Faubourg – Vieux route de Narbonne Super U Trèbes – Route Nationale 113

Market days

Sunday morning – on the Canal du Midi banks

• Bakeries
  Blanche de Castille – 21 Rue Cros Mayrevieille Les Gourmandises de Manon – 29 rue du Plo L’Art Gourmand – 13 rue Saint-Louis
• Restaurants
  Restaurant la Marquière – 13 rue Saint-Jean h p://www.lamarquiere.com/ – +33 4 68 71 52 00

CARCASSONNE

In an old shuttered country inn, this family-run bistro serves meaty cassoulet, along with Mediterranean-influenced dishes such as lamb with parsnip gnocchi, foie gras ravioli, aubergine and spinach cannelloni, and sea bass with squid-ink spaghetti. Ask for a table in the courtyard if it’s sunny. Local products & local crafts are on sale in the restaurant. Menus from 34 € for lunch. Closed on Wednesday & Thursday.

Restaurant Comte Roger – 14 Rue Saint-Louis
http://comteroger.com/ – +33 4 68 11 93 40
This is one of the best establishments to taste a traditional cassoulet. Menus from 24 € for lunch and from 41 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday. Maison du Cassoulet – 6 rue du Grand Puits
http://www.maisonducassoulet.com/ – +33 4 68 47 61 03

La Maison du Cassoulet is ideally situated in the Carcassonne “Cité”, apart from the hectic Grand Rue. The restaurant offers the quiet and nicely decorated place to enjoy the regional cassoulet, cooked and served in the traditional stoneware pot. La Maison du cassoulet also serves a selection of regional wines and advises you on the best matches wine-meals. Menus from 14.50 €.

Market days

Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday mornings – In Place Carnot

Flower, fruit & vegetable markets

Monday to Saturday – Indoor Market in the Old market hall

Meat, charcuterie, fish, fruits & vegetables …

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Sunday Morning – Place de la Barbacane

Local producers market

included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast

Monday 07-Oct-2019 : The Citadel Of Carcassonne – Saint Pierre Des Champs – Cucugnan

This route between the Pyrenees and the wild Corbieres crosses the beautiful Hautes Corbieres countryside. Here you will see the Medieval Castle of Villerouge-Termenes, the Termes Castle and Queribus Castle deeply rooted in the epic Cathar history. The uphill challenges are well compensated by the breathtaking panoramic views.

Hotel Montmorency*** – Carcassonne – Hotel – 3*

2 Rue Camille-Saint Saens, 11000, Carcassonne, France latitude:43.207045 longitude:2.366804 h ps://www.hotelmontmorency.com/en/3-star-spa-hotel-carcassonne Air conditioning in rooms: yes

Check-out : 11:00 am Check in: From 3:00 pm

Distance : 80 Km (50mi). Elevation : 1170 m.

Night at the Guest House la Toure e.

• Bakerie
  Boulangerie Terencio – 23 boulevard de la Promenade
• Grocery store
  Maison du Terroir – 6 boulevard de la Promenade Local products : Wine, Olive oil, tapenade, honey…
• Restaurant
  La Petite Maison – boulevard de la Promenade + 33 4 68 91 34 09
  French food. Closed on Wednesday.
• Restaurants

LAGRASSE

La Taverne – 2 place de la Commune (facing the Castle) http://la-taverne-villerouge.tumblr.com/ – +33 4 68 70 07 12 Traditional restaurant & snacks.

VILLEROUGE TERMENES

Restaurant Médiéval la Rotisserie – Château de Villerouge Terménès

http://restaurant-medieval.com/ – +33 9 81 64 09 11

Medieval style restaurant proposing 13th & 14h century dishes. Cuisine made with fresh local products. Menu from 35 €. Open everyday in July & August. Open on request from september to november.

CUCUGNAN

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• Bakeries
  Les Maitres de mon Moulin – 3 Rue du Moulin Open everyday from 9am to 7pm
• Restaurants

Auberge La Table du Curé – 25 Rue Alphonse Daudet

http://www.auberge-la-table-du-cure.com/restaurant.php – +33 4 68 45 01 46

Traditional local cuisine. Menus from 16 € for lunch & from 20 € for dinner. Closed on Wednesday.

Restaurant Auberge du Vigneron – 2 Rue Achille Mir

http://www.auberge-vigneron.com/fr/index.php – +33 4 68 45 03 00

The restaurant invites you to discover Regional dishes with a touch of fantasy. Discover the smells and authentic tastes of the Cassoulet or dare the Foot of Pork with old Maury. Menus from 16 € for lunch & from 24.50 € for dinner. Closed on Monday.

included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast

Tuesday 08-Oct-2019 : Cucugnan – Amelie Les Bains

Today, the route is hilly, you leave the Corbières to reach the beginning of the Western Pyrenees and then the outskirts of the city of Pepignan. You will reach the small town of Amélie les Bains, known for its thermal baths.

B&B La Toure e – Cucugnan – Hotel – BB (chambre d’hote)

4 passage de la Vierge, 11350, Cucugnan, France

http://www.latourette.eu/

+33 -cell. +33 6 09 64 60 47

Distance : 70 Km (44 mi). Elevation : 820m.

Night at Grand Hotel de la Reine Amelie*** – Amelie les bains

• Bakeries
  Le Petrin d’Ancel – 47 Avenue Roger Salengro L’Estagelloise – 24 Place Arago
  Boulangerie Poma – 10 Avenue René Nicolau
• Grocery stores
  Carrefour Contact – Route de Foix
  Open MON-SAT from 8am to 8pm – Closed on Sunday afternoon

Market days

Monday & Friday mornings

• Restaurants
  L’Aramon Gourmand – 127 Avenue du Canigou

ESTAGEL

PEZILLA LA RIVIERE

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http://www.aramongourmand.fr/ – +33 4 68 92 43 59

Regional cuisine & Catalan dishes. Taste the Chef’s specialty : Roasted pepper with Collioure anchovies. Menus from 28.90 to 39.90 €. Closed on Sunday evening, Monday & Tuesday all day.

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Ramirez – 2 Place Anatole France Patisserie Florent – Avenue François Mitterand La Frianderie – 4 Place de la République
• Restaurants

Restaurant Arbequina- 21 Rue de la République

http://www.arbequina-restaurant.com/ –

THUIR

Mediterranean & Catalan cuisine. Everything is homemade with fresh ingredients in this restaurant. Menus from 16 € for lunch & from 32 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Tuesday.

Le Patio Catalan – 4 Place Général de Gaulle
+33 4 68 53 57 28
Regional cuisine with Catalan specialities. Menu from 16 € for lunch & from 24 € for dinner. Closed on Wednesday & Thursday.

• Grocery stores
  Intermarché – 1 Avenue de la Côte Vermeille
  Open MON-SAT from 8:30am to 8pm – Closed on Sunday afternoon

Market days

Saturday

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Patisserie – 5 Avenue du Dr Bouix
  Open all days from 6:30am – 12:30pm. & from 3:00pm to 7:00pm. L’Epi du Moulin – 11 Avenue du Vallespir
  Open all days from 7:00am – 12:30pm. & from 3:30pm to 7:00pm.
• Restaurants
  Le Carpe Diem – 9 Avenue du Général de Gaulle
  +33 4 34 10 68 43
  French restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce. Closed on Sunday. Casa Pedro – 8 Avenue Général Leclerc
  +33 4 68 39 03 24
  Catalan cuisine. Closed on Wednesday.

Market day

Thursday

• Grocery stores
  Vidal – 6 rue Joseph Coste
  Open: 8.30am to 1:00pm & 3:00pm to 7:00pm. Closed on Sunday.
  Proxi Super – 24 Avenue du Vallespir
  Open: 9.00am to 12:30pm & 2:00pm to 6:00pm. Closed on Sunday.
  Spar supermarché – 17 Boulevard de la Mairie
  Open every day. From Monday to Saturday: 7:30am-12:30pm & 3:00pm to 7:30pm & on Sunday: 7:30am to 12:30pm.

AMELIE LES BAINS

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

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Grand Hotel de la Reine Amelie*** – Amelie les bains – Hotel – 3*

Bd de La Petite Provence, 66110, Amelie les bains, France latitude:42.463992800171 longitude:2.6641845703125 http://www.reineamelie.com/index.php

33 (4) 68 39 04 38
Air conditioning in rooms: No (Fan) Check-out : 11:00am
Check in: from 3:00pm

Wednesday 09-Oct-2019 : Amelie Les Bains – Olot

Today, you will face the Pyrenees mountain and then cross on the Spanish side. A long climb awaits you until the border with Spain. Then, a long descent where you can explore the Garrotxa region, famous for its volcanic landscape. There is also a very good museum dedicated to the subject in Olot which is worth exploring. The Garrotages Volcanic Zone is the best example of volcanic terrain on the Iberian Peninsula. It has 40 volcanic cones and more than 20 lava flows. The mountain landscape, the sun and climate provide a variety of vegetation, often exuberant, with holm oaks, common oaks and beech trees of exceptional value to the landscape.

Distance : 85 Km (53 mi). Elevation : 1660m.

Night at Hotel Can Blanc.

• Bakerie
  L’Ours gourmand – 7 carrer de la Porta de France

PRATS DE MOLLO

• Restaurants
  Bellavista – Place du Foirail
  +33 4 68 39 72 48 – http://www.hotel-le-bellevue.fr/en/bellavista-restaurant/
  French restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce. Open from Thursday to Monday. Le Temps des Cerises – 1-17 Carrer de la Porta d’Espagna
  +33 4 68 95 40 10
  French restaurant.

Market day

Friday

• Grocery stores
  Vidal – 3 Place d’Armes
  Open every day: 7.30am to 12:30pm & 3:30pm to 7:30pm.
  Relais des Mousquetaires – 17 rue du Jardin d’Enfants
  Open every day: from Monday to Saturday: 9.00am to 12:30pm & 3:30pm to 7:00pm. Sunday: 9:00am to 12:00pm

CAMPRODON

• Bakeries
  Pastisseria Pujol – Carrer Valencia, 1
  Forn Sala – Carrer Ferrer Barbara, 14
  Forn de Pa de Llanars – Carrer Catalunya, 7
  • Restaurants
  El Pont 9 – Cami Cerdanya
  +34 972 74 05 21 – https://restaurantelpont9.com/en
  Catalan restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce. Open from Wednesday to Sunday.

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Can Po – Carretera Beget
+34 972 74 10 45
Catalan restaurant.
Pizeria-Restaurante La Rustica – Carrer Catalunya, 11 +34 972 74 09 94

Italian restaurant.

Market day

Sunday

• Grocery stores
  SPAR CAMPRODON – Carrer Valencia, 12
  Open every day: From Monday to Saturday: 9.00am to 1:30pm & 5:00pm to 8:00pm. Sunday: from 9:00am to 2:00pm. Bodega Toni – Carrer Issac Albeniz, 16
  Charter Market – Plaça de la Vila, 9,10
  Open every day: From Monday to Saturday: 9.00am to 9:00pm. Sunday: from 10:00am to 2:00pm.



• Restaurants

Restaurant Ramon – Carrer Xavier de Bolòs, 22

http://www.restaurante-celiacos-olot.com/ – +34 972 26 10 01

OLOT

Catalan cuisine. Dinner menu from 27 €. Open everyday for lunch (except Thursday). Open on Friday & Saturday for dinner.

La Deu Restaurant – Carretera de La Deu, s/n

http://www.ladeu.es/web/fr – +34 972 26 10 04

La Deu restaurant offers traditional, creative dishes with a marked emphasis on local produce. Menus from 13.50 € for lunch. Closed on Sunday evening.

La Quinta Justa – Passeig de Barcelona,7

http://www.laquintajusta.cat/ – +34 972 27 12 09

Volcanic, Mediterranean cuisine. Menus from 13.25 € for lunch. Gourmet menu from 32.50 €. Closed on Sunday evening & on Monday all day.

El Bou Bru – Passeig Bisbe Guillamet, 9

+34 972 26 66 33

Restaurant specialised in Burgers made with fresh local products. Burgers from 6 €. Closed on Tuesday all day. Closed on Monday & Wednesday evenings.

• Bakeries
  Cropic’s Pastisseria – Calle Colos, 10
  Forn de Pa Granier – Carrer Sant Rafel, 31 Open everyday

Market days

Monday – On Passeig de Miquel Blay, Plaça de Jaume Balmes and the adjacent streets

Food and Clothes market

• Grocery stores
  Dia Supermercats – Avigunda Sta. Coloma de Farnes Mercadona – Carrer Mulleras, 33
  Closed on Sunday
  Carrefour – Avinguda de Santa Coloma, 74
  Open everyday from 9:30 am to 9:30 pm

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Hotel Can Blanc*** – Olot – Hotel – 3*

Parajes La Deu s/n, 0, 17800, Olot, Spain latitude:42.166143 longitude:2.486433

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http://canblanc.es/en/

+34972276019 Check-out : Midday Check in: From 2.00pm

Thursday 10-Oct-2019 : Olot – Sant Feliu De Pallerols – Amer – La Cellera De Ter – Anglès

– Girona

From Olot (at 440m above sea level) the Carrilet Greenway is markedly downhill to Girona (at 70m) so you will reach Girona through the green countryside with very little effort!

This route crosses through magnificent scenery of cultural value. It begins in the Garrotxa volcanic area and reaches the Ter valley and then on to the pastures of Salt and Girona. Tonight, you will stay in Girona and discover the old town called the Jewish Quarter next to the magnificent Gothic Cathedral. Do not forget to try some tapas in the numerous bars and restaurants in Girona!

Distance : 59 Km (37 mi). Elevation : 362 m.
Night at Historic – Girona.

SANT FELIU DE PALLEROLS

• Restaurants
  Bar Restaurant Ca la Matilde – Carretera d’Olot, 42
  +34 972 44 42 69
  Traditional cuisine. Closed on Monday. Menu from 12 € for lunch.
• Bakeries
  Forn de Pa – Pastisseria Martori – Plaça de l’Esglèsia, 8 Open MON-SAT from 8 am to 1 pm
• Restaurants
  Restaurant Fonda Giralt – Plaza Sant Miquel 5
  +34 972 43 00 45
  Traditional catalan cuisine. Menu from 10 €.
  Snack Bar Torrent – Avigunda de la Selva, 11 h p://snackbartorrent.com/ – +34 972 43 00 73
  Wide range of Tapas, salads & pastas… Closed on Monday
• Bakeries
  Pastisseria Puigdemont – Carrer de Sant Miquel, 6 Closed on Monday all day & on Sunday afternoon

Market days

Wednesday morning

AMER

• Grocery stores
  Supermercat Suma – Plaça de la Vila, 22
  Open MON-SAT from 8am to 1pm & from 5pm to 8pm. Closed on Sunday
• Restaurants

LA CELLERA DE TER

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Restaurant Can Co – Avda. Montserrat, 10
http://www.restaurantcanco.com/ – +34 972 42 25 22
Catalan cuisine using high-quality products. Menus from 18.50 €. Open everyday for lunch.

• Bakeries
  Forn de Pa El Llevat – Plaça de l’Església, s/n

Market days

Thursday morning – From 9 am to 1 pm

• Restaurants
  L’Aliança d’Anglès 1919 – Carrer Jacint Verdaguer, 3
  http://www.alianca1919.com/ – +34 972 42 01 56
  Traditional cuisine. Main dishes from 14.50 €. Menu from 36 €. Closed on Monday. Restaurant Ca l’Elisa – Calle Salvador Espriu, 9-11
  +34 972 42 02 87
  Traditional cuisine. Menu from 19 €. Closed on Monday.
  • Bakeries
  Pastisseria Piferrer – Plaça de la Ru la, 2
  Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day
  Forn de Pa El Llevat – Carrer de Ponent, 30

ANGLES

Market days

Sunday

• Grocery stores
  Supermercado Dia – Carrer de la Industria
• Restaurants

Blanc – Nord, 2

GIRONA

Mediterranean fusion cuisine. Local products such as fresh vegetables, meats and daily fresh fish. Closed on Monday. Menu from 10.30 € for lunch.

Zanpanzar – Carrer de la Cort Reial,12

+34 972 212 843

Located in the heart of Girona, the restaurant is specialized in Basque cuisine and donostiarras. Open everyday.

NU Restaurant – Carrer d’Abeuradors, 4

http://www.nurestaurant.cat/ – +34 972 22 52 30

Set in the historic centre of Girona, the dynamic, trend-setting Nu Restaurant is pleased to offer an audacious cuisine using the influence and personality of world cuisines. Gourmet menu from 59.75 €. Closed on Sunday.

Market Days

Open-air market – Tuesday & Saturday mornings

The open-air Market takes place in Devesa Park with some 200 stalls selling fruit, vegetables, clothes, footwear, accessories, toiletries and many other products… Flower market – Saturday
Rambla Libertat
Artisan food fair – 1st Saturday of every mont, Holy week, St Narcissus’ Festival and Christmas holiday period

Rambla Libertat

• Bakeries
  Casa Moner – Carrer de Santa Clara, 45 Open everyday from 8am to 9 pm

http://www.grupandilana.com/en/restaurants/blanc – +34 972 415 637

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Pastisserie Nactar Girona – Carrer Nord, 22

Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day

• Grocery stores
  Novavenda – Carrer de les Hortes, 18
  Open MON-SAT from 9 am to 9 pm. Closed on Sunday
• Bike shop
  Bike Breaks Girona Cycle Centre – Carrer Mercaders, 14 https://www.gironacyclecentre.com/ – +34 972 20 54 65
  Open MON-SAT from 9:15 am to 2pm and from 5pm to 7pm. Closed on Sunday

included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast

Historic – Girona – Hotel – 4*

C/ Bellmirall 4A, 17004, Girona, Spain latitude:41.244772343082 longitude:-3.2958984375 http://www.hotelhistoric.com/index-.html

+34 972 22 35 83 Bed size: 4*

Friday 11-Oct-2019 : Girona

Today is a free day to explore the town. Night at Historic – Girona.

included: bedroom and breakfast

Historic – Girona – Hotel – 4*

C/ Bellmirall 4A, 17004, Girona, Spain latitude:41.244772343082 longitude:-3.2958984375 h p://www.hotelhistoric.com/index-.html
Bed size: 4*

Saturday 12-Oct-2019 : Girona – Cassa De La Selva – Llagostera – Sant Feliu De Guixols

Following the cycle path, a converted railway line called ‘El Carrilet’, this ride brings you to the Mediterranean Coast. You will arrive in Sant Feliu with its wonderful seaport and old monastery.

Distance : 44 Km (27 mi). Elevation : 212 m.

Night at Hotel Barcarola.

(Your hotel is located in the municipality of Sant Feliu, few meters from S’Agaro)

• Restaurants

CASSA DE LA SELVA

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La Brasa Grillada – Carretera Provincial, 97 h p://www.labrasagrillada.com/ – +34 972 46 00 03 Catalan cuisine. Closed on Monday.
Momo Burger – Vilaret, 17 h p://www.momoburgercafe.com/ – +34 972 46 52 13 Wide range of Burgers & Tapas. Open everyday for lunch. La Pizza Nostra – Carretera Provincial, 104 h p://lapizzanostra.weebly.com/ – +34 972 46 20 00 Artisanal Pizzeria. Pizzas from 6.85 €. Closed on Monday.

Market Days

Wednesday morning – Avenue Vilaret

From 8 am to 2 pm

• Bakeries
  Pastisseria Nectar – Carrer de la Mel, 21 Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day Pastisseria Vila – Carrer Major, 9
• Grocery stores
  Mercadona – Carrer de la Via, 6
  Open MON-SAT from 9:15am to 9:15pm. Closed on Sunday
• Restaurants

In Llagostera’s city centre

La Taverna d’en Pou – Carrer Pau Casals, 5

+34 972 83 21 03

LLAGOSTERA

Catalan cuisine. Menu from 13.20 € for lunch.Closed on Monday & Tuesday.

On the road between Llagostera and Santa Cristina d’Aro

Restaurant Els Tinars – Carretera de Sant Feliu a Girona – Km 7,2

http://www.elstinars.com/en/- +34 972 83 06 26

Gourmet restaurant. Cuisine based on traditional Catalan cooking and the finest seasonal local produce. Menus from 49.50 € for lunch (except in August) & from 72 € for dinner.

Restaurant Ca la Maria – Carretera de Llagostera a Santa Cristina – Km 9 http://www.restaurantcalamaria.cat/ – +34 972 83 13 34
Modern Catalan cuisine. Menus from 40 € to 55 €. Open from Thursday to Sunday for lunch.

Market Days

Thursday morning from 8 am to 2 pm – Passeig Pompeu Fabra

• Grocery stores
  Fruites i Verdures – Passeig Pompeu Fabra, 3
  Open MON-FRI from 9am to 2pm & from 5pm to 8:30pm. Closed on Saturday afternoon & on Sunday all day Spar – Carrer d’Angel Guimera, 27
  Consum – Av. Girones s/n
  Open MON-SAT from 9:15 am to 9:15 pm. Closed on Sunday

SANT FELIU DE GUIXOLS / S’AGARO

• Restaurants in Sant feliu de Guixols
  Sa Marinada – Passeig del Fortim s/n http://samarinada.com/language/en/home/ – +34 972 32 38 00

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The restaurant has a terrace with a view over the bay of Sant Feliu. Mediterranean cuisine & Seafood restaurant. Menus from 46.50 €. Open everyday.

Creperie La Buganvilia – Calle Sant Llorenc 26

+34 972 32 02 99

Creperie. Average price : 12 €. Open everyday.

Restaurant Ca L’Isern – Carrer Especiers, 27

http://www.restaurant-isern.com/Benvinguda.html – +34 972 82 28 21

Located in the old town of Sant Feliu, the restaurant Ca L’Isern is an establishment runned by the same family since 1954. Traditional Mediterranean cuisine. Menus from 12.90 € for lunch on weekdays.

• Restaurants in S’Agaro

La Clova – Platja de Sant Pol s/n

http://laclova.com/ – +34 972 32 83 91

Withe a terrace overlooking the beach of San Pol, this restaurant offers Mediterranean cuisine & Seafood. You can also taste the delicious Pizzas & Pastas of the Italian chef. Closed on Monday.

Garbi Poolside restaurant – inside the Hostal de la Gavina http://www.lagavina.com/restaurants/garbi-poolside-restaurant/ –

The poolside Garbi restaurant offers Mediterranean cuisine. Choose from dishes such as Gazpaco Andaluz or a selection of salads, carpaccios, meat and fishes cooked over hot embers, typical of Catalunya.

Market Days in Sant Feliu de Guixols

Indoor market – in the Market square from Tuesday to Sunday Street market – on Sunday

• Bakeries in Sant Feliu de Guixols
  Sant Antoni – Calle Girona, 5
  Be Cake – Carrer de Bourg de Peage, 16
  Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day • Bakeries in S’Agaro

Pastisseria Forn de Pa la Ibicenca – Avenida Sant Feliu, 309

• Grocery stores in Sant Feliu de Guixols Alimentacio Can Prat – Carrer Anselm Clavé, 1 Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day • Grocery stores in S’Agaro

Carrefour Express – Carretera de Palamos, 41

Closed on Sunday

• Bike shop
  Ayats Cycles – Carretera de Palamos, 164, Sant Feliu de Guixols http://www.ayatscycles.com/ – +34 972 82 15 37
  Open MON – SAT from 10am to 1pm and from 4pm to 8pm

included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast

Van der Valk Hotel Barcarola*** – Sant Feliu de Guixols – Hotel – 3*

Carrer del pintor Pablo Picasso 1-19, 17220, Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain latitude:41.790795 longitude:3.046647
https://www.hotelbarcarola.es/en

+34 972 32 69 32 Check-out : 11:00 am Check in: From 3:00 pm

Sunday 13-Oct-2019 : Sant Feliu De Guixols – Llagostera – Cassa De La Selva – Figueres

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You move away from the Mediterranean coast to reach the Catalan countryside, you climb a small pass in the middle of an oak forest and then move downwards into the plain and reach Figueres.

Distance : 70 Km (43mi). Elevation : 700m.

Night at Hotel Ronda.

• Restaurant

Restaurant la Cantonada – Carrer Bisbe, 6

http://www.lacantonada.cat/ – +34 972 64 34 13

LA BISBAL D’EMPORDA

Cuisine made with fresh local products. Menus from 12 € for lunch during weekdays or Seasonal Menu that changes with the seasons from 20 €. Closed on Tuesday.

• Grocery store
  Dia – Av. de les Voltes, 25 Closed on Sunday afternoon

Market day

Friday

• Restaurants
  Mas Pi – Crossing Torroella de Montgri rd. – La Bisbal road
  http://www.maspi.net/.en – +34 972 780 612
  Traditional Catalan food. Menu from 10 € for lunch and from 19.80 € for dinner. Closed on Monday evening.

VERGES

Market Days

Tuesday – Plaça Major

• Restaurants
  El Raco de Figueres, Avinguda de Salvador Dali, 17 (in Hotel Ronda)
  +34 972 50 39 11
  Catalan specialities & Tapas.
  Antaviana – Carrer de Llers, 5-7
  http://www.restaurantantaviana.cat/es/ – +34 972 51 03 77
  Local products & Catalan specialities. Menu from 16 €. Closed on Sunday evening & Monday all day. Lizarran – Calle Narcis Monturiol, 3
  http://www.lizarran.es/ – +34 972 50 66 67
  Tapas bar.

Market Days

Weekly food Market – Placa del Gra and Placa Catalunya Every Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday mornings
Clothes market – Passeig Nou
Every Thursday from 9 am to 2 pm

FIGUERES

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• Grocery stores
  Aldi Figueres – Avigunda de Roses, 30-32 Mercadona – Calle San Lazaro, 54 Supermercade Terra – Carrer de Pep Ventura, 27
• Bakeries
  Maia Besalu – Carrer de Besalu, 4
  Pastisseria Serra Lacasa – Plaça de l’Ajuntament, 6 Jaime Guisset Poch – Carrer Sud, 3
• Bike Shops
  Eo Bikes – Carrer de Gonzalez de Soto, 1
  +34 972 673950

  Home — Classic eCommerce 2

  
  Opened MON – FRI from 12:15 pm to 2 pm & from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm Suria Bicis – Carrer de Fortia, 8
  +34 972 505 054 h p://www.suriabicis.com/es/tienda-de-bicicletas-en-figueras

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Monday 14-Oct-2019 : Figueres – Le Barcares

Today, back to France and the Mediterranean coast. You start with a nice climb to cross the border on the French side and then you will go down on the Vermeille hill, named after their red rocks. You will discover Port Vendres and above all do not hesitate to stop in Collioure, a magnificent little typical village! You will continue to cycle between the sea and the mountains along the beaches to the small town of Le Barcares.

Hotel Ronda*** – Figueres – Hotel – 3*

Avinguda de Salvador Dalí 17, 17600, Figueres, Spain latitude:41.244772343082 longitude:-3.2958984375 http://www.hotelronda.com/index.php?idm=3

+34 972 50 39 11
Air conditioning in rooms: yes Bed size: 3*

Distance : 80 Km (50 mi). Elevation : 640m

Night at Hotel de la Plage** – Barcares

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Marie Blachère – 18 chemin de Palau Boulangerie Sanchez – Esplanade du Nouveau Monde Le Petit Dej Eric – Rond-point de l’Arrivee

ARGELES SUR MER

• Restaurants
  Restaurant la Bartavelle – 24 Rue de la République
  http://www.restaurant-labartavelle.fr/home.html – +33 6 19 25 70 13
  Mediterranean-inspired cuisine mixing Catalan gastronomy and creativity. Closed on Monday & Sunday. Al raparou – 17 rue Alembert
  +33 4 68 81 22 46

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Mediterranean cuisine & Tapas. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

• Grocery stores
  Carrefour Contact – 4 Place Gambe a Lidl – Place du 8 mai 1945
  Ardis – Avenue du Grau

Market days

Wednesday & Saturday
Seasonal market on : Sunday, Monday, Tuesday & Thursday

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Les Délices de Lucco – 37 rue Gambe a Boulangerie Labrot – 21 rue du Priolat

SAINT CYPRIEN

• Restaurants
  Sesame – rue Gambe a
  +33 5 53 30 55 34
  Traditional and fresh cuisine
  La Taverne – rue Gambe a
  +33 5 53 29 21 46
  Pizzeria and french cuisine. Closed for dinners.
  Hotel Restaurant La Grave e – 13, route du Chateau de la Roque +33 5 53 29 21 86
  http://www.hotel-lagrave e.com/en/
  Open every day

Market day

Sunday morning

• Grocery store
  Carrefour Express – Le Priolat Open every day
• Bakeries
  La Fée Gourmande – 5, Boulevard du Port
  Open every day from 6:00am to 1:00pm & 4:00pm to 7:00pm.
  La Bague e Barcaresienne – 67 Boulevard du Grau Saint Ange Closed on Monday.
  Le Croustillant – 159 Boulevard du Grau Saint Ange
  Open every day.

BARCARES

• Restaurants
  Restaurant La Playa – Avenue Grande Plage
  +33 9 86 29 22 27
  French restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce. Open from Friday to Sunday. Restaurant Le Lamparo – Rue des Baleares.
  +33 4 68 86 10 44 – https://www.le-lamparo.com/?utm_source=tripadvisor&utm_medium=referral
  Fish restaurant. Closed on Wednesday.
  La Cabane à Cactus – 27 Avenue Annibal

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+33 4 68 61 42 46
French restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce.

Market days

Wednesday, Friday & Sunday

• Grocery stores
  Casino Shop – Avenue de la Grande Plage
  Open from 7:30am to 8:00pm.Closed on Sunday.
  Super U – Boulevard du 14 Juillet
  Open every day: From Monday to Saturday: 8:30am to 7:30pm. Sunday: from 9:00am to 12:30pm. Epicerie L’Abricotier – 14 Boulevard de la Salanque
  Closed on Sunday.

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Hotel de la Plage** – Barcares – Hotel – 2*

9, Boulevard du Golfe du Lion, 66420, Le Barcares, France latitude:42.78330707725 longitude:3.0377197265625 https://hotel-barcares.fr/

+33 (0)4 68 86 13 84
Air conditioning in rooms: Yes Check-out : 11:00am
Check in: from 3:00pm

Tuesday 15-Oct-2019 : Le Barcares – Valras Plage

Throughout the day, you will ride along the seaside and the lakes of the Narbonnaise Regional Natural Park, famous for its outstanding biodiversity.

Distance : 85 Km (53 mi). Elevation : 200m.

Night at Hotel Albizzia*** – Valras Plage

• Bakeries
  La Bague e en Folie – 230 Rue d’Alsace Open everyday from 7am to 7:30pm
  La Porteuse de Pain – 71 Rue Jean Bart Open everyday from 7am to 8:30pm
• Restaurants

Restaurant Le XV – 233 Rue Jean Jaurès

+33 4 68 40 04 47

PORT LA NOUVELLE

Rugby-themed restaurant. Traditional french cuisine using fresh local products. Closed on Tuesday evening & on Wednesday all day Menus from 13 € for lunch & from 18.90 € for dinner.

L’Adresse – 10 Rue Roger Rapin
+33 4 68 45 39 35
Perfect balance between french cuisine & Thaï flavours. Menus from 13 € for lunch. Closed on Monday & Sunday evenings.

• Grocery stores
  Super U – Boulevard Général de Gaulle
  Open MON-SAT from 8:30am to 7:30pm – Closed on Sunday

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Spar – 230 Rue d’Alsace

Open everyday from 8:30am to 8pm

Market days

Wednesday & Saturday mornings – Place de l’Eglise

From 7am to 1pm

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Artisanale Bernard – Place Général Gibert Open everyday from 6am to 8pm

GRUISSAN

• Restaurants
  Aux Deux Oliviers – 1 Boulevard de la Corderie
  https://www.auxdeuxoliviers.com/ – +33 4 68 75 85 53
  Mediterranean cuisine. Homemade dishes. Menus from 20 € for lunch and from 28 € for dinner. In July & August : Closed on Monday. La Regalada – Quai du Ponant – Immeuble Les Rocailles
  http://www.restolaregalada.com/ – +33 4 68 49 67 58
  Seafood restaurant. Menus from 31 €. Open everyday during summer.
  Le Sarment – 3 Boulevard Victor Hugo
  +33 4 68 49 62 67
  Traditional restaurant. Wide range of Tapas, grilled meats & local specialties. Closed on Tuesday & Wednesday.
• Grocery stores
  Intermarché Super – Avenue des Bains Closed on Sunday afternoon

Market days

Monday, Wednesday & Saturday mornings – Au Village Thursday – Avenue de Felouques
Friday – Au Port
Sunday – Avenue des Cormorans

• Bakeries
  La Grange aux Pains – 9 Boulevard de la République Open every day.
  Au Petit Bonheur – 26 rue Frédéric Mistral
  Closed on Thursday.
  Le Pain Doré Nathalie – 16 avenue des Elysées Closed on Wednesday.

VALRAS PLAGE

• Restaurants
  L’Ôdacieuse – 7 avenue du Casino
  +33 7 77 67 40 72
  Fish restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce. Open from Wednesday to Sunday. Il Catanese – 7 Boulevard du 11 Novembre
  +33 4 67 26 27 56 – https://www.restaurant-italien-valras-plage.fr/?utm_source=tripadvisor&utm_medium=referral Italian restaurant. Closed on Monday.
  Restaurant Les Jours Heureux – 6 Boulevard Jean Moulin
  +33 4 67 32 28 17
  French restaurant serving traditional local cuisine, based on fresh seasonal produce.

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Market days

Monday & Friday
• Grocery stores
Casino Shop – Allée Charles de Gaulle
Open every day.
Petit Casino Les Elysées – 16 avenue des Elysées Open every day.
Vival les Moue es – 3 rue Champagne
Open every day.

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Wednesday 16-Oct-2019 : Valras Plage – Montpellier

Today’s ride is mostly flat. You will follow the famous lagoons called “Bassin de Thau” to reach the magnificent town of Sète, overlooked by Mont St Clair, before continuing to Montpellier, your destination of the day.

Hotel Albizzia*** – Valras Plage – Hotel – 3*

12 Chemin Creux, 34350, Valras-Plage, France latitude:43.249203966978 longitude:3.2931518554688 h p://www.hotelalbizzia34.com/

04 67 37 48 48
Air conditioning in rooms: No Check-out : 11:00am
Check in: from 2:00pm

Distance : 90 Km (56 mi). Elevation : 350m.

Night at Hotel du Palais.

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Alary – 2 rue du Pacifique Boulangerie Montagne – 1 rue du Pacifique
• Grocery store
  Lidl – 14 Avenue des Isles d’Amérique Closed on Sunday
• Restaurants

L’Astoria – 8 Quai Commandant Méric

http://www.restaurant-l-astoria.com/ – + 33 4 67 94 13 78

AGDE

Traditional seafood restaurant. Wide range of entrees including pizzas, pastas, and salads. Menu from 22.90 €. Closed on Tuesday & Wednesday. Open everyday from mid-June to mid-September.

La Perle Noire – 20 rue André Chassefière
http://www.restaurantlaperlenoireagde.fr/ – +33 4 67 21 09 38
Mediterranean cuisine using fresh products. Menu from 14.50 € for lunch and from 19.90 € for dinner.

Market days

Thursday – Place des Halles
Saturday morning – Alsace Lorrain parking lot Sunday morning – Place des Muriers

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Seasonal market – from June to September

Monday – Mail de Rochelongue Tuesday – Port
Wednesday – Barbecue parking lot

• Bakeries
  Boulangerie Denise e – 12 Quai de la Résistance La Mie Caline – 5 Quai de la Résistance
• Grocery stores
  Carrefour Express – 29 quai Mal. de La re de Tassigny Monoprix – 22 rue Gambe a

SETE

• Restaurants
  Paris Méditerranée – 47 rue Pierre Semard
  +33 4 67 74 97 73
  Seafood restaurant. Gourmet cuisine. Menu from 28 €. Closed on Monday & Sunday. Les Binocles – 25 rue Pierre Semard
  +33 4 99 04 98 35
  French food, local products. Menu from 22 €. Closed on Monday and Tuesday.
  La Part des Anges – 1 quai Leopold Suquet
  +33 4 67 51 46 31
  Organic food. Menu from 14.50 € for lunch. Closed on Sunday.

Market days

Food market – rue Alsace Lorraine

Wednesday morning

Food market – avenue Victor Hugo

Friday morning

Fish market – Port de Sète

Every day

included: luggage transfer, Itinerary (no cue sheets), bedroom and breakfast

Thursday 17-Oct-2019 : Montpellier – Roissy

You can take your time ge ing started in the morning to have breakfast and depart at your leisure.(Depart on your own). Trains depart in all directions throughout the day.

Night at Hotel Ibis Paris CDG Airport – Paris. included: bedroom and breakfast

Hotel du Palais*** – Montpellier – Hotel – 3*

3 Rue du Palais des Guilhem, 34000, Montpellier, France latitude:43.611601 longitude:3.873903 h p://www.hoteldupalais-montpellier.fr/
Check-out : Midday

Check in: From 2:00 pm

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Hotel Ibis Paris CDG Airport – Paris – Hotel – 3*

Roissypole – BP 11122, 3 rue de Bruxelles, 95701, Roissy, France latitude:48.994635983534 longitude:2.57080078125 http://www.ibis.com/fr/hotel-1404-ibis-paris-cdg-airport/index.shtml

+33 1 49 19 19 19

– Other Services –

Included with your tour : Technical and Emergency support available at all times (from 9am to 7pm) by phone.

number of days: 16
service end date: 17-Oct-2019

Emergency Tour Service Phone :
A self-guided trip is indeed more independent than a guided trip, but you can contact us for emergency support or any questions about the tour. Our mobile

phone number (+ 33 6 27 81 75 52) will be in your road book & travel book for English speaking assistance from 9am to 7pm.

included: Emergency support

Included with your Tour : your personal ROAD BOOK, includes detailed maps, touristic information

number of days: 16
service end date: 17-Oct-2019

Included with your Tour :

Our road books are complete packages of information that will help you to guide yourself through the itinerary that we have planned and laid out. We have invested significant time and incorporated the feedback of our customers over many years (since 1997!) to make our road books even better.

Our road books include: color maps, highlighted routes, touristic information, orientation points to reach hotels, and easy to follow directions. Please note:

GPS routes often start/end in the city center or tourist office and not directly from/to hotels. (check hotel map in the road book). For custom itineraries you will not have cue sheets. Only maps and GPS routes.

included: Roadbook,Travelbook

Included with your tour : GARMIN Oregon 600T or 450T.

number of days: 7
service end date: 02-Oct-2019

GPS Included with your tour :
During your orientation we provide you 1 GPS for every 3 people. The model is a Garmin 600t (or equivalent).
The routes described in your roadbook are pre-programmed in the GPS. You simply have to follow the line shown on the GPS, and enjoy !

NOTE : at the end of your tour, you need to return the GPS as it was given to you (in same box) to the last hotel. Please sign the document (GPS/BIKE PROFF OF RETURN) you received at orientation and have the hotel sign it too. You will need to keep one copy and the hotel will keep the second copy. Both have to be signed by you and the hotel.

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



included: GPS included

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10/20/2019 Travel book – Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT



Discover France

If you need more information about this tour, feel free to contact us. We will respond you shortly to prepare your adventure !

United States : 55 East 59th Street 15th floor, New York, NY 10022, USA, /France : 427 rue Helene Boucher, 34130, Mauguio, France

www.discoverfrance.com

• +33(0)4.67.15.82.00. / US 1-800-929-0152 contact@discoverfrance.com

“Grab a bike, take it slowly and breathe”

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From October 1st to the 18th of 2019, Jerry and Odette biked from Montpellier in France to Girona in Spain and back again.

 

TLDR:  625 miles of riding and 28,000 feet of climbing in 14 days on the tandem

We equivocated on a second trip for 2019.  Part of the indecision was was a hope that we could coordinate things with Will, part of it was just procrastination.  When we got serious I decided that if we were doing it in October I wanted to go to Majorca where it would be warm.  Odette agreed, halfheartedly, and then couldn’t figure out how to structure a tour that would occupy us for two weeks.  Truth be told, I think she was concerned about the hills.  She decided that Croatia would work better, but couldn’t find a tour that made any more sense than the one in Majorca did.  I gave her a list of places that advertised custom, self-guided, trips –  but October isn’t their season and they mainly cater to a crowd that wants short rides between boats and not two-week long bike trips.

As a backup she asked our friends at Discover France if they could support us on a ride from Montpellier to Barcelona and back.  They said “of course” and it didn’t take much convincing for Odette to switch to that destination.  By then it was already September so there was a flurry of activity to establish dates and get a deposit in place.  The Discover France staff was working Tour de France (and the seasonal staff was likely winding up) so the progress was halting.  When they focused on it they decided that we didn’t have time to ride to Barcelona and recommended that we turn around in Girona. We got a hotel list (our first indication of the cities on the route) in the middle of the month and we didn’t get the GPX files until the night before we flew out.

I spent that evening manually converting 12 GPX files into FIT and Odette got the routes loaded into her Garmin and we were off.  Will drove us to the airport.  The flight to Paris was uneventful.  Customs at Charles deGaul were a cluster, but no worse than usual.  The flight to Montpellier departed from the same terminal as the one we’d taken to Corsica a few months earlier so the process of checking the tandem domestically was familiar.  The cab took us to the same hotel we’d stayed in the last time we rode from Montpellier, back in 2016.  The next day I assembled the bike and we rode to Palavas les Flots and back, mainly on bike trail.  I forgot to turn on my GPS tracker until we got to the beach. The following day we met with a guy from Discover France who delivered the standard script and told us about the impressive square with big plane trees in St. Guilhem le Desert.

We left the hotel and rode out past the aqueduct and ended up in St. Guilhem le Desert for lunch (and to confirm that there wasn’t a plane tree infested square. ) We ate at the same hotel we’d stayed at in 2016.  We continued on to Villeneuvette where we had a really difficult time figuring out how to get into the hotel.  The village was originally a uniform factory before the French Republicans liberated it – living quarters downstairs and working lofts above.  It still has that impressive classic French look and it’s set in a natural area not too far from Lake Salagou (which we had also visited in 2016).  I still don’t think you can get to the hotel entrance from the interior of the village, though.  The hotel restaurant was very good.

Day two was a straightforward ride to the tiny village of Siran.  The hotel we stayed in there was 4-star and really a remarkable chateau.  The restaurant ranked among the best we have ever found.  Day three was kind of a long way around to get to Carcassonne.  We climbed up the gorge out of Lagrasse on an incredibly scenic and gentle grade, but the highlight of the day was the medieval city at the end of the ride.  Our hotel was very orange and rocked a 1960’s mod ethic and a pack of Rick Steeves tourists, but you couldn’t beat the location.  (Unfortunately they didn’t have secure bike storage so the tandem spent the night outdoors chained to a tree with the assistance of someone else’s lock that we appropriated.)  The fortifications were very interesting and we spent most of the afternoon walking them.  Dinner was touristy but tasty.

The next day we rode a different route back to the gorge and then retraced our route to Lagrasse.  A little more climbing got us to Cucugnan and a wonderful B&B.  We didn’t visit but we passed several famous Cathar castles on the ride (and our room had a view of the one at Cucugnan.)  As we were eating lunch and waiting to check in we met a group from Portland that recognized my Cascadia jersey and a blind guy from Norway who was drawn to our tandem, saying that he had five of his own at home.  Day four we rode inland from Perpignan, mainly through vineyards, ending up at Amelie les  Bains on the Tech river.  Amelie was a small town with three large geothermal baths, evidently dating from Roman times.  It had an impressive hiking trail up a gully, but that was closed and the suspended platforms didn’t seem like they were going to be suspended much longer.  The hotel was a disappointment, overrun by a British tour group and struggling to accommodate them and not able to offer much to anybody else.  We locked our bike in a desolate room in the basement (we couldn’t get the lights or the lock to work without help) and we walked out on their restaurant.

From Amelie les Bains we rode a long climb to Col Ares – just after admiring the fortifications at Prats de Mollo.  Most of the climb was a gentle grade that we rode well and at the top it flattened out…  the descent was fun, too.  We had a wonderful hotel and a great dinner in Olot, marred only by the difficulty of navigating to the hotel from the end of the route in the Garmin.

The ride from Olot to Girona wasn’t supposed to be long, even though it was mainly routed on bikeways that weren’t quite as direct as the roads.  To overcome the navigational issues from the previous day we used the “navigate to start of route” on the Garmin and kept the blue arrow on the purple line.  After about 15 miles  we both agreed that something was wrong – the fact that we started to recognize things we’d seen on the way into Olot was a clue.  Odette still can’t explain what happened, but evidently we’d been following our previous day’s route in reverse, just sticking to trails instead of taking the roads as we had on the way in.  We turned around, rode back to Olot, got a bystander to help us find the right direction on the right trail, and rode on to Girona.  The highlight of the day was carrying the tandem up a block of stairs next to the cathedral.

We had a layover day in Girona which we spent walking the city.  The medieval city walls were my favorite, but the jewish museum and the architectural museum were both worth the time we spent.  The hotel was really good and there were a bunch of good restaurants to be visited.  For our eighth day of riding we went to San Feliu by bikeway.  These trails were unpaved and not nearly as well maintained as the ones between Olot and Girona.  On our descent to the water to do an OAB on a small spit I got the front wheel caught in a rut and dropped the bike – escaping with only some road rash for me and a skinned knee for Odette.  We ate lunch near that spit and then rode over a headland to another beach and our hotel.  The hotel wasn’t special (except that it did have a bike locker with hooks high enough to get the tandem off the ground) but we sat on the sand for a couple of hours and I swam in the mediterranean.
The next day we rode almost all the way back to Girona on a different combination of roads and trail, and then cut over to Figures.  Our hotel there was easy to find but located out on the edge of town.  We walked in to the center, had lunch at a very good tapas place, and then visited the Salvador Dali museum.  Unlike the place we’d visited in Paris a few months earlier, the museum was a parody of regular art museums (much like Dali was a parody of regular art, I guess.)  We both enjoyed it a lot.

For the tenth day of riding we climbed over the col de banyuls and rode down into Le Barcares.  The climb was gentle and the descent was fun even through it threatened to rain on us all morning.  The hotel in Le Barcares was the least posh of all the places we stayed on this trip, but the staff was friendly and they had good storage for the bike.  Not many choices for restaurants, however, and after we got there we saw a really strong windstorm and a little rain.  The next morning we headed from Le Barcares to Valras-Plage.  Much of the riding was on trail but it being France the trail was mainly paved and well signed.  From Port La Nouvelle to Sainte Lucie we were supposed to ride a narrow causeway which we found to be closed to all traffic.  We looked for a beach trail around the construction but ended up riding roads to Narbonne and then back out to the beach.  We were using Google maps for navigation and spent a few hours riding in circles on unpaved roads in some guys’ vineyard.  We had trouble finding the hotel when we got there but we had a great dinner in a little restaurant that made up for all of the difficulties.

From Valras we rode beach trails to Palavas Les Flots.  We saw pelicans and flamingoes and birds we couldn’t identify.  We crossed a bridge too tight for the tandem where I had to stand the bike up on the back wheel to get through the chicane.  At the end we followed the route we’d ridden on our shakedown ride back into Montpellier.   We got to the hotel at 4:20 and had the bike disassembled and packed up by 6:00 – a record possible only because Odette helped.  We walked the town the next morning and after lunch caught a cab to the airport.  The Air France flight was uneventful and our hotel (Ibis) was within walking distance from the train that runs between terminals at Charles deGaul. We stowed the bike cases in a locker and ate in a bad imitation of a French restaurant.  Our flight was delayed a couple of hours so we had a leisurely breakfast and took the train back to terminal 2 where we negotiated security and baggage check before waiting a couple of hours to board.  The flight home was long but nothing exciting.  US customs in Seattle were about as good as I’ve ever seen them.  We caught a yellow cab to get home and then ordered a pizza.

Observations:

• I was surprised at how well we did on the climbs – makes me start thinking about Alps and Pyrenees.  Of course 625 miles in 13 days with 28,000 ft. of climbing has to be compared to the 450 miles in 10 days with 35,000 ft. of climbing that we did in Corsica in May.
• The bike performed very well – no mechanical issues at all
• We were very lucky about weather –  we didn’t get rained on at all during our rides
• It was interesting to be in Catalonia and Occitania while reading The Silk Roads.  The standard narrative is really a linear “Western Europe as descended from Rome” story while the local versions are a lot richer.
• We saw separatist symbols and graffiti all over the Catalan towns and a couple of days after we left, the Catalan leaders were sentenced and protesters shut the airports and the highway crossings into France.
• We think that we do better if we work with a local travel agency, but Discover France is based in Montpellier and while our routes were in their backyard they still couldn’t get files to us until the 11th hour, couldn’t route us on open roads, couldn’t find great hotels every night, etc.

here are the maps:

10/16 –  Day 12. Valras-Plage to Montpellier.  here’s the  map.  61 miles

10/15 – Day 11. Le Barcares to Valras-Plage.  here’s the  map.  68 miles

10/14 – Day 10. Figures to Le Barcares.  here’s the  map.  52 miles

10/13 – Day 9. San Feliu to Figueres.  here’s the  map.  43 miles

10/12 – Day 8. Girona to San Feliu.  here’s the  map.  30 miles

10/10 –Day 7. Olot to Girona.  here’s the  map.  61 miles

10/9 – Day 6. Amelie les Bains to Olot.  here’s the  map.  54 miles

10/8 – Day 5. Cucugnan to Amelie les Bains.  here’s the  map.  44 miles

10/7 – Day 4. Carcassonne tp Cucugnan.  here’s the  map.  45 miles

10/6 – Day 3. Siran to Carcassonne.  here’s the  map.  45 miles

10/5 – Day 2. Villeneuvette to Siran.  here’s the  map.  55 miles

10/4 – Day 1. Montpellier to Villeneuvette.  here’s the  map.  46 miles

10/3 – Montpellier to Palavas les Flots OAB.  here’s the (partial) map.  20 miles

 

here are my photos; here are Odette’s

here is the itinerary

Odette and Jerry biked in southern Spain from September 22nd to October 13th of 2018:

Odette had a vacation problem.  The county doesn’t pay physicians too well, but it makes up for it by giving an extraordinary amount of time off.  Odette hasn’t been able to take all of her vacation for years and usually at some point there is a crisis and they want her to stick around so they allow her to carry over extra days.  Last year they wouldn’t make an exception so she ended up giving weeks of vacation away to colleagues needing extensions of their leave.  She was determined not to have that happen again.

Before we went to France she put in for three more weeks off in the fall.  We talked a lot about where to go – a second trip to France, some other place in Europe, maybe even a non-bike trip…  She was attracted by the idea of traveling without bike cases and pushed the idea of renting bikes at our destination, even knowing that would mean riding under her own power.  Eventually she decided that October would be a good time to go someplace warm and that we were better off on the tandem.  Spain, and southern Spain in particular, seemed like a good place to go.  Odette bought plane tickets as far as Madrid figuring we’d sort out the rest once we knew where we needed to be

There was some drama in finding a tour agency that would offer a self-guided tour of Andalucia.  My only requirement was that we needed to start and end in the same city so that we could leave the cases.  We disagreed on side trips to Morocco and/or Gibraltar.  Eventually Odette found a company she liked – Cycle Fiesta – and put down a deposit.  That meant we had dates and plane tickets and a destination – and we figured we’d work out the details later.  Then I left for Tibet.

While I was gone Odette worked out an itinerary that started with their standard Seville to Grenada tour and then looped back to Seville.  She arranged lay-over days in Cordoba and Grenada and extra days in Seville at the beginning and end.  Her concept was that this was a tour and that bicycling was just kind of incidental to trip – something I repeated when I explained to people that my Tibet trip was a real bike tour but that I was also going on this trip to Spain that would be more comfortable and less strenuous.  The main question the agency had was how strong we rode and Odette proceeded to tell them about Ramrod and our fondness for the Mazama ride.  Here’s the route they put together for us:

I got back from Tibet and had two weeks before we were to leave.  While I was gone Odette bought a Garmin map of Europe and found that she needed a memory card to load it – which came just after I got home.  Just as I got back she got TCX files for the routes, but we had house guests the weekend before we were to leave.  A couple days after they left, the bank called to say our credit card had been compromised and that they were cancelling it and issuing us a new card.

I converted the rides into routes and Odette saved the map but she ran into trouble loading the routes and with relatives needing to be attended to she didn’t have time to fiddle with her Garmin.  She ended up loading un-processed TCX files for about half of the days and only loading one route on days when there were options.  The bank fedexed new cards to us and I updated visa information so that we wouldn’t lose our cell phones.

After our un-planned stop in Reykjavik in June, Odette wanted to avoid Delta and the best deal she could get on airfare was Air Canada going and Lufthansa coming back.  The only problem was that the flights left early – like 6:00 in the morning for the flight out.  We caught a yellow cab with our bike cases and backpacks at 3:00AM and we were off!

The flight to Seville was uneventful.  We changed planes in Toronto and then caught a domestic flight in Madrid where there was confusion about baggage tags and we ended up paying for extra bags just in order to make the machine work.  We caught a cab to the hotel and were blown away by the buildings and bridges we passed on the way into the city.  The hotel was seven guest rooms in a beautiful old building with a central courtyard.  We were early enough to catch lunch in their fancy restaurant which was more than we bargained for, but very good.

The next morning I put the bike together and we did a 10-mile ride to make sure everything worked.  We visited the Cathedral that afternoon – very grand and clearly showing moorish origins inside.  We ate lunch at the bistro in the hotel and learned that the restaurants there were affiliated with a cooking school. Dinner was at a famous tapas bar that lived up to its reputation.

We left Seville and rode to Carmona, stopping to look at the roman ruins at Italica.  The ruins were bigger than the ones we toured in Provence, and the theatre in the middle was the main thing excavated.  The mozaics were cool, too.  Carmona looked to us like a hilltop fortress, but it was mainly churches.  The hotel was big and full of dark wood – there was a swimming pool for which we had no suits.  Lunch in the bar was good.  Dinner in the outdoor courtyard of a cafe on the other side of the churches was really excellent.  As the lights came up the lizards played on the walls.

The ride from Carmona to Palma del Rio wasn’t particularly memorable – mainly lots of orange trees I guess.  The monastery we stayed at in Palma del Rio made up for that.  The complex was huge with several courtyards.  The interior of the buildings seemed authentic and untouched by restorers.  The domes and towers visible from the street were particularly impressive.  We had lunch at a recommended restaurant where we were the only patrons and the fare was adequate.  We had dinner at the monastery and it was superb.  When I went to get the bike the next morning I found that we had been joined by a group from Vermont Bike Tours.

We rode from Palma del Rio to Cordoba after getting lost on our way out of Palma del Rio.  The ride took us in a semicircle around the Almodovar del Rio castle and we stopped several times to admire it and take pictures.  We also stopped at Medina Azhera, both to see the museum exhibits and to walk the ruins.  I found the moorish ruins more interesting than the roman ones.  It’s really interesting how only a few hundred miles east of Andalusia the north African cultural influences are really minimal and the influence of the cathars is accentuated…

Cordoba is a big town and we had some navigational issues getting to our hotel.  We stayed at a tourist spot a couple blocks from the main square in the monument district.  We ate at a couple of restaurants Odette found in guidebooks – one was touristy and nothing special, the other was pretty good.  We had a lay-over day in Cordoba and toured the Mezquita, the Alcazar, and the Al Andalusia museum.  The first two were really cool with a red and white motif that matched what we’d seen at Medina Azhera.  The Al Andalusia thing had little real content and was mainly an effort to make the point that the muslim, christian and jewish religions overlap and that before the reconquest more time was spent living together than at war.

The ride from Cordoba to Zuheros was exciting – we had about 10km of gravel where I got carried away and we suffered a pitch flat as a consequence.  Somehow Odette had the idea (buttressed by the the printed queue sheet) that the tour operator had told her that the Hacienda where they usually put riders was full so we were staying at a hotel in the village.  We rode up really steep narrow streets to the castle in the center of town, then rode down an equally steep hill for a couple of blocks to find the hotel – only to learn that they didn’t know about us.  They called the Hacienda and confirmed we had reservations there – and that our luggage was waiting for us a couple miles back up the road.  We had lunch at the mistaken hotel and walked the bike back up the hill to look at the castle before riding out to our place.  The group from VBT was admiring the castle when we got there. They were also staying at the Hacienda. Before dinner we walked a rail-trail down to the village again – but this time we didn’t make the climb up to the castle.  Dinner at the Hacienda was excellent and the dinning room was spectacular.

The ride from Zuheros to Montefrio took us through a natural park and we moved from oranges into olives and almonds and hills with a lot more relief.  We descended into the town, then climbed a rib to the square below the Nazid fortress.  We found the souvenir store and got the key to our AirBNB.  We had lunch at a cerveceria and then walked up a steep hill to the fortress.  We had dinner at the same cerveceria.  No problems navigating our way out of town in the morning.

The route from Montefrio to Grenada took us through Moclin – probably the most impressively fortified of the white villages we visited.  Apparently the castle was built after the battle where the Castilian forces were defeated, but it was really impressive and the village below it was really picturesque.  The descent down to Grenada was impressive, too.  The big attraction in Grenada was the Alhambra – we paid for a guided tour.  We walked around the city a lot, admiring the architecture.  We headed for a famous tapas bar in the Albaicin but I didn’t want to wait in line so we settled for a tourist place up the street.  We had a couple of meals in the hotel which was surprisingly good.

From Granada we rode to Alhama de Granada, taking an extension around a lake for which we had no Garmin route.  There was a serious descent and then an equally serious climb around the village of Cacin.  There was also a lot of up and down getting to the village of Alhama de Granada, but no real navigational issues.  Our hotel room was on the second floor looking down into the gorge.  The woman who ran the place was really cool.  The baths were several miles away but we saw the outside of another Nazid fortress and several impressive churches.

From Alhama de Grenada we rode to Colmenar.  The ride involved a lot of hills but no serious climbs and no significant villages.  We stopped at one point to adjust the headset which was “clunking” and I had to take it all the way apart and get a seal on the lower bearing back in place.  Colmenar doesn’t have any fortresses – it was evidently settled later and its claim to fame is beekeeping.  We had lunch on the patio at the hotel and dinner in their dining room.  Nothing special, and no good place to lock up the bike, but we survived.

We rode from Colmenar to Antequera with an OAB to Torcal de Antequera.  The first part of the ride was really high with lots of crags and truck crops.  There was a stunning twisty descent and then a long climb up to Torcal. After a fast descent from Torcal it was pretty flat into the village where we had route finding problems and ended up walking the last few meters.  Torcal was worth the extra climb – windswept limestone spires and cool rock formations that would have been fun to hike.  The village of Antequera had a lot of huge churches but the only thing we walked to were the Dolmens – Durid burial mounds aligned with Torcal. Lunch at an outdoor cerveceria was good, dinner at a tapas bar less so.

In the morning we had Garmin problems and got off route before we left the hotel.  We ended up with some unnecessary climbing but with a view of the backside of a church that we would have otherwise missed.  We had a long day  with a lot of climbing to get from Antequera to Ronda, but it was beautiful.  We dropped down into a gorge and crossed a dam with an indescribable view of the Camino del Rey.  We climbed out of the gorge and climbed for miles in Sierra de las Nieves.  We finally dropped down into Ronda and the navigation to the hotel was much easier than we expected.  Riding the pedestrian street was less than ideal, though.  We locked up the bike in an underground parking garage after the attendant gave us some grief about blocking cars.  We ate at a tourist place on the pedestrian street and it was pretty much okay.

We started out on an “optional” lollypop out of Ronda that would have given us  three serious climbs.  The first one came after stopping to look at the new bridge and the Nazid gates to the city walls.  After a hot, fast descent we climbed to the loop part of the ride and stopped in the village of Juzcar.  This part of Spain is famous for whitewashed villages and Juzcar is structured like the others, but instead of being white it is blue.  The main square has large Smurfs as decorations.  We did maybe a quarter of the loop and then turned around for the climb back up the way we’d come.  We had lunch at a cerveceria on the square and it was not bad.  We spent the afternoon walking around the town.  We ate at a famous tourist restaurant across from the bullring and it was actually a really good meal.

The ride from Ronda to Grazelema took us along a reservoir to Zahara.  For a while we rode in a river valley and then we had a spectacular climb out of the gorge.    We saw lots of groves of cork trees.  We skirted a reservoir for the rest of the way with the fortress at Zahara as our landmark.  Then we had a 15km climb in the natural park that was steep and twisty and kind of looked like we were riding the great wall.  We crossed the pass and dropped a few km into Grazelema – the rainiest village in Spain. There were a couple of big churches and a roman road.  We had dinner at the hotel and it was okay.  Odette was really worried about the weather forecast for the next day and didn’t want to wait until the breakfast place opened at 9:00 so we stopped in a convenience store and bought cookies.

We got up really early and had tea and cookies and then headed for Utera.  The first order of business was to climb back up to the pass we’d crossed the day before and then descend the steep twisty way we’d come up.  It was much easier the second time through.  From there the ride was pretty flat so I got into the big ring and muscled us to a more reasonable average for the day, despite it being abut 100km.  Utera is a suburb with a lot of traffic and we didn’t have turn-by-turn, but we got to the hotel without any mishaps.  The owner didn’t trust their regular bike park with our tandem and walked us a few blocks to her personal residence so that we could park in her underground garage.  We had salads at a tapas place for lunch but the recommended place with the green door was closed, despite the insistence of the woman at the front desk of our hotel, so after walking the square we ended up at the cerveceria across the street from the hotel.  The food was an adventure but they had 10 beers on tap.

We retrieved our bike and got on the road relatively early although we mistakenly believed that we didn’t have a Garmin route to match the written route guide.  The way wasn’t too complicated and after about 25 flat miles we were back in Seville on the river-side bikeway we had explored on the first day in the city.  We had lunch at the hotel bistro and we spent the afternoon in the Seville Alcazar and its related gardens.  Dinner was at a tourist place up the street from the hotel.  The next day it rained while I disassembled and packed up the bike.  We walked the monument district again and visited the Triana market, but overlooked the museum of the inquisition.  Dinner was in the fancy hotel restaurant where we had the tasting menu – probably the best meal of the trip.

The next day was spent getting to Madrid – a ridiculously short trip to spend a day on.  We collected our stuff, took a cab to the Seville airport, checked our bike cases, sat at the gate, took a short flight, collected our cases, took a cab to the airport Hilton, and then hung out at the hotel.  Odette was “time shifting” so we didn’t want to make a trip into town.  We had lunch and dinner in the hotel bar and went to bed early for a 3:00 wake up.  We checked out then and took a (wild) cab back to the airport where we were first in line for our flight.  We checked our bike cases and then sat at the gate until a flight to Frankfurt where we cleared EU customs and connected to a flight to Seattle.  That flight, on a 747, was smooth but long.  US customs in Seattle was fine and our bike cases popped out onto the carousel just like they were supposed to.  We took a yellow cab instead of Lyft and the first driver wasn’t able to make our cases fit into his prius so we had to wait for a handicap van and we paid a premium to rattle up to Phinney Ridge.

All in all an exceptional trip.  A few observations:

• The Muslim/Christian stuff is really fascinating and much more dynamic than I realized
• Andalusian architecture is magnificent and totally different from the stuff you see in Southern France
• The food in that part of Spain was fantastic and not as pretentious as French food.  The wine was all good.  Food and wine were much less expensive.
• There is a big difference between country and city hotels – cervecerias seem to be the same everywhere
• We need to learn to take our time and follow the direction on the Garmin
• A loop route really simplifies things  Leaving fresh clothes in the bike case was a good idea.  I didn’t need the shoes I left there.
• I could have used one less bike jersey and one more T-shirt and I didn’t need the warm layer I brought for the mountains
• layover days work better when you plan things you want to do
• We’re able to do a lot of climbing, day after day.  When I map out our Cyclemeter files I get almost 60,000 feet of elevation gain on the trip (in just under 650 miles)  We need to return to Mt. Ventoux and we ought to consider tours in the Pyrenees and Alpes
• When Odette bonks she isn’t much help and she fusses.  Having snacks on the bike is a really god idea.
• The bike worked pretty well – one pinch flat, some indexing problems that I addressed with the barrel adjuster, the lower bearing on the headset came apart but I reassembled it and it held until the end of the trip
• I need to try one of these trip without an SLR
• The climbing on this trip was more strenuous than Tibet, but the lower elevation made up for it (so much for comfortable and easy)

Here are the maps:

10/10 – Andalucia Day 15.  Here’s the map. (Utera to Seville) 26 miles
10/9 – Andalucia Day 14.  Here’s the map. (Grazalema to Utera) 62 miles
10/8 – Andalucia Day 13.  Here’s the map. (Ronda to Grazalema) 40 miles
10/7 – Andalucia Day 12.  Here’s the map. (Ronda to Cartajima OAB) 36 miles
10/6 – Andalucia Day 11.  Here’s the map. (Antequera to Ronda) 55 miles
10/5 – Andalucia Day 10.  Here’s the map. (Colmenar to Antequera) 30 miles
10/4 – Andalucia Day 9.  Here’s the map. (Alhama de Grenada to Colmenar) 38 miles
10/3 – Andalucia Day 8.  Here’s the map. (Grenada to Alhama de Grenada) 57 miles
10/1 – Andalucia Day 7.  Here’s the map. (Montefrio to Grenada) 45 miles
9/30 – Andalucia Day 6.  Here’s the map. (Zuheros to Montefrio) 49 miles
9/29 – Andalucia Day 5.  Here’s the map. (Cordoba to Zuheros) 48 miles
9/27 – Andalucia Day 4.  Here’s the map. (Palmas del Rio to Cordoba) 48 miles
9/26 – Andalucia Day 3.  (Carmona to Palmas del Rio) Here’s the map. 48 miles
9/25 – Andalucia Day 2.  (Seville to Carmona) Here’s the map. 47 miles
9/24 – Andalucia Day 1.  (Seville shakedown) Here’s the map. 13 miles

Here are the photos

Here are some snapshots from my iPhone

Here are Odette’s photos

From the 14th of August to the 5th of September Jerry and Will (together with a friend of Will’s) biked from Golmud in China to Lhasa in Tibet – about 1,200 KM and mainly at about 5,000 meters of elevation.

We flew from Seattle to Bejing with three bikes and two big duffles full of gear.  We put the bags in left luggage at the airport and took the subway to our hotel, only to find that the reservation had been cancelled.  We walked around in the dark for a while before we found a place that could host foreigners.  The next day we walked and went to a Peking Duck restaurant for lunch (a place we’d eaten at in 2008) before catching a flight to Xining.

We took a cab (actually two cabs) from the airport to the train station in Xining.  Our first experience with a sleeper car went pretty well (the girl who shared our compartment may not share that assessment.)  Two more cabs got us to our hotel in Golmud where we checked in at about 9:30 in the morning and then proceeded to assemble bikes.  The attachment of the front rack to the brake pivot bolts on the Franklin took some extra time, but Will and I got all three bike put together in time for lunch.  Will arranged to ship the cases and duffles to our hotel in Lhassa and then we went shopping.

The next morning we rode something like 20KM to a police checkpoint where we spent several hours trying to figure out if we were going to have to return to Golmud to wait for a permit.  Eventually, between Extravagant Yak and the cop that Will was talking to, we were told that we could proceed as far as Tanggula  as long as we didn’t deviate from the main route.  We did an extra 30 KM that day to make sure we would be out of range if somebody changed their minds.  We spent the night in a dorm (the third one we tried) with a couple of very inquisitive Tibetan kids.  We filled water bottles from the spring even though it violated everything we knew about sanitation while traveling in the third world.

The next day we biked to Kunlun Mountain Resort, a group of truckstops and a mineral water bottling plant.  The place we stayed was run by Muslims but they seemed to be on good terms with the cops and military.  I never did figure out how to make the shower work. Leaving that town in the rain was remarkable for a valley with low peaks on either side featuring glaciers between each peak.  The valley was a military exercise zone and there were tanks and other vehicles on the road and maneuvering around on the valley floor.  We spent that night in Xidatan and then climbed to Kun Lun pass the next day.  The final kilometer up to the pass was strenuous. After the pass it was downhill to Budong Spring (the sign on the road pointed to hot springs but the locals told us that none existed.)  Chris had a headache so we spent an extra day there.

When we got going again we were up on the Tibetan Plateau so the climbs didn’t involve a lot of additional elevation but they were still plenty strenuous.  We got to WuDao Liang and then to Hoh Xil before arriving at Tanggula where we met our guide.  One of those night (WuDo Liang?) was spent in a dorm at a road construction camp where we operated a coal stove to boil water and heat the room.  By the time we got to Tanggula we and our bikes were muddy and tired.

There was only one place in Tanggula that was permitted to house foreigners and we got run around some before we found it.  We connected with the guide and driver and took showers.  The next morning we cleared the checkpoint now that we had the requisite permit and headed for YanShiPing.  Just before the town Chris fell off his bike and decided that he couldn’t ride any further.  The next morning we took the van for maybe 10 KM to get through a checkpoint and then had a miscommunication where Chris and the guide went to a restaurant and ordered lunch without coordinating with Will and me.  We were tired and annoyed and rained upon and Will prevailed on me to load the bikes in the van and ride over the next pass – the highest point on the route.  We ended up riding the van over two passes and spending the night in Andou.  We rode from there to Nagqu (minus Chris who still wasn’t riding) which was a large town with a choice of restaurants.  The next stop was Ancient Lieu where we didn’t like the lodging choices but evidently couldn’t get permission to stay at the monastery.

The following day we drove a long way to get breakfast and then rode a short way to a monastery for lunch.  After touring the temples we went to our guide’s parents place and spent the afternoon eating Yak cheese and sausage.  The next morning we got really muddy biking unpaved roads and then flew downhill to a set of hot springs half-way to Lhasa.  The following day we finished the ride to Lhasa (the final checkpoint on the city’s outskirts was trivial and after that Chris decided to ride again.) We wandered around until we found our hotel (we’re told that Shambala translates to   Shangri La and there were a bunch of establishments with Shambala in the name.) It catered to expats but was a really nice place despite the Spanish tour group.  We had a spare day in Lhasa to visit the Natural History museum and pack up the bikes. Chris chose to get a massage instead.

In the morning we got a small truck to ferry the three of us and our guide, plus the three bikes and now three duffles, out to the train station.  After a fairly long wait we took the high-speed train for a 25 hour ride to Xining.  We didn’t avail ourselves of the oxygen.  (The route of the railroad was very close to that of the highway we rode in on, so during daylight – most of the way across the plateau – we recognized features that we’d seen before.)

We spent most of a day and that night in Xining – a big city where we didn’t venture beyond the modern shopping malls.  We took a shuttle to the airport and flew to Shanghai, landing early in the evening.  We were informed that the left luggage concession at the airport was closed, with no alternative available, so we headed into town with our bikes and duffles.  Will had made plans to meet a Danish friend in the Bund and we had to push the time back, but by paying for a cab we got there in time for dinner.  Then we had to find a cab back out to the suburbs…

We flew from Shanghai to Seattle the next afternoon and that leg of the trip was uneventful.  Customs in Seattle was as good as I’ve ever seen it and a Lyft XL got us and all of our stuff home in time for lunch.

Quite a trip.

Impressions:

• The road had no shoulders and soft pavement with deep ruts and lots of potholes.  There were a ton of trucks.
• Wide tires were a really good idea
• We should have spent a little more time maintaining the bikes – we ended up with racks falling off and saddle adjustment issues that probably could have been avoided
• But no serious mechanical issues – not even a flat tire
• We were well advised to bring a sleeping bag and we really didn’t need camping stuff
• There were lots of prayer flags and Buddhist cultural stuff, but maybe not as much as in Kashmir
• The landscape on the plateau reminded me of the Yukon – no trees, low mountains, obviously harsh winters
• Having someone who speaks Chinese was essential, someone who spoke Tibetan was even better
• Usually you wonder if the guide is getting a kick-back for steering you to particular hotels and restaurants.  not on this trip.
• Nothing against the natural history museum, but we probably should have paid for the ticket to the Potala Palace.
• Tibet is not the place you ought to go if you decide you’re not going to eat noodles.

here are the maps:

9/2 – Lhasa ( Shambala Palace hotel to Potala Palace to Natural History Museum to Electronics Mkt and back to hotel)  no map.  10 miles on my Rodriguez with Will

9/1 – Tibet Day 13 (Yangbajingzhen Hot Springs to Lhasa) Here’s the map.  60 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/30 – Tibet Day 12 (Ancient Lieu Town to Yangbajingzhen Hot springs) Here’s the map.  61 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/29 – Tibet Day 11 (DangXiang to Ancient Lieu Town) Here’s the map.  16 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/28 – Tibet Day 10 (Nagqu to DangXiang) Here’s the map.  53 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/27 – Tibet Day 9 (Andou to Nagqu) Here’s the (partial) map.  40 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/26 – Tibet Day 8 (YanShiPing to Andou) Here’s the map.  57 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/25 – Tibet Day 7 (Tanggula Mt Town to YanShiPing) Here’s the map.  57 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/24 – Tibet Day 6 (Hoh Xil Protection Station to Tanggula Mt Town) Here’s the map.  40 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/23 – Tibet Day 5 (WuDao Liang to Hoh Xil Protection Station) Here’s the map.  52 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/22 – Tibet Day 4 (Budong Springs to WuDao Liang) Here’s the map.  54 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/20 – Tibet Day 3 (Xidatan to Budong Springs) Here’s the map.  34 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/19 – Tibet Day 2 (Kunlun Mtn. Mineral Springs to Xidatan) Here’s the map.  24 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

8/18 – Tibet Day 1 (Golmud to Kunlun Mtn. Mineral Springs) Here’s the map.  58 miles on my Rodriguez with Will & Chris.

Here are the photos (and here are snapshots from my phone.)

Here are the planning documents

Will’s Blog post

Selected photos of me (taken by Will)

 

This year Odette and Jerry travelled in France from May 22 through June 2.  They packed the tandem and flew to Paris, took the TGV to Avignon, spent six days biking a loop starting and ending in Avignon and passing through Arles.  They worried about the train strike interfering with the trip back to Paris but it wasn’t a problem.  They spent four days walking around Paris and then flew home.  Their flight had engine trouble over Greenland and diverted to Reykjavik where they spent a night and most of the next day as Delta had issues getting them going again.  US Customs and baggage claim was a breeze by comparison.

The planning for 2018 was less intense than in 2017 or 2016.  While in Whistler we agreed that we would do another self-guided tour in France, but we didn’t settle on the exact destination until late spring.  At that point Odette arranged coverage for the last couple of weeks in May, and we needed to lock in a tour quickly.  Without much debate we decided to use Discover France again and to extend their “Best of Provence” route on into Arles and then back to the start in Avignon.  That gave us time for three or four days in Paris and we agreed to stay at the same hotel we’d used the last two years.

Given how late we were in booking, Odette realized that there wasn’t any hope of using Alaska Air miles – and after our experiences on IcelandAir she decided to fly direct to Paris.  Coincidently, Air France announced a new direct Seattle-Paris flight, but Delta was less expensive and there were other issues with the Air France schedule, so we bought tickets on Delta.  Payment to the tour agency still required a phone call to the bank, but wasn’t as complicated as it had been before.

The first issue that came up was a series of national strikes involving SNCF.  We didn’t pay any attention until we realized that one of the days of action was the day we’d be returning to Paris.  Six weeks before the trip we asked Discover France what the chances were that it would still be an issue when we were traveling, and got this response:

Yes, thanks for bringing up the train strike. Here is the schedule for strike dates. So you could be affected on the date of your return to Paris. Within the link I just sent, there is a link to the daily update for which trains are running. Check the afternoon before your trip to see if you need to change your plans. My understanding is that only a portion of the trains are cancelled. If there are 3 trains each day running Avignon > Paris, they will only cancel one. So if your train is cancelled, you can still get one of the other two trains running that day though you may not be able to have a seat. You can try to sit in the dining car or you may have to just play musical chairs. But for certain you can take one of the other trains scheduled the day of your ticket.

It left us feeling uncertain, but reasonably confident that we’d get to Paris.

Along with the SNCF advice, Discover France sent us TCX files for each of the six routes we’d ride.  I loaded those files into RideWithGPS so that I could see them on the map.  I converted them to routes, but discovered that I couldn’t get queue sheets without upgrading my RWGPS account.  Eventually I upgraded (which I’d done once before for our Wallowas tour in 2015) and learned that in the premium version the conversion was done by retracing the ride, and that the resulting queue sheet incorporated small maps with the turn-by-turn giving a nice package but a very long queue sheet.  We didn’t decide we wanted the turn-by-turn until about a week before we left and then didn’t realize that without Garmin’s map of Europe what we got was just a blue line without context.  I did print the conventional queue sheets and brought those along (and I had PDFs of the expanded queue sheets on my iPad.)

We packed for the trip the night before and couldn’t find european electrical adapters so in the morning before we left for the airport I took a short bike ride while Odette ran out and bought adapters.

The flight to Paris was smooth and without problem.  Customs at CDG was a cluster, but we cut the line and got through without much delay.  The train to Avignon was noteworthy only in that we could probably have caught the one from CDG and saved ourselves a cab ride and a long wait at Gare de Lyon.  I assembled the bike on a marble floor at the hotel in Avignon and got it done in time for a 6:00 orientation meeting with the guy from Discover France.

Discover France provided us with a pre-loaded Garmin but the guy demonstrating it couldn’t get it to work in Avignon.  Odette eventually fiddled enough to be able to select routes, but it always seemed to want to route back to the beginning.  We figured that we had enough electronic and paper navigational stuff to get by so we didn’t take them up on their offer to replace it.  Then on day 2 the on/off button fell off.  I figured out how to operate the switch with a key, but in the process the maps for the last two days, the add-ons to the standard tour, disappeared.  Discover France had a replacement delivered to our hotel in Arles so that we had working Garmin for the ride back to Avignon where Odette figured out the train situation while I broke down the bike.

In Bedoin we stopped at a wine cooperative and tasted several Cotes de Rhone.  They were good and we wanted to buy, but the place didn’t ship to the US because the wines weren’t expensive enough to justify the cost.  We bought a couple of bottles anyway and then spent the rest of the trip worrying about how to get them back home.

The first night, in Avignon, the front desk told us that their restaurant was closed for a private event so we ate at a neighborhood place called Balthazar which wasn’t bad.  The next four nights we ate at the hotel.   In Gordes and St. Remy the establishments told us the meal was covered by Discover France (our paperwork said it shouldn’t have been covered in St. Remy and that was later confirmed by Discover France.)  All of the hotel meals were surprisingly good.  In Arles we ate at a place called Criquet which was exceptional.  Back in Avignon, the hotel restaurant claimed a staff shortage as the reason for not being able to give us a reservation, so we ate at a place called Cour d’Honneur which was pretty good.

In Paris we returned to several of the places we’d eaten at before – Christines and Boutary were great again, Chez Fernand was way too crowded and touristy.  We also went to a new place, Sequana, which was very good, very expensive, and very empty.  We’ll see if it is still there a year from now.

Highlights of Provence included Chateau Neuf de Pape (where we bought a case of wine to be shipped back to the US,) Mt. Ventoux (which we didn’t climb,) the pass over Les Alpilles where the buildings were carved out of limestone cliffs, the Abby at Montmajour and the Roman ruins at St. Remy and Arles.  On the last day of riding we ran into a small construction site (“route barre”) where the guys insisted on lifting our tandem and carrying it across the hole for us.  In Paris we did waking tours from Odette’s guidebook, revisited the Musee d’ Orsay and Pompidou and discovered the Musee des Arts et Metiers.

Overall the biking was great with really beautiful routes and interesting scenery.  The towns were not too difficult to navigate and the people were really friendly.  The food at the places we stayed was good but not pretentious.     The weather was not too hot but the thunderstorms predicted for every afternoon gave us an incentive to ride fast.  (We got caught in really drenching rain on the way to St. Paul but we had raincoats and it wasn’t cold.  In Paris we weren’t so lucky the night we ate at Boutary…)

Then we headed home.  The cab ride to the airport was easy, marred only by the night guy at the hotel who convinced Odette to give him 20 Euros as a “city tax”. The check-in at the airport was smooth and we found that putting two bottles of wine in the bike case brought the weight up to just barely over 23 kg – close enough that the airline didn’t charge for it.  We got through security with no hassles and eventually settled into seats and started the last leg of the trip – only to make a u-turn over Greenland.  It turned out that one of the engines had a problem and the crew decided to head for Iceland:

By Simon Hradecky, created Sunday, Jun 3rd 2018 21:34Z, last updated Sunday, Jun 3rd 2018 21:34Z A Delta Airlines Boeing 777-200, registration N867DA performing flight DL-35 from Paris Charles de Gaulle (France) to Seattle,WA (USA), was enroute at FL360 over Greenland about 500nm west of Keflavik (Iceland), when the crew decided to turn around and divert to Keflavik due to an engine (Trent895) losing oil. The aircraft initially descended to FL350 for the diversion but needed to drift down to FL200 about 10 minutes later when the crew needed to shut the engine down. The aircraft landed safely in Keflavik about 80 minutes after leaving FL360 and turning around. A replacement Boeing 777-200 registration N709DN was dispatched to Keflavik, resumed the flight as DL-9895 and reached Seattle with a delay of 28 hours. The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground in Keflavik for about 45 hours, then positioned to Atlanta,GA (USA) as flight DL-9979. https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL35/history/20180601/0820Z/LFPG/KSEA

We got to watch them dump fuel and the landing was pretty hard, but no firetrucks or anything so we didn’t really appreciate the gravity of the situation.  We sat on the plane for a while until they determined that they were going to need a different aircraft.  We collected our bike cases and went through customs (with 300 other passengers) without any real guidance from anybody.  Eventually busses appeared and we got taken to a hotel for the night.  We got up at 6:00 in the morning to get bussed back to the airport and then found that the system for checking in and assigning seats was broken. The check-in lady had us take our bike cases to oversize – which didn’t seem kosher.  We eventually got through check-in and security only to have the estimated boarding time delayed again and again as they struggled with catering and staffing and who-know-what other issues.  Eventually word spread that Delta was handing out vouchers for lunch  but no Delta representative was anywhere to be found and nobody knew what was going on.  The group in the waiting area got pretty rowdy, but with nobody from Delta around it was hard to figure out who to be mad at.  Almost seven hours after we got to the airport they bussed us out to a replacement plane and headed for Seattle.  (We were only allowed on the bus in priority order and after Odette passed another swab test to verify that she hadn’t picked up any explosives after clearing security.)  I got stuck in a window seat for a seven-hour flight and they didn’t have much food and there were no USB ports – but it was better than being in the ocean.

We got to Seattle and our luggage popped out on the conveyor – both cases this time!  We took a cab home and despite construction blocking I-5, traffic wasn’t too bad.  The wine in the bike case survived intact.  We ate at 74th street ale house.

Some observations drawn from this experience:

• having our own Garmin with turn-by-turn capability would be a really good thing
• a GPS track without a map isn’t very helpful
• we need to go back and ride Mt. Ventoux
• the Chinese bluetooth helmets we got are the best intercom we’ve tried yet
• the bike worked really well out of the box with no particular adjustments required
• no flats with Schwalbe Marathons that have accumulated maybe 1,500 miles
• still need to rethink the SLR camera
• could have done with fewer clothes and fewer chargers
• we’ve soured on the Hotel Dauphine after the night guy’s con job
• I wouldn’t pay anything extra to fly Delta
• should have bought more wine

Here are my photos

Here are Odette’s photos

Here are the maps:

5/27 – Arles to Avignon.  Here’s the (partial) map. 43 miles

5/26 – St. Remy to Arles.  Here’s the map. 19 miles

5/25 – Gordes to St. Remy.  Here’s the map. 33 miles

5/24 – Bedoin to Gordes.  Here’s the map. 42 miles

5/23 – St. Paul to Bedoin.  Here’s the map. 44 miles

5/22 – Avignon to St. Paul.  Here’s the map.   53 miles

Here are the premium Queue sheets:

Day 6 – Arles to Avignon.

Day 5 – St. Remy to Arles.

Day 4 – Gordes to St. Remy.

Day 3 – Bedoin to Gordes.

Day 2 – St. Paul to Bedoin.

Day 1 – Avignon to St. Paul.

Here is the itinerary from Discover France:

From June 10 to 23 Odette and Jerry travelled in France

 

here are the photos

here is the itinerary:

 

Day 1 – Sunday Jun 11, 2017 : Fly Seattle – Reykjavik – Paris, train Paris to Dijon
Day 2 – Monday Jun 12, 2017 : Dijon – Fleurey sur Ouche – Velars sur Ouche – Dijon
Day 3 – Tuesday Jun 13, 2017 : Dijon – Gevrey Chambertin – Chambolle Musigny – The Château du Clos de Vougeot – Vougeot
Day 4 – Wednesday Jun 14, 2017 : Vougeot – Hautes Côtes de Nuits – Vougeot
Day 5 – Thursday Jun 15, 2017 : Vougeot – Nuits Saint Georges – Arcenant – Savigny les Beaune – Beaune
Day 6 – Friday Jun 16, 2017 : Beaune – Pommard – The Château de la Rochepot – Santenay – Puligny Montrachet – Meursault – Volnay wines – Beaune
Day 7 – Saturday Jun 17, 2017 : Beaune – Besançon
Day 8 – Sunday Jun 18, 2017 : Besançon
Day 9 – Monday Jun 19, 2017 : train Besancon to Paris
Day 10 – Tuesday Jun 20, 2017 : Paris
Day 11 – Wednesday Jun 21, 2017 : Paris
Day 12 – Thursday Jun 22, 2017 : Paris
Day 13 – Friday Jun 23, 2017: Fly Paris – Reykjavik – Seattle

here are the bike maps:

6/12 – Dijon 1 – 17 miles

6/13 – Dijon 2 – 28 miles

6/14 – Dijon 3 – 35 miles

6/15 – Dijon 4 – 32 miles

6/16 – Dijon 5 – 51 miles

6/17 – Dijon 6 – 77 miles

6/18 – Dijon 7 – 26 miles

The lead-up to this trip was our tour up Vancouver Island and out to Harrison Hot Springs.  That was a bike trip – we rode 480 miles in eight days and we carried our own luggage.  In exchange, Odette got her pick of French tours and I understood that it was going to be more of a food trip than a bike trip.  I got the tandem serviced the week before we were to leave and when we got it back we found that it wasn’t rideable since it slipped out of gear with any load at all.  I took it back to get the middle chain ring replaced and picked it up Friday evening to pack for a Saturday flight.  Everything came together in the end and we got the bike in the boxes and into a cab and headed out to the airport.

The flight was pretty uneventful and we got a cab from Charles DeGaul to Gare de Lyon.  Then we sat at the train station for something like three hours.  It had been forty years since I took a train in France.   Back then we didn’t have reserved seats, and I don’t remember luggage racks.  TGV trains are pretty amazing.  We kind of figured things out as we went along and except for claiming seats with the right numbers but in the wrong car everything worked out pretty well.  It took a very long time to get a cab in Dijon, and then the hotel turned out to be pretty close to the train station.  We had dinner at the hotel and it was good.  We got up really early and I got the bike assembled, ate breakfast, and took a shower before a 9:00 meeting with the guy from Discover France.  The first day’s ride was short and sweet – out along a canal with a loop back that had a nice hill. We had navigational difficulties getting out of the city but otherwise it was uneventful.  We spent the rest of the day walking around the city.  We bought mustard gift packs and special truffle mustard to keep.  We ate at a place on Odette’s list that was really good.

At breakfast the second day I broke the tooth off the bridge I was wearing to hide the tooth I was missing.  The second day’s ride left Dijon and soon was in vineyards.  We stopped for a tasting at a large commercial winery and bought half-a-dozen bottles.   We missed a fromagerie that Odette wanted to see but there was a little climbing and navigating to keep us focused.  We got to Vougeot in time for lunch even after stopping to go through the Château du Clos de Vougeot.  It took some doing to figure out how to get into the hotel. We could have used swimsuits for their pool.  The lack of public restaurants explained why we were scheduled to eat at the hotel – their buffet of terrains and cheeses was actually quite good.

The third day’s ride was a loop out and back to the same hotel.  We covered some of the same ground we’d ridden the previous day but generally from different directions and on different roads.  Much of the day was spent in forest and limestone cliffs above the vineyards – the farming villages are old and seem really authentic.  We stopped at a couple more vineyards for tastings and bought a dozen more bottles.  We got turned away from a hotel restaurant where we wanted to eat lunch and then ended up back in Vougeot too late for the one bar we’d found the day before.  We ate an early dinner at the hotel featuring the same buffet as the previous day.

The ride on day four went on down to Beaune.  It repeated some of the villages we’d visited the previous day and again climbed above the vineyards.  When we got to Savigny les Beaune we stopped for a tasting and bought half-a-dozen bottles.  We found a cafe and had lunch while watching some kind of bike race  – including a Cannonade tandem.  We had some navigational difficulties on the last half-mile to the hotel but we got there in time to make reservations for a wine tasting class on the other side of town.  Afterwards we sheltered in a bookstore to avoid a rain shower and bought roadmaps for the ride to Besancon.  We found glue in a hardware store and I patched up my bridge.  The people at the hotel made reservations for us at a place on Odette’s list and it was really excellent.

Day five was a loop out and back from the same hotel.  We had a good climb on a different route to one of the villages we’d visited the previous day and then rode a couple of different bike trails on a railroad corridor and along a canal.  We spent much longer on lunch than we wanted – mainly because the waitress forgot our order for about an hour.  Odette was focused on finding a store that sold handbags so we didn’t stop at any wineries at all.  Dinner was in a place billed as similar to the previous night’s restaurant – and in fact it was better.  Odette spent several hours with the Garmin and maps preparing a queue sheet for the next ride.

Day six pretty much paralleled a major highway but still had some significant route finding challenges.  The route was generally flat and almost entirely in farmland with very few vineyards or the wine-related tourist stuff.  Most of the farming villages were too small to have cafes – we finally found a boulangerie and bought cheese and a couple of croissants.  We got onto a bike path as we got close to Besancon and when I went to make a quick shift down for a short climb the shifter cable for the rear derailleur broke.  We rode the rest of the way in the middle chainring and the smallest rear cog.  Our hotel was in the center of the old part of town (the tourist district) and we got caught between pedestrians and a bus and the last couple of blocks weren’t very pretty.  We walked up a hill to a bike shop and bought a new cable.  Dinner was at a place recommended by the hotel front desk and was surprisingly good.

At breakfast on day seven I broke my bridge again.  We did a basic out-and-back along the river / canal.  It was Sunday and nothing was open but we walked around town quite a bit, I re-glued my bridge, and packed up the bike.  We ate at a brasserie that we liked a lot.

The next morning we got a cab to the train station and jockeyed for seats on the local train.  There weren’t any luggage racks by the train doors so we hauled the bike cases into the car with us and ended up with them blocking a couple of seats and sticking out into the aisle.  The railroad staff didn’t seem to be bothered, though and had Odette plug their credit card machine into the outlet that our case was blocking and then left the machine with her all the way to Dijon.  In Dijon we caught the TGV to Paris, an experience memorable because of the random assignment of seat numbers.   We got a cab to the same hotel we’d stayed in the previous year.

We spent four days in Paris – went to Versailles on the train and went to Musee d’Orsay and the Institut du Monde Arabe on foot.  Basically, we did a lot of walking.  For some reason my back decided to act up but it only hurt in museums – as long as we walked briskly, or sat, I was fine.  Odette decided I had spinal stenosis.  It didn’t help that we were there during an  unprecedented heat wave – it was in the upper 90’s every day.  We ate in a couple of restaurants near our hotel that we remembered from a year ago.  One of them, Christines, was really remarkable.  We went to a couple of new places, both with tasting menus, one of which was pretty pretentious (the other one – Boutary Mazarin – was arguably the best meal I’ve ever had.)  We rebalanced the contents of the bike cases and got both of them just under the 50 lb weight limit. On the morning of the fourth day we caught a cab out to Charles DeGaul where we waited forever to check in on Iceland Air.

The first leg of the flight was fine – there were even vacant seats in the plane.  We were, however, delayed about 45 minutes and we only had an hour to change planes in Reykjavik.  Everything else was delayed, too so that worked and the longer leg of the flight was crowded and uncomfortable.  Customs in Seattle was pretty painless but half of the tandem didn’t ever make it out onto the conveyer.  Things got heated with the airport baggage handler and we ultimately filed a claim with Iceland Air and left without the second case.  Odette was much more concerned about the mustard and truffles it contained than about the inutility of a bike missing everything forward of the stoker seat post.

We decided not to ride the day after we got back (Saturday) as Odette had to go to a funeral.  I went to R&E to pick up the wheels they were rebuilding for the Ibis so that we could ride it on Sunday.  They hadn’t even started building wheels so I got to ride back over a couple hours later.  Mysteriously, the second tandem case appeared on our doorstep sometime Saturday night after we went to bed.  Everything was there and there was no indication that it had been opened or riffled.

Overall it was a great trip – I had fun, Odette and I connected in a way we can’t do at home, and the cycling was fun even if not challenging.  Things I’d do differently:

• I’ve got to rethink the SLR camera
• train travel with the bike is possible but local airlines make the baggage handling easier
• doing a loop back to the starting point means you don’t have to deal with the bike cases while on the road
• it is worth investing some time on routes the evening before so that you have some context when you inevitably get surprised by the turn-by-turn
• the blue-tooth intercom we use works better if you’re patient when you first turn it on
• shipping wine to the US from France is expensive but surprisingly easy
• it isn’t good to schedule four days in a city with no plan beyond “we’ll visit museums.”
• there were likely a lot of food oriented activities in Paris that would have been fun and in keeping with the general themes of this trip.
• If we can avoid Iceland Air on future trips to Europe it would be better (but I would like to do a bike trip there someday.)

 

here is the itinerary from Discover France:

Burgundy Food Tour

Odette BATIK & Jerry SCOTT
Identity card
Start date: June 11 – 23, 2017
Duration: 13 days

Travel summary

Day 1 – Sunday Jun 11, 2017 : Dijon
Included: Orientation with a local guide, bedroom
Day 2 – Monday Jun 12, 2017 : Dijon – Fleurey sur Ouche – Velars sur Ouche – Dijon
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 3 – Tuesday Jun 13, 2017 : Dijon – Gevrey Chambertin – Chambolle Musigny – The Château du Clos de Vougeot – Vougeot
Included: luggage transfer, dinner (no drinks), bedroom and breakfast.
Day 4 – Wednesday Jun 14, 2017 : Vougeot – Hautes Côtes de Nuits – Vougeot
Included: dinner (no drinks), bedroom and breakfast.
Day 5 – Thursday Jun 15, 2017 : Vougeot – Nuits Saint Georges – Arcenant – Savigny les Beaune – Beaune
Included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast.
Day 6 – Friday Jun 16, 2017 : Beaune – Pommard – The Château de la Rochepot – Santenay – Puligny Montrachet – Meursault – Volnay wines – Beaune
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 7 – Saturday Jun 17, 2017 : Beaune – Besançon
Included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast.
Day 8 – Sunday Jun 18, 2017 : Besançon
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 9 – Monday Jun 19, 2017 : Paris
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 10 – Tuesday Jun 20, 2017 : Paris
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 11 – Wednesday Jun 21, 2017 : Paris
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 12 – Thursday Jun 22, 2017 : Paris
Included: bedroom and breakfast.
Day 13
Included: breakfast.

Background

Your local contact : +33 6 27 81 75 52
available from 9am to 7pm
Address 1st hotel : Maison Philippe Le Bon, 18 rue Sainte-Anne, 21000 Dijon

Orientation : In Person in the hotel lobby

Orientation time: Monday June, 12th at 9:30 am

This cycling tour is the perfect combination of Burgundy’s most important treasured assets : wine and cuisine – or more artfully referred to as Gastronomy !

Starting in Dijon, a beaufiful city with sites, history, and gateway to vine country, you will make your way across the vineyards of the most famous vignobles. As great wine requires great cooking, you will have many gastronomical experiences in the restaurants we include, but you can also venture out on your own to explore the many excellent choices available in both Dijon and Beaune. The cycling is moderate and is the perfect way to enhance your appetite for the best of Burgundy ! This tour is a deluxe program of luxury for those interested in the best of the best !

Bicycle touring in the wine country of Burgundy is one of the most rewarding means of discovering the wine of the internationally renowned Burgundy name.

Country you will visit
France

France is the world’s top tourist destination, with 83 million foreign tourists. Spread across the entire country, each of the main cities in Metropolitan France has its own international dimension and charm such as Bordeaux which is the world capital of wine, or Marseille which is the European capital of culture. France offers landscapes of exceptional beauty and amazing diversity in which there are 38 UNESCO-listed World Heritage sites ! But don’t forget leisure activities and prestigious cultural events that take place all over the country featuring the oldest and the most prestigious cycling race in the world: the “Tour de France”.

Region to discover
Burgundy

With its charming countryside, peaceful atmosphere and pure country air, the French region of Burgundy is the ideal destination for those seeking to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Particularly known for the plentiful wine and culinary delights, tourists come to Burgundy when they want to get away from it all. The friendly people and laid back atmosphere make for the perfect relaxation getaway, and the beautiful natural landscape is the perfect backdrop for leisurely cycling rides.

Ile-de-France

Île-de-France is a region in north-central France. It surrounds the nation’s famed capital, Paris, an international center for culture and cuisine with chic cafes and formal gardens. The city’s landmarks include the Louvre, home to da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” the iconic Eiffel Tower and Gothic Notre-Dame Cathedral. Outside Paris, there are forests, grand châteaux and farms, including dairies that produce milk for Brie.

Places you will visit
Dijon

Dijon began as a Roman settlement called Divio. This province was home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th century until the late 1400’s and Dijon was a place of tremendous wealth and power and one of the great European centers of art, learning and science. The city has retained varied architectural styles from many of the main periods of the past millennium, including Capetian, Gothic and Renaissance. Dijon architecture is distinguished by, among other things, Burgundian polychrome roofs made of tiles glazed in terracotta, green, yellow and black and arranged in geometric patterns.Dijon is home to many museums, including the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon in part of the Ducal Palace. The church of Notre Dame is famous for both its art and architecture.

Gevrey Chambertin

Gevrey Chambertin is one of the most important winegrowing villages with 550hectares of wines. Its rich history began in 640 with the monks of Bèze Abbey and the creation of the “Clos de Beze”, the oldest Burgundian Clos. The birth of the vineyard is linked to religious institutions as far back as the 7th century. Protector of the vineyard, the castle of Gevrey Chambertin dates from the medieval period. At first a fortress, the castle is made up of square windowless towers, with only loopholes pierced in the watchtowers. During the middle ages, it became a “castrum”, a fortified castle with ditches filled with water, a drawbridge, prisons and high walls with a covered way.

Castle of Gevrey Chambertin
Chambolle Musigny

Located on the “route des Grands Crus” in the heart of the Côtes de Nuits vineyards, Chambolle Musigny is a charming wine village. Chambolle’s wine production is almost exclusively red from the Pinot Noir grape. Towering high above the other vineyards stands Le Musigny, a 10.86 ha piece of land owned and exploited by no less than ten different wine producers. It is most famously described as “the queen of all Burgundy” and “an iron fist in a velvet glove”. Classed as a Grand Cru vineyard, it is one of two such classed vineyards on the commune.

The Château du Clos de Vougeot

Standing in the very heart of Burgundy’s vineyards, it was originally a wine farm, built in the 12th century by monks from the nearby Abbey of Cîteaux. In the 16th century, a Renaissance style château was added to the existing buildings. With its medieval vat-house and presses, Cistercian cellar and original kitchens, it forms a unique architectural whole, attracting history lovers, architecture lovers or wine lovers. Even though the Chateau du Clos de Vougeot does not produce wine anymore, it stays the symbol of a millenary of Burgundy’s History.

Clos vougeot vineyards
Vougeot

The name Vougeot immediately calls up the name of that famous vineyard, the Clos de Vougeot. But this village of the Côte de Nuits has other fine vineyards.
The name itself derives from that of the little river Vouge. The powerful abbey of Cîteaux established these vineyards in the 12th century and laid the foundations of their long brilliant reputation. Their claim to fame is due at least partly to the fact that, rather unusually for the Côte de Nuits, Vougeot produces white wines (Chardonnay) as well as red (Pinot Noir).The appellation was formally instituted in 1936.

Hautes Côtes de Nuits

The vines of the Côte de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Nuits stretch over 20km from north to south. This area is the center for the region’s Grands Crus. Mainly reputed for its red wines, it also produces a select few whites. Over the past few decades, the winemakers have been dedicated to producing high quality vines. And their work has borne fruit. Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits wines are today recognized as wines of character. With their purple or ruby color, these reds have body, while the whites are gold in color with a lively and balanced structure. As in the rest of the Bourgogne winegrowing region, the Côte de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Nuits also produce wines of all the appellations Régionales: Bourgogne red and white, Bourgogne Aligoté, Coteaux Bourguignons, Bourgogne Passe-Tout-Grains, and Crémant de Bourgogne.

Nuits Saint Georges

Nuits-Saint-Georges is the main town of the Côte de Nuits wine-producing area of Burgundy. The city was also the site of the traditional Burgundian festival, la Saint-Vincent-Tournante, in 2007. It’s a festival that celebrates the wine of a different Burgundian village each year. The Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) Nuits-Saint-Georges may be used for red and white wine with respectively Pinot noir and Chardonnay as the main grape variety. The city also provides many sights as The Cassinium, a museum unique in Europe or the Imaginarium with whose you will be able to know all about sparkling wines of the world, secrets and methods used in producing.

Arcenant

The origin of Arcenant dates from the prehistoric period, where men came sometimes in the area to hunt bison and horse. Several thousands years later, they settled and founded the first villages. In Gallo-Roman period, a rural spot is located near the old Neolithic road going through the top of the Hautes-Côtes: it is named “L’Ecartelot” (excavations since 1988) and sheltered a sanctuary and the living place of hunters, handicraft men, cattle breeders and farmers. Located between forests and vineyards, Arcenant is also famous for little red fruits, especially the “red currant”.

Savigny les Beaune

Savigny les Beaune is one of the oldest wine making village of burgundy. Its castle, built in 1340 and demolished in 1478 was bought by the Bouhier family at the beginning of the 17th century, the castle underwent several changes. Since 1979, the castle came back to its first use as a wine-growing estate. It also now houses a museum featuring several large collections of motocycles (dating from 1902 to 1960), race cars, army planes (exposed throughout the park), firefighters vehicles as well as a wine museum.

Fighting Falcon
Pommard

Pommard is famous for its Côte de Beaune wine production and is situated along the Route des Grands Crus. Like Nuits-Saint-Georges, the name of Pommard was made famous as a marketplace for wines from better areas, in the days before Appellation Controlee. 130,000 cases produced from 337 hectares makes it the second biggest area by production after Beaune. 135 hectares of that is Premier Cru, of which Les Epenots and Les Rugiens are the most notable. Visit the Château de Pommard and its beautiful French style gardens and in the courtyard discover the famous statue of Saint George and the Dragon by Salvador Dali. The château also houses a vineyard museum and an impressive 17th-century wine press.

Facing the Château
Beaune

Situated in the heart of prestigious vineyards, like Pommard, Corton-Charlemagne, La Romanée-Conti whose names make wine lovers’ eyes sparkle, Beaune is also a city of art with the master element of the town’s heritage: the Hôtel-Dieu (Hospices de Beaune) and its multicoloured roofs. Beaune is a walled city, with about half of the battlements, ramparts, and the moat, having survived and in good condition, and the central “old town” is extensive. Historically Beaune is intimately connected with the Dukes of Burgundy.

The Château de la Rochepot

The Château de la Rochepot has been standing on its rocky peak since the 13th century. On the surrounding grounds,the visitor can see the ruins of the castle which originally occupied the site and was built in the 11th century by Alexander of Burgundy. During the 15th century, the Château became the home of the Lords Régnier and Philippe Pot, both Knights of the Golden Fleece and counsellors to the Dukes of Burgundy. A visit to this splendid fortress-castle offers a fascinating trip through the history of the Middle-Age.

The Château de la Rochepot
Santenay

Santenay is a charming town bordered by mountains, living according to the rhythm of vineyards and wines. Besides its vineyards, Santenay is also known for its waters, the richest in lithium in Europe. Chanoine Felix Kir said of Santenay: “By bringing together the healing waters with the cheerful wine, the sun and the games, Santenay can actually be considered today the ‘Nice of Côte d’ Or’ ”. The Château de Santenay is a prestigious property, consisting of the Château with its remarkable glazed tile roof and a 98 hectare vineyard. It is the fruit of an ancient heritage intimately linked to the history of wine production in Burgundy.

The Château de Santenay
Puligny Montrachet

In the middle of the Côte de Beaune, it is a well-known appellation of Burgundy wine, containing one of the most famous vineyards in the world, Montrachet. The “Scabby Hill” (“Mont Rachaz”), not much more than an undulation between the villages of Puligny and Chassagne, is one of the most famous vineyard sites in the world.

Montrachet Vineyards
Meursault

Meursault, famous for its white wine, the “Appellation Meursault Controlée” can mature from 3 to 15 years before you can drink it. Meursault produces mainly white wines from Chardonnay grapes, primarily in a style with a clear oak influence, which have led to descriptions such as “buttery” to be applied to powerful examples of Meursault wines. The town of Meursault is also home to the international wine event La Paulée de Meursault.

Paris

When asked why we want to visit Paris we all think of different things. For some it will be the famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, for others it will be the chance to walk along the Champs-Elysées or to sit in a street-side cafe enjoying croissants and coffee, while others will think of going shopping or exploring some of the best museums in the world…
In truth it is the combination of all these attractions that makes Paris so special, and the reason why so many people fall in love with the city and keep coming back…and why you will do the same !

Volnay wines

Lords of Burgundy used to stay in Volnay maybe because its red wine is one of the most prestigious and noble of Burgundy. In general the wines are lighter than most other red Burgundies from the area. Half the production is split among 26 Premier Crus. The most notable of these are Bousse d’Or, Champans, Clos des Chenes, Clos des Ducs, Les Caillerets, Santenots and Taille Pied. Red wine from the Santenots vineyard is classified as Volnay Santenots, whereas white wine from the same vineyard can call itself Meursault Premier Cru or Meursault Santenots.

Itinerary

Day 1: Sunday Jun 11 2017, Dijon
Arrival in Dijon. This city has easy access by train from Paris. You can explore the old city, the beautiful palace of the dukes of Burgundy in which is housed the Art museum. You can also see the Ste Benigne’s cathedral. Settle in your hotel conveniently located in the center of the city.

Orientation & bike set-up at your hotel : our local guide (French native & English speaking) will meet you at your hotel in the evening of your arrival day (at 6:00pm). He will bring your bicycles, road-books, GPS and touristic information.
An expert of the region, you can ask him all the questions you have about your trip. Then he will adjust your bike so you feel comfortable riding.

Along the road you will find numerous wine cellars. Here are some suggestions on your itinerary.
Most of the time, but not always, wine tasting is free if it is followed by a sale. If you decide not to buy anything, you could be asked to pay a fee for the tasting. Prices vary from cellars to cellars, and it can be anywhere from 5€ up to 15€ or more, depending among other things on how many wines you tasted.To avoid any confusion, when you arrive at a cellar always ask if there is any fee to taste the wine.

Hotel : Night at Hotel Philippe le Bon.

DIJON

• Restaurants
Au Pourquoi Pas – 13 rue Monge
+33 3 80 50 11 77
Traditional french restaurant. Menus from 28 €. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

• Gourmet Restaurants
Le Pré aux Clercs* – 13 place de la libération
http://www.alexisbilloux.com/ – +33 3 80 38 05 05
A genuine institution in Dijon, Le Pré Aux Clercs is located opposite the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. The gastronomic restaurant, which was awarded a Michelin star in 1972, offers cuisine made in the great French tradition. Menus from 32 € for lunch & from 59 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday.
Loiseau des Ducs* – 3 rue Vauban
http://www.bernard-loiseau.com/en/houses/loiseau-des-ducs/dijon-loiseau-des-ducs.html – +33 3 80 30 28 09
Loiseau des ducs is a Gourmet restaurant located in a beautiful pedestrian street overlooking the famous Place de la Liberation. One-star Michelin. Enjoy regional Burgundy specialities, as well as exciting creations by the chef, Louis-Philippe Vigilant, supported by pastry chef Lucile Darosey. The wine cellar allows visitors to taste a wide range of wines by the glass.Menus from 32 € for lunch & from 55 € for dinner. Closed on Sunday & Monday.
Restaurant William Frachot** – 5 rue Michelet
http://www.chapeau-rouge.fr – +33 3 80 50 88 88
William Frachot defines his cuisine as contemporary cuisine without borders and creative, emphasizing both the French countryside as his travels. Gourmet restaurant. Menus from 55 € for lunch & from 90 € for dinner. Open from Tuesday to Saturday.

• Best Beef Bourguignon in Town
Restaurant Chez Léon – 20 rue des Godrans
+33 3 80 50 01 07
Menus from 15.90 € for lunch and from 26 € for dinner. Closed on Sunday & Monday.
DZ’Envies – 12 rue Odebert
http://www.dzenvies.com/ – +33 3 80 50 09 26
Menu “I Love Dijon” from 20 €. Closed on sunday.

Market days
Halles centrales – Tuesday, Friday & Saturday all day
Place de la Libération – Wednesday all day

• Grocery stores
Epicerie Locavore des Bourroches – 34 Boulevard Eugène Fyot
This grocery offers a wide range of locals products (dried sausage, honey,…).
Open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm.
Monoprix – 11-13 rue Piron
Closed on Sunday afternoon

• Food Lovers
Moutarde Maille Shop – 32 rue de la Liberté
+33 3 80 30 41 02
In the beautiful city of Dijon, you will find the original Maille boutique which first opened in 1845. Here, hundreds of bottles and dozens of beguiling mustards scale the walls with distinctive, complex and audacious flavors to satisfy even the most demanding taste buds. The Maille Mustard Sommelier offers you to taste. Delicate vinegars, playful vinaigrettes, luxurious tableware and unique gifts for food lovers are also to be found, all accompanied by inspiring food tips and recipes to take home with you.
Opening hours : Open from Monday to Saturday, from 10 am to 7 pm.

Maison Mulot & Petitjean – 1 place Notre-Dame <i>(close to the Tourist Office)</i>
http://www.mulotpetitjean.fr/ – + 33 3 80 30 07 10
Established in 1796, Mulot & Petitjean has a long Dijon family tradition of making gingerbread. You need to taste the gingerbread at the Shop ! Visit : Open from Tuesday to Saturday, 9 am-12 pm & 2 pm-7 pm.

Included: Orientation with a local guide, bedroom
Day 2: Monday Jun 12 2017, Dijon – Fleurey sur Ouche – Velars sur Ouche – Dijon
Riding today will take you out into the countryside of Dijon to get warmed up and to visit some of the nearby vineyards and sites including the Burgundy canal. Return to Dijon.

Distance : 34 Km (21 mi).
Elevation : 290 m.

Hotel : Night at Hotel Philippe le Bon.

VELARS SUR OUCHE

• Bakeries
Boulangerie des Trois Ponts – Place Osburg
Closed on Monday

• Restaurants
L’auberge Gourmande – 17 Allée de la Cude
http://www.auberge-velars.com/ – +33 3 80 33 62 51
Gourmet restaurant. Cuisine made using local products. Menu from 22.50 € for lunch. Closed on Tuesday & Wednesday all day.
A La Grasihade – 43 Allée de la Cude
+33 3 80 33 63 38
Pizzeria-Grill. Closed on Sunday.

• Grocery stores
Supermarché Colruyt – Rue des Trois Ponts
Closed on Sunday afternoon

FLEUREY SUR OUCHE

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Lagrange – 27 Grande rue bas
Closed on Monday

• Restaurants
O P’tit Repere du Gout – 8 rue des Vieilles Carrières
http://www.optitreperedugout.fr/en/ – +33 3 80 41 30 92
Burgundy cuisine. Original dishes with imaginative and tasty flavours, subtle inventive desserts, all presented with attention to detail and the sensitivity of agreat artist. Closed on Monday.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 3: Tuesday Jun 13 2017, Dijon – Gevrey Chambertin – Chambolle Musigny – The Château du Clos de Vougeot – Vougeot
You ride into the Cotes de Nuit wine country today passing some of the most famous names in Burgundy wine such as Chambolle-Musigny, Gevrey Chambertin and Vougeot. Visit Château du Clos Vougeot and stay in your charming hotel tonight.

Distances :20/29 km (12/18 mi)
Elevation : 108/325 m.

Hotel : Night at Hotel le Clos de la Vouge.
Dinner included at your hotel.

MARSANNAY LA COTE

• Bakeries
Le Fournil des Grands Crus – 59 rue Mazy
Boulangerie Banette – 4 route de Beaune
Europain 21 – 156 rue Centre Arco

• Restaurants
Restaurant Les Gourmets – 8 rue du Puits de Têt
http://www.restaurant-lesgourmets.com/ – +33 3 80 52 16 32
Gourmet restaurant. Creative cuisine & seasonal menu regularly changed. Closed on Monday & Tuesday. Menus fom 20 € for lunch on weekdays & from 31 € for dinner.

Market days
Thursday morning – Place des Droits de l’Homme
Saturday morning – Place Jean Bart

• Grocery stores
Grand Frais – 146 Allée du Docteur Lepine
Closed on Sunday
Carrefour Express – Avenue Marguerite de Salin
Closed on Sunday afternoon

COUCHEY
• Bakeries
Boulangerie Bourgeois – 1 rue Georges Clémenceau
Closed on Monday

• Restaurants
Ô Cocoon – Rue du 8 mai 1945
+33 3 80 52 35 36
Regional Burgundian cuisine as Snails, poached eggs or Epoisses toast… The restaurant also offers tastings to complete your discovery of wine. Open everyday. English spoken.

BROCHON

• Food Lovers
Fromagerie Gaugry – The Gaugry shop is located beside the RD974 road
http://gaugryfromager.fr/home/ – +33 3 80 34 00 05
Discover each stage in the production of cheeses thanks to a glass visitors’ gallery that passes through all the different production areas and 3 presentation videos. After your visit, a Cheese tasting invites you to discover different specialities, which form an integral part of the rich Burgundian heritage. The Fromagerie has been awarded with the “Quality Tourism” label.
Visit : There are two ways you can visit the production site : either on a guided (with reservation) or unguided tour (free & without reservation). We recommend that you come in the morning, while production is underway. Informations : Open MON-SAT from 9 am to 12:30 pm and from 2 pm to 7 pm. English spoken – Contact : visites@gaudryfromager.com

GEVREY CHAMBERTIN

• Bakeries
Boulangerie des Grands Ducs – 5 rue Richebourg
Closed on Sunday
La p’tite Chambertine – 1 route de Dijon
Closed on Sunday

• Restaurants
Chez Guy – 3 place de la Mairie
http://www.chez-guy.fr/ – +33 3 80 58 51 51
Delight in the savory fresh produce of Contemporary cuisine. Menus fom 28 €. Closed on Sunday.
La Rotisserie du Chambertin – Bistrot Lucien
http://www.rotisserie-chambertin.com/ – +33 3 80 34 33 20
Brasserie-style cuisine at the Bistrot Lucien. The chef will take you right into the heart of Burgundies traditions with authentic and modern dishes rich in flavor.. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

Market days
Tuesday – Place de l’Europe
From 8 am to 1 pm

• Wine Cellars
Domaine Philippe Leclers – 6-9 rue des Halles
http://www.philippe-leclerc.com/ – +33 3 80 34 30 72
Wine cellars & Museum. Wine tasting (7 wines) from 10 € with some explanation of the wines produced and the area. Visit : Open everyday from 9:30 am to 7:00 pm.

Jean-Philippe Marchand – 4 Rue Souvert
http://www.marchand-jph.fr/introduction/index.html – + 33 3 80 34 33 60
Proposes different sorts of tasting sessions. Different wines (chite/red) & alcoholic fruit creams accompanied by delicatessen. Visit : Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 1 pm & from 2pm to 6:30 pm.

CHAMBOLLE MUSIGNY

• Restaurants
Restaurant Le Chambolle – 28 rue Caroline Aigle
http://www.restaurant-lechambolle.com/ – +33 3 80 62 86 26
In each plate, you will find authentic regional cuisine, inspired by the breath of the seasons, prepared in pure tradition and respect of the products. Menu from 25 €. Closed on Thursday evening & Wednesday all day.
Restaurant le Millésime – 1 Rue Traversière
http://www.restaurant-le-millesime.com/ – +33 3 80 62 80 37
Gourmet restaurant using fresh local products. More than 500 references in the wine cellar. Menu from 19.90 € for lunch. Closed on Monday & Sunday. Wine tasting possible in the vaulted cellars from Wednesday to Sunday. Call +33 3 80 62 84 01 for more informations.

Included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast, dinner (no drinks)
Day 4: Wednesday Jun 14 2017, Vougeot – Hautes Côtes de Nuits – Vougeot
Loop ride day from Vougeot. Discover the Burgundy countryside and more vineyards of Hautes Cotes de Nuits at your own pace; as we propose 3 different cycling options. This area is the center for the region’s Grands Crus. Mainly reputed for its red wines, it also produces a select few whites. Visit more vignobles and taste some of the produce at your leisure. Return to Vougeot.

Distances : 35, 43 or 55 Km (21, 26 or 34 mi).
Elevation : 530, 650 or 840 m.

Hotel : Night at Hotel le Clos de la Vouge.
Dinner included at your hotel.

CHAMBOEUF

• Restaurants
Auberge du Terroir – 3 chemin de la Vareine
http://www.auberge-terroir42.com/ – +33 4 77 52 56 32
Traditional restaurant using local products. Menu from 11.50 € for lunch. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

• Bakeries
O Pain Delice – 3 Place de l’Eglise
Closed on Sunday

• Grocery stores
Intermarché – La Grange
Closed on Sunday afternoon

CHATEAU D’ENTRE DEUX MONTS

• Food Lovers
Discover the Truffle at the Chateau d’Entre Deux Monts
http://www.truffedebourgogne.fr/en/portfolio/the-truffles-farm
The Chateau d’Entre Deux Monts invites you to discover the Truffle, a symbolic product of Burgundy. Under the guidance of an harvester and his dog, you will be able to discover the fascinating world of Black Burgunndy treasure. Visit : Several activities proposed on-site as demonstration of hunting; Tasting craft products based on truffle, Visit of the Castle … Prices : Demonstration of hunting from 10€ / person. Opening hours : Open from Thursday to Monday from 10 am to 6 pm. Plan your visit : All reservation is well recommended. – Send an email to : ordesvalois@gmail.com or cal +33 623 130 946.

VOSNE ROMANEE

• Restaurants
La Toute Petite Auberge – 5 Route Nationale 74
http://www.latoutepetiteauberge.fr/?langue=en – +33 3 80 61 02 03
Traditional french restaurant. The menu changes four times a year, with the chef revisiting classic Burgundy dishes. Menus from 31 €. Closed on Tuesday & Wednesday.

• Wine Tasting
Domaine Armelle & Bernard Rion – 8 Route Nationale
http://www.domainerion.fr/historic/?lang=en&lang=en – +33 3 80 61 05 31
At the Domaine Rion you can discover some old vintages, in bottles and in magnums. Armelle, Bernard and their daughters Alice & Nelly invite you to share a great moment around their passions of Great Burgundy Wines and Burgundy Truffles. Visit : The Classical tasting : It’s in the cellar atmosphere that you will have some explanations about wine making process. After the cellar tour, you will have the opportunity to discover more about wines. Of course, the tasint will be commented by the family. Price : The Classical tasting is free of charge. Your tour can be associated to a truffle toast for 2€. If you wish to know more about the Domaine, there are some specified tours available : VIP Tour, Burgundy Truffle secrets, Terroir Tour … Opening hours : You can visit the cellar from Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 6 pm with or without an appointment. On Sunday, an appointment is required. Tours in French & English.

Included: bedroom and breakfast, dinner (no drinks)
Day 5: Thursday Jun 15 2017, Vougeot – Nuits Saint Georges – Arcenant – Savigny les Beaune – Beaune
Leaving your hotel you will pass through the lower vineyard area of Cotes de Nuits and into Beaune, the wine capital of the region. Leave plenty of time to explore Beaune and its many sites including the famous Hotel Dieu, and its many wine caves.

Distances : 36 or 51 Km (22 or 31 mi).
Elevation : 360 or 420 m.

Hotel : Night at Hotel des Remparts.

NUITS SAINT GEORGES

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Patisserie St Georges – 4 rue Fagon
Closed on Monday
Boulangerie Marcoux – 5 rue Henri Challand
Boulangerie Gaudillot – 42 Grande Rue

• Restaurants
La Cabotte – 24 grande Rue
http://www.restaurantlacabotte.fr/ – +33 3 80 61 20 77
Regional cuisine. The chef gives life to traditional dishes with a very personal touch. Menu from 19.50 € for lunch and 29.90 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday.
Café du Centre – 22 Place de la République
http://www.brasserieducentre-nuits.com/ – +33 3 80 61 34 47
This brasserie serves typical local dishes. Traditional and family cooking that will delight all gourmets. The Cafe offers a wide selection of wines of Burgundy & works with many producers in the region. Menus from 14.70 €. Open everyday.

Market days
Friday – Halles Centrales
from 8am to 1pm

• Grocery stores
Fruirouge & Cie- 40 Grande Rue
100% Farmer products – Open THU-SAT from 9:30 am to Noon & from 2:30pm to 7pm
Supermarché Colruyt – 2 rue de Bingen
Closed on Sunday afternoon

• Wine Tasting
Maison Morin Père & Fils – Avenue du Jura
http://www.morinpere-fils.com/
Since its creation in 1822, Maison Morin has maintained local traditions and contributed to the reputation of Burgundy wines. Every year, it receives over 30 000 visitors in its 18th century cellars and introduces them to know-how that is almost 200 years old. Visit : The Sacrée Vigne tour (40 min) takes the visitor on an odyssey to the heart of the sometimes harsh universe of the winemaker. Visit followed by a tasting of Burngundy wines. Price: 8€ per person Informations : Open everyday from 10 am to 7 pm. Closed on Monday morning. Visits in English, German & Japanese. Last visit at 5:30 pm.

• Food Lovers
Le Cassissium Liquoristerie Védrenne – 8 Passage Montgolfier
http://www.cassissium.fr/ – +33 3 80 62 49 70
Vedrenne has been making its liqueurs since 1923, in the middle of the burgundian orchards. Every year Vedrenne liqueurs receive numerous medals for their exceptional quality in prestigious international blind-tasting competitions. Vedrenne created the Cassissium, the most important and interesting place in the world where you can discover and learn everything about the burgundian black pearl : blackcurrant. Visit : The guided tour includes the visit of the Vedrenne cellars and liquor factory of the famous Crèmes de Cassis & Fruits Liqueurs. Duration : 1 h 45. Last visit 1h45 before closing. Entrance fees : 9 € per Adult – Free for children under 12yo. Opening hours : Open everyday from 10 am to 1 pm & from 2 pm to 7 pm.

VILLERS LA FAYE

• Wine Cellar
Domaine Bonnardot – 1 rue de l’Ancienne Cure
http://www.bonnardot.fr/ – +33 3 80 62 91 27
Domaine Bonnardot is a family winegrowing estate. Four generations of winegrowers have worked on the estate, and it is run today by Danièle Bonnardot. Nine different wines are produced by the estate; four red wines, two whites, a rosé and two crémants. Visit : The estate is open to visitors Monday to Friday between 8 am and 6 pm, Saturdays from 10am to 6pm, and upon appointment on Sundays and holidays.

PERNAND VERGELESSES

• Restaurants
Le Charlemagne – 1 rue des Vergelesses
http://www.lecharlemagne.fr/en – +33 80 21 51 45
Gourmet restaurant. Inventive cuisine with regional and Japanese influences. Menus from 32 € for lunch. Closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Cooking classes.

SAVIGNY LES BEAUNE

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Brianti – 7 rue Paul Maldant
Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Thursday all day
Boulangerie La Vigneronne – 12 rue Vauchey Véry
Closed on Sunday afternoon & on Monday all day

• Wine Tasting
Domaine du Prieuré – 23 route de Beaune
http://www.domaineduprieure-maurice.com/ – +33 3 80 21 54 27
The family Domaine was born fifty years ago in Savigny les Beaune with 4 Ha of vines. Reflecting the drive of the hard-working monks who originally cultivated Burgundy’s vineyards, Jean-Michel MAURICE replanted sections of the vineyards in the Hautes Côte de Beaune.Visit : The Domaine welcome visitors all year round. You can discover or rediscover their wines and the different vintages in the 18th century stone cellars. Do not hesitate to make an appointment so that they can ensure the best possible welcome.
Domaine Henri de Villamont – Rue du Docteur Guyot
http://www.hdv.fr/ – +33 3 80 21 50 59
Discover an unusual wine-growing estate with vast buildings : 2400 m2 of vaulted cellars of exceptional height, amongst the largest in Burgundy.
Visit : The estate offers you a guided tour of its vineyard, its vat room and its exceptional maturing cellars. English spoken.

• Restaurants
R… de Famille – 5 Place Fournier
http://rdefamille.fr/ – +33 3 80 21 50 00
Brasserie-Pizzeria restaurant. Menus from 13.50 € for lunch and from 27 € for dinner. Closed on Monday.
Restaurant L’Ouvree – Route de Bouilland
http://www.louvree.fr/ – +33 3 80 21 51 52
Traditional cuisine & regional specialities. Homemade cookinng. Menu from 17€ for lunch. Closed on Wednesday for lunch & Tuesday all day.

BEAUNE

If you would like to discover a selection of memorable wines , stop off for some wine tastings in Beaune. With an impressive range of wine tastings close to the town centre, as well as the famous Hospices de Beaune, it is genuinely a heaven of earth for wine connoiseur.

• Wine Tasting
Maison Joseph Drouhin – 7 rue d’Enfer
http://www.drouhin-oenotheque.com/en/visite – +33 3 80 24 68 88
Right in the heart of Beaune, the Oenothèque Joseph Drouhin welcomes you in the beautiful cellar of the Duke of Burgundy’s Parliament building. More than 60 references available including some older vintages and larger formats. Visit : a personalized promenade through the most ancient cellars of Beaune followed by the tasting of 6 emblematic wines from Maison Joseph Drouhin. Price : 38 € per person. Informations : The Oenotheque is open from 9:30 am to 6pm from Monday to Saturday. Visits at fixed times and upon appointment only. Visits at : 10:00 am, 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm everyday.

Sensation Vin – 1 rue d’enfer
http://www.sensation-vin.com/fr/ – +33 3 80 22 17 57
Right in the centre of medieval Beaune, Sensation Vin offers wine tasting courses of hour, wine-lovers or professionals. Discover the wonders of Burgundy wine in a relaxed setting – around the communal table in a purpose built tasting room or in the wine cellar. Visit : Wine tasting class – The Essentials : A wine tasting class to help you get to know more about the wines from Burgundy. You will taste 8 wines (including a Grand Cru) in a more structured way and talk more easily about them. Price : 35 € per person. Informations : Visits everyday (except on Saturday) at 2:30 Pm. Duration : 1 hour 30. BOOK in Advance.

La Cave de l’Ange Gardien – 38 Boulevard Foch
+33 3 80 24 21 29
The Cave de l’Ange Gardien is a wine-tasting cellar which sells wines, of course, but also sells local delicacies, both savoury and sweet. A selection of wines that caters to all tastes and all budgets & a wide variety of terrines and foies gras, as well as other gourmet products typical of the Burgundy region. The Cave de l’Ange Gardien can also arrange wine shipments worldwide.
Informations : Open from Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 7 pm. English spoken.

Market days
Wednesday & Saturday – Place de la Halle
Beaune has a large Saturday market day with about 150 stalls that fills many streets of the town and a smaller Wednesday market that is mainly fruits and vegetables and a few regional specialties, centered around the Place de la Halle.

• Restaurants
Le Caveau des Arches – 10 Boulevard Perpreuil
http://www.caveau-des-arches.com/ – +33 3 80 22 10 37
The Chef invites you to discover traditional cuisine, fresh and tasty, based on fine products from Burgundy’s lands. Book the table in the kitchen to watch the show from the team in action. Menus from 25 €. Closed on Monday & Tuesday.
Le P’tit Paradis – 25 rue du Paradis
http://restaurantleptitparadis.fr/ – +33 3 80 24 91 00
Traditional restaurant serving fresh homemade cuisine. Beautifully presented dishes full of flavours, accompanied by a fine selection of à la carte wines. Menus from 29 €. Closed on Monday & Sunday.
Koki Food & Shop – 10 Place Ziem
+33 3 80 24 06 61
Fast food & Food shop. World cuisine. Open everyday.
Ma Cuisine – Passage Sainte-Hélène
+33 3 80 22 30 22
Fabienne Escoffier and her Cuisine are a Legend in Beaune. Winner of the “Restaurants and Wine Press Award” in 2005. Traditional and tasty cuisine, selection of 850 wines. Advance booking is recommended. Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday.

• Gourmet Restaurants
Le Jardin des Remparts* – 10 Rue de l’Hôtel Dieu
http://www.le-jardin-des-remparts.com/en/ – +33 3 80 24 79 41
Gourmet restaurant nestled in a nice shady garden. The Chef Christophe Bocquillon, introduces you to his bold and creative cuisine, usually prepared with locally-sourced, authentic and seasonal produce. Menus from 32 € for lunch & from 65 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

• Best Beef Bourguignon in Town
L’Oiseau des Vignes* – 31 rue Maufoux
http://www.bernard-loiseau.com/en/houses/loiseau-des-vignes/beaune-loiseau-des-vignes.html – +33 3 80 24 12 06
There are so many reasons to try this quality restaurant that takes you to the heart of Burgundy’s gastronomy. The “Loiseau” brand, a fine wine list with a rare choice of wines by the glass, and its setting with definite character. Particular, dishes that are full of character. The restaurant has received its 1st Michelin Star in 2010. Menus from 25 € for lunch & from 59 € for dinner.

• Food LoversMoutarderie Fallot – 31 rue du Faubourg Bretonnièrehttp://www.fallot.com/en/parcours-de-visites/ – +33 3 80 22 10 10La Moutarderie Fallot invites you to discover the mustard through its 3 dedicated spaces : a “Museographic tour” which will reveal all the secrets of the Brassica seed and its history, a “Sensational Experience tour” for a sensory approach, and “Enjoy Fallot” : a very original tasting area ! Visit : Individual visits are guided and take place at fixed times. Plan your visit : to plan your visit, you can contact the Mustard Mill at : accueil@fallot.com or +33 3 80 22 10 10 Entrance fees : 10 € per Adult – 8 € for Children. Free tasting at the end of the tour. Opening hours : Open from Monday to Saturday from 9:30 am to 6 pm. Opening on few sundays.

Included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast
Day 6: Friday Jun 16 2017, Beaune – Pommard – The Château de la Rochepot – Santenay – Puligny Montrachet – Meursault – Volnay wines – Beaune
A ride from Beaune to the south and the Cotes de Beaune vineyard area. You will be able to visit Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Chagny, Pommard, Santenay and then back to Beaune. You will find many opportunities to taste and purchase; or when you return to Beaune you can taste some of the appelations you visited by bike today.

Distances : 22, 48 or 57 Km (14, 30 or 35 mi).
Elevation : 278 or 642 m.

Hotel : Night at Hotel des Remparts.

POMMARD

• Wine Tasting
Château de Pommard – 3 route de Beaune
http://www.chateaudepommard.com/fr/les-visites – +33 3 80 24 99 00
The Château de Pommard is one of the most prestigious vineyards in Burgundy. Visit the Chateau & its stunning surroundings. The Chateau offers daily tours of the wine estate and wine tastings. Visit : The Terroir experience, in small groups accompanied by a wine advisor, includes the visit of the vineyards, the 18th century famous valted cellars sheltering more than 300 000 bottles, and the tasting of the Grands Vins du Chateau. Visit in French, English or Chinese. Price : 25€ per person. Informations : Open everyday from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. No appointment necessary.

Domaine Rebourgeon Michel – 7 Place de l’Europe
http://michelrebourgeon.wixsite.com/domaine-mr – +33 3 80 22 22 83
Small family holding passed down from generation to generation since 1550. Their work follows Burgundian traditions : picking by hand, ageing in oak barrels. Informations : Wine tasting in the wine cellar or at the winery. Open everyday from 10am to noon & from 2 pm to 5pm. Closed during Harvest season. English spoken.

MEURSAULT

• Wine Tasting
Chateau de Meursault – 5 Rue du Moulin Foulot
http://www.chateau-meursault.com/en/degustations/ – +33 3 80 26 22 75
Domaine de Château de Meursault offers an exceptional setting with a park, 8-hectare Clos, cellars that date back to 12-16th centuries and an old winery.
Visit : Discovery tasting with a selection of 4 red wines & 3 white wines from 21 €. Grand Terroirs tasting : a selection of the most prestigious Crus including 5 red & 4 white wines from 26 €. Theme tasting upon request. Informations : Open everyday from 10 am to 6:30 pm. Guided tours start at 10:30 am and 11:30 am and every hour from 2pm to 5pm.

Domaine JanotsBos – 2 place de l’Europe
https://www.janotsbos.eu/en/ – +33 3 80 21 00 38
A wine tasting at JanotsBos is an experience. It’s much more than the standard wine tasting. You’ll learn more about their way of wine making, their philosophy and what defines their well-appreciated style. Depending on the time of your of your visit, you’ll get the chance to enjoy a unique wine tasting from the barrels of wines that aren’t bottled yet. You’ll be amazed ! Visits by appointment.

Caves Ropiteau Frères – Cour des Hospices
http://www.caves-ropiteau.com/ – +33 3 80 21 24 73
Situated in Meursault, the cellars from the XVth and XVIIth century are among the most prestigious in Burgundy and are a former property of the Hospices de Beaune. With about 900 barrels in its cellars, Ropiteau Frères is today one of the biggest producers of oak matured white wine in Burgundy.
Visit : Cellar visit & tasting of prestigious Burgundy wines. Wine shop on site. Informations : Open everyday from 9:30 am to 6:30 pm.

Market days
Friday morning – Place de l’Hôtel de Ville

• Restaurants
Le Chevreuil – Place de la République
http://www.lechevreuil.fr/ – +33 3 80 21 23 25
Traditional French cuisine and Burgundy specialties using fresh products. Menu from 25 €. Closed on Wednesday & Sunday.
Restaurant Chez Richard – 8 RN 74
+33 3 80 26 12 48
Traditional restaurant offering a quality French meal experience at moderate prices. Wide range of Meursault wines on the winelist. Main dishes from 18€. Closed on Sunday evening & Monday & Tuesday all day.

PULIGNY MONTRACHET

• Restaurants
Le Pelugney – 8 Place du Monument
http://www.lepelugney.com/ – +33 3 80 24 69 65
French traditional cuisine made using local products. Menus from 28 €0 Open from Friday to Tuesday.

• Gourmet Restaurants
Le Montrachet – 10 Place du Paquier de la Fontaine
http://www.le-montrachet.com/en/ – +33 3 80 21 30 06
Le Montrachet offers you a genuine Burgundian experience : outstanding wines, authentic cuisine, warmth and expertise. The best value Michelin star lunch in the region ! Menus from 32 € for lunch. Open everyday.
Olivier Leflaive – 10 Place du Monument
http://www.olivier-leflaive.com/ – +33 3 80 21 37 65
Olivier invites you to his Table, for a welcoming wine tasting to match a simple meal. Tasting Menu from 60 € including wine tasting. Closed on Sunday.

• Best Beef Bourguignon in Town
L’Estaminet des Meix – Place du Paquier de la Fontaine
+33 3 80 21 33 01
Closed on Tuesday.

• Wine Tasting
Domaine Olivier Leflaive – 10 Place du Monument
http://www.olivier-leflaive.com/en/packages-table/ – +33 3 80 21 37 65
Visit the vines & discover the Burgundy terroir, the work in the vines and the misteries of the various appellations.
Informations : Different packages available including cellar visit, vines visit & wine tasting. Open everyday

Caveau de Puligny Montrachet 1 rue Poiseul
+33 3 80 21 96 78
The Caveau sells wine by the glass so you can sample several different producers in one place. The owner is very passionate about the wines. Informations : Open everyday at lunch time.Price : Tasting of 5 wines from 10€, 8 wines from 15 €.

CHASSAGNE MONTRACHET

• Gourmet Restaurant
Restaurant Ed.Em* – 4 impasse des Chenevottes
http://www.restaurant-edem.com/fr/index.php – +33 3 80 21 94 94
Gourmet restaurant awarded 1 star Michelin. A highly recommended and well respected restaurant with impressive wine list. Menus from 35 € for lunch & from 42 € for dinner.

SANTENAY

• Restaurants
Restaurants l’Ouillette – Place Jet d’Eau
http://www.ouillette.fr/ – +33 3 80 20 62 34
All dishes are homemade. Wide range of wines with more than 200 references. Menus from 17.50 €.
Restaurant le Terroir – 19 Place du Jet d’Eau
http://www.restaurantleterroir.com/en/ – +33 3 80 20 63 47
Creative cuisine : a combination of traditional, regional dishes that reflect the changing seasons. Menus from 22€ for lunch. Open everyday except on Thursday & Sunday evening.

• Wine tasting
Château de Santenay – 1 rue du Château
+33 3 80 20 61 87
With 98 hectares of vines in various plots on the Côte d’Or and the Côte Chalonnaise, Château de Santenay is one of the largest properties in Grande Bourgogne.Visit : Château de Santenay is open to the public every day from April to November from 10 am to noon & from 1:30 pm to 6pm. There is free access to the wooded park and the tasting cellar. Guided tours available at 10:30 am, 2pm and 4pm. Price : 6.80 € per person.

NOLAY

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Cochard – 19 rue de la République
Closed on Thursday
Boulangerie Dervin – 48 rue de la République
Closed on Wesnesday

Market days
Monday – Place Monge & Les Halles
Traditional food market

• Grocery stores
Atac Nolay – Route d’Autun
Closed on Sunday afternoon

• Restaurants
Le Burgonde – 8 place de l’Hotel de Ville
+33 3 80 21 71 25
Regional Burgundian cuisine. Cuisine based on the land. Menu from 16 € for lunch. Closed on Wednesday all day and Sunday & Tuesday evening.
Restaurant le Midupi – 35 rue de la République
http://nadach-informatique.fr/Midupi/ – +33 9 80 39 95 35
Menus from 25 € for lunch with a glass of wine. Closed on Monday. Reservation advised.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 7: Saturday Jun 17 2017, Beaune – Besançon
You follow the river of La Saône then Le Doubs to join Besançon passing by the small roads in the middle of the fields.

Distance : 119 Km (74 mi).
Elevation : 1070 m.

Hotel :
Night at Hotel de Paris.

BEAUNE

If you would like to discover a selection of memorable wines , stop off for some wine tastings in Beaune. With an impressive range of wine tastings close to the town centre, as well as the famous Hospices de Beaune, it is genuinely a heaven of earth for wine connoiseur.

• Wine Tasting
Maison Joseph Drouhin – 7 rue d’Enfer
http://www.drouhin-oenotheque.com/en/visite – +33 3 80 24 68 88
Right in the heart of Beaune, the Oenothèque Joseph Drouhin welcomes you in the beautiful cellar of the Duke of Burgundy’s Parliament building. More than 60 references available including some older vintages and larger formats. Visit : a personalized promenade through the most ancient cellars of Beaune followed by the tasting of 6 emblematic wines from Maison Joseph Drouhin. Price : 38 € per person. Informations : The Oenotheque is open from 9:30 am to 6pm from Monday to Saturday. Visits at fixed times and upon appointment only. Visits at : 10:00 am, 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm everyday.

Sensation Vin – 1 rue d’enfer
http://www.sensation-vin.com/fr/ – +33 3 80 22 17 57
Right in the centre of medieval Beaune, Sensation Vin offers wine tasting courses of hour, wine-lovers or professionals. Discover the wonders of Burgundy wine in a relaxed setting – around the communal table in a purpose built tasting room or in the wine cellar. Visit : Wine tasting class – The Essentials : A wine tasting class to help you get to know more about the wines from Burgundy. You will taste 8 wines (including a Grand Cru) in a more structured way and talk more easily about them. Price : 35 € per person. Informations : Visits everyday (except on Saturday) at 2:30 Pm. Duration : 1 hour 30. BOOK in Advance.

La Cave de l’Ange Gardien – 38 Boulevard Foch
+33 3 80 24 21 29
The Cave de l’Ange Gardien is a wine-tasting cellar which sells wines, of course, but also sells local delicacies, both savoury and sweet. A selection of wines that caters to all tastes and all budgets & a wide variety of terrines and foies gras, as well as other gourmet products typical of the Burgundy region. The Cave de l’Ange Gardien can also arrange wine shipments worldwide.
Informations : Open from Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 7 pm. English spoken.

Market days
Wednesday & Saturday – Place de la Halle
Beaune has a large Saturday market day with about 150 stalls that fills many streets of the town and a smaller Wednesday market that is mainly fruits and vegetables and a few regional specialties, centered around the Place de la Halle.

• Restaurants
Le Caveau des Arches – 10 Boulevard Perpreuil
http://www.caveau-des-arches.com/ – +33 3 80 22 10 37
The Chef invites you to discover traditional cuisine, fresh and tasty, based on fine products from Burgundy’s lands. Book the table in the kitchen to watch the show from the team in action. Menus from 25 €. Closed on Monday & Tuesday.
Le P’tit Paradis – 25 rue du Paradis
http://restaurantleptitparadis.fr/ – +33 3 80 24 91 00
Traditional restaurant serving fresh homemade cuisine. Beautifully presented dishes full of flavours, accompanied by a fine selection of à la carte wines. Menus from 29 €. Closed on Monday & Sunday.
Koki Food & Shop – 10 Place Ziem
+33 3 80 24 06 61
Fast food & Food shop. World cuisine. Open everyday.
Ma Cuisine – Passage Sainte-Hélène
+33 3 80 22 30 22
Fabienne Escoffier and her Cuisine are a Legend in Beaune. Winner of the “Restaurants and Wine Press Award” in 2005. Traditional and tasty cuisine, selection of 850 wines. Advance booking is recommended. Closed on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday.

• Gourmet Restaurants
Le Jardin des Remparts* – 10 Rue de l’Hôtel Dieu
http://www.le-jardin-des-remparts.com/en/ – +33 3 80 24 79 41
Gourmet restaurant nestled in a nice shady garden. The Chef Christophe Bocquillon, introduces you to his bold and creative cuisine, usually prepared with locally-sourced, authentic and seasonal produce. Menus from 32 € for lunch & from 65 € for dinner. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

• Best Beef Bourguignon in Town
L’Oiseau des Vignes* – 31 rue Maufoux
http://www.bernard-loiseau.com/en/houses/loiseau-des-vignes/beaune-loiseau-des-vignes.html – +33 3 80 24 12 06
There are so many reasons to try this quality restaurant that takes you to the heart of Burgundy’s gastronomy. The “Loiseau” brand, a fine wine list with a rare choice of wines by the glass, and its setting with definite character. Particular, dishes that are full of character. The restaurant has received its 1st Michelin Star in 2010. Menus from 25 € for lunch & from 59 € for dinner.

• Food LoversMoutarderie Fallot – 31 rue du Faubourg Bretonnièrehttp://www.fallot.com/en/parcours-de-visites/ – +33 3 80 22 10 10La Moutarderie Fallot invites you to discover the mustard through its 3 dedicated spaces : a “Museographic tour” which will reveal all the secrets of the Brassica seed and its history, a “Sensational Experience tour” for a sensory approach, and “Enjoy Fallot” : a very original tasting area ! Visit : Individual visits are guided and take place at fixed times. Plan your visit : to plan your visit, you can contact the Mustard Mill at : accueil@fallot.com or +33 3 80 22 10 10 Entrance fees : 10 € per Adult – 8 € for Children. Free tasting at the end of the tour. Opening hours : Open from Monday to Saturday from 9:30 am to 6 pm. Opening on few sundays.

SAINT JEAN DE LOSNES

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Jayé – 12 rue de la Liberté
Closed on Sunday
Patisserie le Poupon – 2 rue Desilles
Closed on Sunday
Boulangerie Magniens – 4 rue nationale
Closed on Sunday

• Restaurants
Auberge de la Marine – Quai de la Hutte
+33 3 80 27 03 27
Traditional cuisine. Menu from 15 €.
Chouette Pizza – 5 rue Monge
http://www.chouettepizza.fr/ – +33 3 80 29 18 18
Pizzas, salads & sandwiches. Open everyday.
Auberge du Paradis – 17 route de Dôle
https://www.auberge-du-paradis.com/nos-pizzas/ – +33 3 80 29 07 33
Pizzas and traditional cuisine made with fresh product. Dish from 15 €.

• Market day
Saturday on the morning – Place des Halles
Fruits and vegetables product

• Bakeries
Casino supermarché – Allée du Bastion des Charmilles
Closed Sunday
Colruyt – rue nationale
Open everyday
Sole Di Sicilia – 11 rue Marion
Closed Sunday

GEVREY CHAMBERTIN

• Bakeries
Boulangerie des Grands Ducs – 5 rue Richebourg
Closed on Sunday
La p’tite Chambertine – 1 route de Dijon
Closed on Sunday

• Restaurants
Chez Guy – 3 place de la Mairie
http://www.chez-guy.fr/ – +33 3 80 58 51 51
Delight in the savory fresh produce of Contemporary cuisine. Menus fom 28 €. Closed on Sunday.
La Rotisserie du Chambertin – Bistrot Lucien
http://www.rotisserie-chambertin.com/ – +33 3 80 34 33 20
Brasserie-style cuisine at the Bistrot Lucien. The chef will take you right into the heart of Burgundies traditions with authentic and modern dishes rich in flavor.. Closed on Monday & Sunday.

Market days
Tuesday – Place de l’Europe
From 8 am to 1 pm

• Wine Cellars
Domaine Philippe Leclers – 6-9 rue des Halles
http://www.philippe-leclerc.com/ – +33 3 80 34 30 72
Wine cellars & Museum. Wine tasting (7 wines) from 10 € with some explanation of the wines produced and the area. Visit : Open everyday from 9:30 am to 7:00 pm.

Jean-Philippe Marchand – 4 Rue Souvert
http://www.marchand-jph.fr/introduction/index.html – + 33 3 80 34 33 60
Proposes different sorts of tasting sessions. Different wines (chite/red) & alcoholic fruit creams accompanied by delicatessen. Visit : Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am to 1 pm & from 2pm to 6:30 pm.

BESANCON

• Bakeries
Boulangerie Au Fournil Comtois – 25 rue Pasteur
Closed on Sunday
Boulangerie des Carmes- 88 Grande rue
Closed on Saturday and Sunday
Boulangerie Caublier – 12 rue Gustave Courbet
Closed on Sunday

• Restaurants
Le Saint Nicola – 29 rue Ronchaux
+33 3 81 53 52 40
Italian specialities like pizzas and pasta. Menus fom 12 €. Closed on Sunday.
Les 100 patates – 24 rue de la Madeleine
http://le100patates.fr/ – +33 3 81 57 29 23
Cooking has based of potato but not only… Traditional and innovative cook. Closed on Monday & Sunday.
The Grean Mean – 24 rue de la Madeleine
http://thegreenman.fr/accueil/ – +33 3 81 50 99 59
French cooking in an warm atmosphere. Closed on Sunday.

• Market days
Sunday on the morning – Place jouffroy
Fruits and vegetables
Tuesday, Friday and Saturday on the morning – Place de la Révolution
Fruits and vegetables
Wednesday on the morning – Place de la Liberté
Fruits and vegetables
Wednesday and Saturday on the morning – Place des Tilleuls
Fruits and vegetables

• Wine Shop
Nicolas – 16 place de la Revolution
+33 3 81 81 11 04
Closed on Sunday
Barthod – 22 rue Bersot
+ 33 3 81 82 27 14
Closed on Sunday

• Bakeries
Petit Casino – rue Megevand
Closed on Sunday
Monoprix – 12 grande rue
Open everyday
Casino – Place de la Bascule
Open everyday

Included: luggage transfer, bedroom and breakfast
Day 8: Sunday Jun 18 2017, Besançon
Free day to explore surroundings.

Hotel :
Night at Hotel de Paris.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 9: Monday Jun 19 2017, Paris
Free day to explore surroundings.

Hotel : Night at Hotel Dauphine Saint Germain.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 10: Tuesday Jun 20 2017, Paris
Free day to explore Paris on your own.
Hotel : Night at Hotel Dauphine Saint Germain.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 11: Wednesday Jun 21 2017, Paris
Free day to explore Paris on your own.
Hotel : Night at Hotel Dauphine Saint Germain.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 12: Thursday Jun 22 2017, Paris
Free day to explore Paris on your own.
Hotel : Night at Hotel Dauphine Saint Germain.

Included: bedroom and breakfast
Day 13: Friday Jun 23 2017
Today is departure day, you can take your time getting started in the morning.

Included: breakfast
Other services
Included with your tour : technical and emergency support available at all times by phone.

From day 1 ( Sunday Jun 11, 2017 ) to day 13 ( Friday Jun 23, 2017 )
Included with your tour : GARMIN Oregon 600T or 450T.

From day 1 ( Sunday Jun 11, 2017 ) to day 8 ( Sunday Jun 18, 2017 )

During your orientation we provide you 1 GPS for 3 people. The model is a Garmin 600t (or equivalent)

The routes described in your roadbook are pre-programmed in the GPS. You simply have to follow the line shown on the GPS, and enjoy !

Included with your Tour : your personal ROAD BOOK, includes detailed maps, touristic information and the step by step itinerary.

From day 1 ( Sunday Jun 11, 2017 ) to day 8 ( Sunday Jun 18, 2017 )

Our road books are complete packages of information that will help you to guide yourself through the itinerary that we have planned and laid out. We have invested significant time and incorporated the feedback of our customers over many years (since 1997!) to make our road books even better.

Our road books include: color maps, highlighted routes, touristical information, orientation points to reach hotels, and easy to follow directions (step by step).

Hotels
Maison Philippe Le Bon
dates: 11-Jun – 12-Jun
Dijon
Category: 4*
☎: +333 80 30 73 52
18 rue Sainte-Anne, Dijon, Burgundy, 21000, France
http://www.maisonphilippelebon.com/en/home
Situated only a short walk from the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, in the heart of the historic center of Dijon, The House Philippe le Bon welcomes you in a unique building. It is a place steeped in history, with a two-atmosphere restaurant, combining authenticity and modernity,The establishment has a shared terrace, a listed gothic courtyard and several cellars where visitors have the chance to appreciate the encounter of modernity and charm. Beautiful and confortable, the rooms and suites have a modern style with an authentic charm. Enjoy the “Art de Vivre à la Française” in this splendid hotel where you will find all the necessary comfort to garantee a pleasant stay.
Informations:
Check-out : Midday
Check in: From 4:00 pm

Le Clos de la Vouge
dates: 13-Jun – 14-Jun
Vougeot
Hotel Category: 3*
☎: +333 80 62 89 65
1 Rue du Moulin, Vougeot, Burgundy, 21640, France
http://www.hotel-closdelavouge.com/?lang=en
Beams & original stonework, roof Burgundy, murmur of the water, historical and cultural environment … You are the Clos de la Vouge! Ideally located between Dijon and Beaune, in the heart of prestigious part of the Burgundy vineyard, Vougeot, a small village internationally renowned Le Clos de la Vouge is the perfect base for your charming stay in Burgundy. We welcome you to a collection of buildings of the twelfth century bordered by a river, completely renovated and transformed into a boutique hotel, traditional restaurant, as well as space for seminars and relaxation. Le Clos de la Vouge, human size, perfectly combines the comfort of a boutique hotel and the friendliness of a B & B.

Informations:
Check-out : 11:00 am
Check in: From 3:00 pm

Hotel des Remparts
dates: 15-Jun – 16-Jun
Beaune
Hotel Category: 3*
☎: +333 80 24 94 94
48 Rue Thiers, Beaune, Burgundy, 21200, France
http://www.hotel-remparts-beaune.com/en/index.html
Just a stone’s throw from the famous Hotel-Dieu, the Hôtel des Remparts welcomes you in style in an elegantly renovated 17th century mansion with a charming inner courtyard. Claude and Elyane Epailly, the owners, have kept the character of the old building and found the perfect balance between the charm of bygone times and modern comfort. Each of the rooms is unique and is named after one of the famous surrounding Burgundy vineyards. Enjoy your stay in this charming hotel where attention has been paid to every last detail to make your stay in Burgundy a memorable one.

Informations:
Check-out : Midday
Check in: From 2:00 pm

*Hotel de Paris – Besançon
dates: 17-Jun – 18-Jun
Besançon
Hotel Category: 3*
☎: +33 3 81 81 36 56
33 Rue des Granges, Besançon, Burgundy, 25000, France
http://www.besanconhoteldeparis.com/
The Hotel de Paris welcomes you in the heart of Besançon. With its contemporary and ancient styles which coexist in harmony, the hotel breathes a real atmosphere of serenity. You will appreciate the particular attention paid to the comfort of the bedrooms. The cosy lounges offer original spaces to rest and meditate and the fitness room is the good idea to keep up one’s form. The hotel is a starting point for nice walks in the historical town centre, hemmed in by the loop of the river Doubs.
Informations:
Check-out : Midday
Check in: From 3:00 pm

Hotel Dauphine St Germain
dates: 19-Jun – 20-Jun – 21-Jun – 22-Jun
Paris
Hotel Category: 3*
☎: +33 1 56 81 10 10
36 rue Dauphine, 6e arrondissement, Paris, Paris, 75006, France
Boasting a superb location just steps from the Seine River, the Pont Neuf and boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel, the Hôtel Dauphine Saint-Germain is a privately-owned 3-star establishment managed with passion to ensure guests an unforgettable stay in the heart of the City of Light. This hotel is situated in a charming 17th century building. It has been carefully refurbished to preserve all the charm and refinement of that beautiful period whilst ensuring all the modern comfort. 30 rooms and suites were all renovated with our guests’ comfort in mind. Feature exposed beams, period style furniture, a warm and elegant colour scheme, luxurious fabrics, as well as high quality bedding to ensure our guests a sound night’s sleep in the centre of Paris.

Useful links

Insurance : World Nomads
Bike Tour Packing List
Biking Guide
France Guide
Paris Guide
Discover France
55 East 59th Street, 9th floor, New York, NY 10022, United States,
427 rue Helene Boucher, 34130, Mauguio, France
www.discoverfrance.com
53039497200026
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contact@discoverfrance.com