Homeward Bound

After 2 months, 13 hotels, 13 plane trips, countless dollars, euros and green backs, we are finally Australia bound! By the time you are reading this we will be well on our way to Canberra via LA and Sydney, arriving in Canberra @ 9am Tuesday.

Although we have immensely enjoyed our travels it will be great to get home and see family, friends and our beloved doggies! Thanks to all who have read our blog, sent emails and posted messages - it definitely kept the homesickness at bay. A huge thanks also to Dee and Steve who have shared their home with us for a month and also played a big part in organising our travel within the US.

Cold Canberra here we come!!!

Swap one swamp tour for one night on Bourbon St, New Orleans

We finally arrived at our hotel in New Orleans and made a beeline for the airboat swamp tour! With less than a day to spend in the city we wanted to make the most of every minute

We were really excited to be seeing the swamp tour and jumped in the boat, filled with anticipation! The tour is on the Mississippi River, not far from the gulf. Our boat captain was a young southerner, Felix, we were gonna have some fun! Alas, we were no more than 5 minutes up the river, with the 357 Chev engine growling in our ears, when it became apparent we were going to be stuck, with a huge storm blowing in from nowhere! The skies turned to a monsoon blue-grey and Felix checked the radar again, the prognosis was terrible and Felix wasn’t prepared to take the risk. We got a full refund, which paid for our big night out, and Scotty amused himself by wrestling some ‘gators on land, Steve Irwin style, while we waited for our lift back.

OK onto Bourbon Street! We cruised the main strip and being a Monday night we expected it to not fully go off, which suited us. We listened to some great Jazz, found a top selection of drinks, caught some beads off balconies and bought some beads of our own to throw off the balconies! We enjoyed Huge Ass beers, margaritas, daiquiris, hurricanes, all of which contained copious amounts of alcohol. Needless to say, we were feeling a little second-hand this morning!

It was an awesome night; the highlight for Scotty was meeting such a variety of people in the bars while Fi loved throwing beads at people who weren’t expecting them. For those who don’t know about beads…in New Orleans, particularly Bourbon Street, there is a tradition of guys throwing bead necklaces off balconies for girls they like the look of! Scotty got some too : )

Unplanned sojourn in Atlanta Crown Plaza airport view

Ready and raring to go at 4:15 this morning (Vegas time), we returned our sportsmobile and eventually hopped onto our flight to New Orleans via Atlanta. Flying AirTran, which is like buses for the air, and crappy ones at that, we made it as far as Atlanta, Georgia, when delay after delay caused the cancellation of ours and about 100 other flights.

Instead of getting uppity and stressed about the situation we played Euchre, had a laugh at the many thousands of Americans feeding their faces with fries and fake cheese, and calmly accepted the option of a 4 star overnight stay at a discounted rate! Right now we're putting our feet up and watching a reply of Stage 9 of le Tour and sipping hot drinks. Hopefully, bright and early tomorrow we'll be on our way to Bourbon Street, New Orleans!

Negative split @ the Grand Canyon

Yes that's right! 3:10 to descend the 6.2 mile hike with 1000 m of altitude drop, and only 2:45 to ascend in reverse. For non-sportos, that is a negative split!

The weather was highly favourable for us. Starting our hike at 11am, the weather was a balmy 77 degrees (23 celsius) and it only peaked briefly, in the sunny afternoon, at around 90 (30 celsius).

It was pretty easy on the way down apart from dodging tourists doing the shorter hike, and mule convoys (see Video: Mulus Interruptus). The path was quite lumpy with rocks, sand in places, and large steps made from logs. The descent took its toll on our quads too!

We used our lunch date at Plateau Point to refuel and recharge, before tackling the ascent. See Video: Wouldn't be dead for quids.

It was actually easier to ascend the trail and we both felt quite weary by the time we reached the top. But it's an experience that we're very happy to have had!

Food stats for the hike:

• 9 litres of water
  
• 4 pieces of leftover pizza
  
• 2 stolen (from the breakfast buffet) and 2 bought bananas
• 2 stolen apples
• 2 stolen oranges
• 2 powerbars
  

Tomorrow it's back to Vegas for one night before heading to New Orleans.

Motoring the Mohave

We fired up all four cylinders in our Pontiac Grand Prix and hit the searing hot pave of Nevada this morning! Waving a teary goodbye to Hooters Hotel & Casino we traversed the Hoover Dam wall and witnessed the spectacle of the Mohave Desert trailer park communities, which dot the horizon all the way to Williams, Arizona.

Thankfully a cool change has come through and 115 degrees of Vegas has given way to a mere 75 degrees. Maybe we will be able to do some hiking in the Grand Canyon after all.

Tonight we are heading out to the Arizona summertime cowboy shoot out!

Vegas Extravaganza

45 degrees!!! Yes, that is how hot it is today in Vegas. It is going to be such a shock to go back to Canberra winter in 2 weeks.

We are loving Las Vegas though. It is such a colourful, extravagant city and nowhere near as crowded/dirty as New York and Paris.

We have had a few rounds of Black Jack in various casinos and have so far made an investment into our future Black Jack playing! Last night saw us having dinner with our new Aussie friends, Liz and Garry, at a funky Mexican restaurant. Liz had nachos which could have fed 4 people! We also did a night time walk down part of the strip, taking in a musical fountain outside the Bellagio hotel...check out the video below.

Today we escaped from the heat by driving out to a huge outlet mall. We 'air-con-hopped' between the shops of the outdoor mall and got releif from some water sprayers scattered throughout the shops.

Tomorrow we're driving to Williams, near the Grand Canyon. We had planned on doing a hike of the Grand Canyon on Friday but have since reconsidered due to the extreme heat!

4th of July Celebrations

Yesterday was Independence Day, the 4th of July, a pretty big deal for Americans, but far more importantly, it also marked the eve of the first stage in the 2008 Tour de France! This morning Scotty and Fi put the coffee on at 8am, ready to watch the live tour telecast commencing at 8:30am. Oh what a pleasure it was to watch le Tour at a reasonable hour! We all put our tips in for the CCC tipping comp last night and so far Steve is in the lead (out of our contingent).

Tonight we set off our bag of crackers (postponed due to rain last night) and were lucky to come away with all fingers in tact after trying some creative ways of setting off multiple fireworks at the same time! We are now settled in with our martinis to watch the replay of Stage 1.

New York, New York!

With New York only a 5 hour bus ride away, we took the opportunity to visit the city that never sleeps, for 2 days.

Staying right in the thick of things in Times Square was quite the experience! There is always something to look at, or something going on. People, people, people…everywhere! It seemed at times that we were traveling at half pace (I think we were).

New York caters to tourists very well, there’s a hop on-hop off tour bus system that we took advantage of. It covers all of the main attractions and features of New York city which can be viewed from the top of a double-decker open-topped bus.

Some of the highlights from our trip to New York are:

• Sunset cruise taking in the Statue of Liberty, Long Island & Ellis Island, and the NYC 'waterfalls'
• Our tour guide giving an excellent rendition of ‘New York, New York’ on the twilight tour of the city, sung like a pro
• The Bodies exhibition – just fascinating
• Pancakes for breakfast at the ‘local’ Mexican-run Italian café
• The bright lights of Times Square (they have to be on 24 hrs/day by law)
• Finally getting home (it took an hour to go the 3km out of NYC on the bus)
  

We both agree that New York city has to be seen once!

Inald v Inald Segway racing in Washington DC

Well, sort of! We weren't racing each other but there were some fun times had on our Segway tour of DC. For those of you who don't know, Segways are 2 wheeled, electric, people movers that are controlled by shifting your body weight forward or backward. Check out the Video: Fi learning the Segway

The Sparkellys and the Inalds embarked on a 3 hour tour of DC's sights, with plenty of space to unleash the fury of the Segways which had a top speed of 12 1/2 miles per hour! This is definitely the way to see DC.

By the end of the tour we were quite the experts. Check out Video: Fi's Flying and Video: Dee & Steve

We're off to throw a few essentials in a backpack for our trip to NYC tomorrow!

Falls Church City Crime Report

Reading the local paper at a cafe this morning we came across these very disturbing incidences of local crime:

LARCENY: 900 blk. Parker Ave., June 17, 6:34pm, unknown person(s) stole 45-gallon trash container.

LARCENY FROM VEHICLE: 200 blk. S Virginia Ave., between June 9, 8:00pm and June 10, 8:00am, unknown person(s) entered an unsecured vehicle and stole approximately $6.00 in quarters.

LARCENY, SHOPLIFTING: 7Eleven 804 S Washington St., June 19, 2:20pm, unknown person(s) entered the establishment and stole (2) burritos, chicken quesadilla and potato skins from the establishment.

Intercourse in Amish Country

There really is a town called Intercourse, in Pennsylvania, smack bang in the middle of Amish country, where about 29,000 Amish people live! Nearby are towns Bird In Hand and Paradise just to add to the collection!

We made the 2.5 hour drive to Pennsylvania this morning with our lovely driver, Dee. Scotty wasn’t exactly excited about the trip but perked up a bit when we had a tour of an Amish village and got to see all the quirks and the very conservative ways of the people. It was a sight to see cars lined up behind the Amish horses and buggies along main roads through the town.

The highlight of the day was a buffet lunch at an Amish restaurant. All food is made at the restaurant and is so much better than Sizzler! About 20 hot foods to choose from as well as a salad bar and a dessert bar with no less than 10 types of pie, two flavours of soft serve and many puddings that we had never heard of before.

Needless to say, we all spent the drive home feeling a little uncomfortable and not needing much of a dinner tonight.

Last night was a treat too; dinner at a local Italian restaurant with the Inalds, Sparkellys and Steve & Gi Gi, friends of Scotty’s from cycling.

American History & Culture 101

Since the Inalds hit the ground in the US we’ve had a nice blend of shopping, riding, swimming and relaxing – in that order. Scotty nearly pulled his shoulder out trying on the most number of shirts in the shortest amount of time!

The ‘try-on’ trolley was full to over-flowing in our first expedition to ‘Marshalls’ but we showed restraint as there are many more outlet malls to come!

This morning we went to work with Dee and Steve, they work in Washington DC, for a self-guided walking tour. We found all the American history and monuments quite fascinating and spent about ½ an hour absorbed in them before scoping out a good coffee shop!

Scotty’s new bike arrived today. For those who know bikes, it’s a 2008 6.5 Trek Madone, so he was quite chuffed this afternoon when we made in home just in time to catch the delivery man!

Now it’s Fi’s turn…outlet malls for 9 hours tomorrow!!! She’s got some catching up to do!

Sunday at the races

On a hot Sunday morning, the Inalds and Sparkellys (pronounced 'Sparklies') drove to a country town, similar to Bungendore, about 70 miles out (everything is now is miles, yards, ounces and pounds!), to see some of Scotty's buddies race in a crit, the last stage in a weekend cycling tour.

The best part about the racing would have to be the 'larger than life' commentator. He was a big, black dude, delivering some fantastic lines, which we may have to use...you kinda had to be there, here are some samples though...

'He's so regular, he must've had a bran muffin and prune juice chaser for breakfast!'

'He's gone OFF, he must've heard Lorraine (wife) was behind the barn with Billy-Bob!'

'Her smile's so wide she could do a Colgate commercial, or poly dent or dentaguard!'

'He's a professional drafter, get up there and do some work!'

About 2 o'clock, we'd had enough of that, and it was time for some outlet shopping!
We hauled home our first lot of booty!

Touchdown USA

After a tumultuous departure from gay Paris and the worst airport in the world, say no more, we happily departed France and headed to the infamous Terminal 5 at Heathrow (in the first week of operation they lost 15,000 pieces of luggage!).

We had no trouble offloading our surplus euro in London, buying some bargain basement duty free and a hearty British breakie. Before we knew it we were US bound, however, unbeknown to us, Terminal 5 had now swallowed 15,002 pieces of luggage!! We arrived sans bikes! Fortunately they arrived at 2am this morning and our porter, Dee, graciously braved a thunderstorm and dragged them inside while we were sleeping soundly.

Last night we were welcomed to the Virginia household of Dee and Steve, known as the Sparkellys, with a BBQ and two bottles of champers! They disappeared so quickly, we can only assume the high evaporation rate was a contributing factor.

Today was filled with a swim, a visit to an Amish market – with sampling of freshly made donuts, a breakfast roll, many cheeses and dips – then chilling out with margaritas, pretty tough! Fi and Dee also found time to squeeze in pedicures and nail polish pampering! Did we mention the great coffee we had this morning!!?

The last Paris post: Notre Dame

The PeekInalds enjoyed crepes and croissants for breakie today, walking to Notre Dame, only 20 minutes walk from our apartment!

We agree we have all had enough of old buildings and are ready to move on, the Inalds to the US to stay with Scotty's mum, Dee, and Steve tomorrow and the Peeks to East London to see the grandparents (Alex's great grandparents). Scotty has staked out a park just outside our apartment ready for our 4am start in the morning!

Notre Dame was an awesome final building, so huge and with such beautiful stained glass windows!

We are looking forward to hangin' out with Dee and Steve in the US for four weeks...bring it on!

Ode to ye Olde Francois Royal-tois

The PeekInalds ventured forth today to Versailles, to be guests at James' family friends estate in Marly le Roi, for a 5 course gourmette luncheon . After a sufficient fill of degustation, we were escorted to Versailles.

Versailles is a 'must-see' on any Parisian tourist's sightseeing itinerary!

The PeekInalds opted to absorb the entire experience of Versailles by purchasing the full self-guided audio tour option, and we involved ourselves in the cultural and historical experience that is to be had at Versailles.

There are lots of new pics and a video: 'Scotty takes the Versailles audio tour very seriously'

Today was a good day, with lots of laughs all 'round, and we're capping it off with a great meal of homemade ravioli and cocktails!

Paris Disneyland - the happiest place in the world...

....for kiddies...for the rest of us it is a fun place to go and try a few new rides!

We had a bit of a metro/train hop on/hop off to get out to Disneyland and for those who hadn't been before it was quite an experience. We were more than happy to head out of there after about 6 hours of rides, fast food and lots of Disney.

We are pretty lucky to have so many good food shops near where we are staying cos no one felt like cooking tonight! Bring on the fresh baguettes...mmmm

Check out the pics!

From Paris with romance

We have arrived in the city of lurve! Pretty shattered after yesterday's 6 hour drive from Bordeaux then 3 hours trying to work out how to park the car! The Peek family - James, Karen and Alex - arrived last night, we had a well-earned sleep in and it's great to be hangin' out with English-speaking people and their company's not bad either ; )

James, having lived here before, proxied as our tour guide and immediately took us to the streets of Paris to see the big ones. The Eiffel, Champs and Arc were all quite impressive, but the highlight would be the tower. It is actually quite spectacular and we're hoping to go up it later in the week.

Check out all the pics and the videos 'Peek & Son pram prowess' and 'Bonjour - an eyeful of the Eiffel (below)!

Check out the PeekInalds travel site too!

Saturday is chill out day

Today being our last full day in Bordeaux, we decided that we wouldn't be riding anywhere. Instead, we just checked out a local market, stocked up on supplies for Paris, watched a couple of hours of the Dauphine (cycling) on tele, squeezed in a siesta, checked a few emails in true holiday style, soaked up some sun, and to round if off had some evening cocktails to commemorate Scotty's divorce Eve!

St Emilion wine run

On our last visit to St Emilion, we had bookmarked the wine festival that was commencing there today. The weather looked promising in the morning, and after sitting on our sun lounges reading for a couple of hours in the sun, we hit the road, traveling via the quietest roads we could find to St Emilion via Libourne.

The weather closed in on us super quickly, just as we hit Libourne. We had a quick look at their weekday markets and chilled out with a cup of tea until the rain eased.

A short window, really short as it turned out, opened for us to ride to St Emilion, dark storm clouds chasing us all the way! You’d think we were in the last km of a 100 km race the way we screamed into St Emilion! The heavens unleashed fury as we arrived. This time we waited for the weather to ease by having hot chocs in a bar and watching a hugely educational video about wine making.

The festival we had gone to St Emilion for had only just started as we were about to leave, at 3pm. Fortunately, we had the pleasure (?) of sampling many of the region’s finest wines. We weren’t too impressed and even one of the cellar staff agreed that Aussie wine is much better!!

The clouds parted, leaving us with a beautiful ride home in full sunshine.

Video 1: 'Another great day!'
Video 2: 'Where's Wallamina?'

The Bassin d’Arcachon

Sounds pretty fancy huh? Well you would be wrong and so were we! We had a tourist brochure with this great bike path meandering around the bay on it…

First up, we got stuck in a traffic jam, due to a 4 truck pile up, for 1 ½ hours, turning our trip into a 3 hour one. Once we got to d’Arcachon, we found the bike path that was promoted in the brochure pretty easily. Our target destination was Europe’s biggest sand dune (110m tall), a mere 40 km ride in each direction. After 20 km we were totally fed up with the super boring, straight-as-an-arrow, flat, and dead bike path that cut its way through a pine forest in the middle of nowhere. To make the trip even more painful, about every 500m – sometimes more often – there was a blind road crossing for which you had to pretty much come to a complete stop! We think this was designed by a rejected road engineer who didn’t think to put the bike path a tad closer to the bay all the tourists are interested in!

We did a U turn and headed back into town for ice cream, checked out the lamest beach ever! and went home. Not the best day ever but certainly not the worst…we did manage to find some laughs along the way : )

Bordeaux on foot

It was take two for Bordeaux, sans bikes. We drove to the outskirts, hopped on a tram, couldn’t work out the ticketing ; ) so got a freebie ride into the heart of town. We undertook another self guided tour of the city, a kind of lap with a bit of zig-zagging. To our surprise (not) we managed to take in just about all of the touristy bits, and it was actually quite good, especially St Andrews Cathedral. We weren’t going to go in because of the beggar stooped over the entry, but we elbowed her out of the way and got in. It was worth the bruise (jokes).

We must have covered about 20 clicks on foot, and I swear 100 bike ks is easier on the legs.

Find of the day – there were two; 1) crème brulee – one of the best ever, and we’ve had a few, and 2) crepe spreader – so simple but so essential for perfect crepes, which ours will be from now on.

We cracked open another bottle of French wine tonight and we both thought it was more like a mix of petrol and vinegar, so we’ll add it to our ‘don’t waste your money’ list;

• French coffee
• French wine
• Guided tours on dinky trains through cities
• Tram tickets (just don't need 'em!)
  

Excursion to St Emilion

For something different, we went for a ride today to see what we could see! St Emilion is a medieval town, about 20kms from where we are staying. We set the GPS to ‘bike route’ again and found some more beautiful roads through the vineyards, on the way to St Emilion.

This was not without incident - we were instructed by the GPS to go up a road that is now blocked off by a train track. We could see the road ‘just over there’ and just had to jump a couple of low concrete blockades, and the train track, to get to it. Very carefully we hopped over the fence, passed our bikes over and we stood there, off to the side of the track. We were about to cross when we heard the familiar rumble of a train coming. H-o-l-y c-o-w!! We had a very up close and personal experience with the French TGV!! To say this train went past quickly would be an extreme understatement! Both our hearts were beating about 200 bpm and you’ve never seen two people cross the train tracks so fast. That’ll be our last unauthorised train crossing! And back onto the quiet roads we went.

St Emilion is a small medieval village set in among heaps of vineyards. Out of all the old buildings we’ve seen recently we think today’s monolithic underground church and catacombs, constructed around 767 (it took over 100 years to carve), takes the cake. We hopped on a 45 min guided tour of these buildings which was quite enjoyable. Next up, we climbed the bell tower, above the underground church, to see panoramic views of St Emilion and the surrounding countryside. Very pretty as you can see from the photos.

3 days in a row of velo-tourism has caused our appetites to swell and a feed of Nutella toast and local cheese with crackers was in order the moment we arrived back at our cottage!

Tomorrow we’re going to have a day off the bike to return to the city of Bordeaux for some walking-based tourism.

Check out the video from today’s ride to St Emilion!

Vélò Éxpéditiòné la Bõrdëaŭx

Thé Inålds, that béing ŭs, wént in séarch õf sõmé mõré Frénch cŭltŭré õn twõ whééls, frõm õŭr rŭral rétréat, la Mailliõné. Cycling by GPS is fantastic! Wé fõŭnd a sétting õn thé GPS that plans a bicyclé rõŭté fõr yõŭ ŭsing all thé back rõads. Thé 38km trip tõ Bõrdéaŭx was prõbably qŭickér õn thé biké anyway, and far mõré énjõyablé.

Théré was véry pictŭrésqŭé scénéry inclŭding rõlling hills, chatéaŭs and qŭiét cõŭntry rõads fõr thé first 20km, béfõré wé gõt clõsér tõ thé city õf Bõrdéaŭx.

Õŭr primary õbjéctivé tõday was tõ gét sõmé infõrmatiõn abõŭt thé aréa and scõpé õŭt sõmé mõré riding rõads.

Wé gõt tõ éxplõré a littlé bit õf Bõrdéaŭx, a slightly cléanér and largér vérsiõn õf Tõŭlõŭsé and Mõntpélliér, with mõré charactér and things tõ séé. Théré was a drõp õf rain, õr 10,000, õn thé way hõmé bŭt that didn’t bõthér ŭs at all! It had béén qŭité hõt ŭp ŭntil thén.

Wé’ll try and héad back tõ Bõrdéaŭx tõ séé thé rést õf thé sights.

Bordeaux R & R & R

We've arrived at our French country retreat, and our initial thoughts were that it's actually a bit more in the country and a little more of a retreat, than we had anticipated! After going for a ride to scope out the 15km radius our first concerns have been put to rest...it's beautiful countryside, quiet roads through vineyards and not far to neighbouring villages.

We have a few day trips planned for on or off the bikes and finally we have a kitchen and fridge, which we'll be making great use of as we've done without for the last two weeks. You wouldn't believe the gorgeous, fresh ravioli and cheese we see in the supermarket...bring it on!

For tonight, we have a nice bottle of French red and some locally made pizza to heat up in our very own oven (the supermarkets aren't open on Sundays...can you believe it???). Hopefully we'll catch some of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (Tour lead up race) on the tele.

Toulouse half day out

An early rise (8 am) to hit the road by 8.30 - for Toulouse. All motorway saw us get here nice and early. We pulled our walking shoes (back) on and made the usual b-line for the tourist info office. The very helpful recorded message...err.. I mean lady behind the counter pushed us a tourist map and circled all the old buildings in the area. We thanked her kindly and proceeded to do our own thing. We'd seen a hundred old buildings in the last couple of days so we just explored the city without really prioritising.

First stop/stumble was across some fyshwick-style markets, good for lunch and a bit of culture. Upon further exploring we discovered a hydro-electric power station, right in the heart of town (on the river). It was actually very interesting, and we even sat through the half-hour video (in french). May have had something to do with the extremely comfy seats. I'm sure Scotty had a little siesta in there....

The best find of the day was a Tour de France expo. Le Tour comes through here in about 7 weeks and the promo carnival was set up in a town square. It was quite a pleasant surprise, and we left a note on a message board for Cadel, sampled some freebies and Scotty had a go on KOM contest.

A short hop to Bordeaux tomorrow for a week of R & R and R.

Montpellier day out

Tourist map in hand, we ventured forth to acquaint ourselves with the historic and culturally significant aspects of Montpellier! No, really, it wasn’t that serious but we did check out some cool old buildings and even saw a photographic exhibition.

After seeing the exhibition we have decided that on returning to Canberra we will be having our own exhibition! In our opinion, the slideshow you are now viewing on the right is of far more interest (and excitement) than the exhibition we saw!

The exhibition was followed by Nutella crepes…they were decadent and we are determined to make some crepes like this when we get home. Tonight we had a delish pizza dinner, with pina colada cocktails, followed by cards and a cuppa back at the hotel. It was a good day!

Tomorrow we are off to Toulouse, about 2.5 hours drive heading south. The Tour de France sometimes comes through there so maybe we’ll check out a ride through the Pyrenees!

Au Revoir!

Evian to Montpellier

We punched our next destination into the GPS and a 500km journey was on the program. It was a pretty uneventful journey via mostly motorways and toll booths. Unlike Australia, highway roadhouses are few and far between, so around lunchtime we picked the only one for about 100km and we were well overdue for our morning coffee. Suffice to say, we found the single worst coffee in all of Europe, possibly the world! We now understand why so many Frenchies smoke – it’s to remove the taste of their disgusting coffee!! So far we’ve been most unimpressed with French coffee, lucky for them they can still make crepes.

Our hotel, which we found on Priceline-Europe.com last night, turned out to be a gem! A very cool castle-style building, about 100m from the tram straight into the heart of Montpellier (about 5km from the hotel).

With our few evening hours we caught the tram to town and had a preliminary look around, visited the tourist info shop and sampled a few…errr…of the gastronomic…errr…high calorie…delights! Hot waffles, nutella crepes, more pastries, ice-cream and…Royals with Cheese!!

Can’t wait for tomorrow to do some more exploring of Montpellier!

Cycling Inalds visit UCI HQ

The weather was not on our side today, with a forecast of 13 degrees max and 91% chance of rain. This did not deter us, we were determined to make the 80km round trip by bike, to Aigle Switzerland where the World Cycling Centre is located.

We met our new found cycling buddy from Colorado on the way and arrived at Aigle just in time to have lunch at the WCC with elite cyclists-in-training. Lunch was a good change from pizza, pasta and pastries (life's tough) and the cycling museum was interesting to look around. We got to see some trackies doing motorpacing on the velodrome while we waited for the rain to ease (wishful thinking).

We swapped off for the ride home, inspired by the elite cyclists, we averaged 46.7km/h for the 38km journey ; )

Culture in Evian les Bains

On our coffee run this morning we saw a beautiful golden retriever tied up at a restaurant, looking really sad – like he needed a walk! We brushed up on our French phrases, courtesy of our French phrase book, and in the most unedumacated French voice asked the lady if we could take the dog for a walk. Of course this didn’t work so we resorted to sign language, the owners were more than happy for us to take him out. ‘Alto’ turned from a lethargic sleepyhead into overjoyed with excitement! He showed us the local walking trails and it was a nice way to start the day. Scotty may have even recruited a rider for the 24 hour MTB as we bumped into a US U23 MTB squad member training for the world champs. We’re hopefully going for a road ride with him tomorrow.

The afternoon was filled with an exhilarating historical self-guided walk around Evian les Bains. We have never seen so many sites where old buildings used to be! This used to be a medieval town so the parts that were still around were pretty cool. As it turned out, we are staying right in the middle of the former village square and our hotel is about the same age as Captain Cook’s Cottage!!

Italian, Swiss and French Alps

Our longest, and most draining, day in the car – however, well worth the sights. To see these awesome mountain ranges first hand is something to behold. We drove roads in the same famous regions as the Galibier, Izoard and Mont Ventou. These mountains are HUGE and steep!

We accidentally-on-purpose traveled to Grand Monte Bianca which is a slightly shorter version of Mont Blanc, on the Italian side of the border, but still extremely impressive. Driving in the very non-tourist region, we climbed in the car for about 45 mins on what would have been 12 % average grade climbs but it felt like straight up! How they race on the roads is beyond understanding.

After realizing the Sat Nav’s mistake (way too late) we reprogrammed for the real Mont Blanc and set off. As you can see from the photos, the weather was against us and the guy at the Mont Blanc cable car ticket office said going up the mountain would be no good.

It was a lovely drive but really long day – about 8 hours of driving. We made it to our destination, Evian Les Bains in France, late this afternoon and are now enjoying some local wine! This place reminds us of Mooloolaba or Noosa…very clean, great food and shops, and lots of touristy things to see. Perfect after the hectic Milan.

Au Revoir!

Fi Fi and Scott-Pierre

Giro Grande Finale

We jumped on our bikes and rode the time trial course in reverse, before it was set up, give or take a couple of wrong turns! We checked out the start area but it was a bit crazy. Only authorized personnel could get anywhere near the start area. Scotty managed to bluff his way past the guards, in his Discovery channel kit, only to woos out halfway up the chute when people who actually knew saw that he was an imposter…there was no discovery team at the Giro (Fi thinks maybe he got pinged for being a non-climber build!) Scotty did manage to find us some sustenance for the trip back to our spectating position – some paninis and 1kg of lasagne!

We did find a top spot to watch the riders where there were a whole heap of Italians spectating too. We made friends with an Italian lady who helped us with rider name pronunciation and we let her know when they were coming!

We waved our Aussie flag at the three Aussie riders and Nick Gates gave us a big cheer and a wave on his way through. Adam Hansen gave us a ‘courtesy wave’. Nick Gates (in 29^th overall) was way too focused!

As soon as Contador and entourage rolled passed, the course was open for young and old so we rode the Contador wake back into town (about 15km). It was awesome! We rode flat out, people cheering us on in Italian, we hammed it up (esp Scotty) and got back to our hotel in about 25 mins.

We ended up doing about 65km of riding and 4 hours of sitting around so were really tired when we got back…just strolled down to our fave pizza shop for a couple of BIG slices of fresh margeurita pizza, some birra, and then bed!

Discovering Milano

Today being our rest day from the Giro (even us spectators need a rest), we did a bit of metro hopping, saw some really old stuff, walked about 50,000 km, and after giving the posh centre of Milan the flick we stumbled across a giant Paddy's-style market. On the way back to see some more old stuff we found a sport and music festival which included some pro level go karting. It was much more our style than all the old buildings! We aren't total historic snobs but if you've seen one big old building you've seen them all!

The best thing about the posh centre of town was the goodness contained within a Luini - a freshly baked pastry filled with mozzarella and tomato (pomodoro) - it was melt-in-your-mouth and we don't think it had many calories!

Stage 19 Giro d'Italia

Today was an awesome day! We got up early to have coffee and a pastry then rolled out in search of the Giro (Tour of Italy cycling race) just after 8am, and the roads were amazingly quiet, they must be late starters here. Cycling from Milan to Desio, the town the Giro passes through, was pretty painless. For the first part we hopped on and off the footpath until we got out of town. It was a cruisy roll of about 20km.

Seeing the Giro caravan and the efficiency of the whole set up was pretty amazing. In the 2 hours we were there, a busy city street was transformed into a cycling race frenzy. Hundreds of Italianos who hadn’t even heard of the Giro went a bit crazy, along with us.

Literally five minutes after the peloton had passed everything had gone including barricades, flags, signs etc.

We jumped back on our bikes for the roll back to Milan at a very easy pace, the 20km took us about an hour and included footpath and tram track hopping, dodging many, many cars and pedestrians. There’s definitely a greater level of respect given to cyclists here – we were given heaps of room and no aggro!

We are going to check out the time trial on Sunday, the finish is only 1.8km from where we’re staying and the whole route is about 20km.

Right now, we’re going to search for a Laundromat (Scotty is a bit stinky) and grab some lunch prior to our siesta…yeah! The photos have been updated too.

Please leave blog comments, we love reading them and so do all our buddies! The emails are awesome too!

Milano here we come!

We drove about 300km through scenic mountain ranges, from Marina di Pisa to Milan. The 130km/h speed guideline was a bit of a challenge to stick to when doing 130 means you are holding up Ferraris, Porshes, Daewoos etc who wanted to go much faster!

We stopped near Parma (as in Parmesan/Parmigiana) for our first taste of Italian pizza…mmm

We have just arrived at our Milan home for 4 days and it is cool!!! Right in the middle of everything. Hopefully it won’t take too much to find the Giro d’Italia and see some action. And some shops!

Pisa one minute, Milano the next

Thanks to everyone for the nice emails and comments! We are having lots of fun!

Sergio and I jumped into our brand new Peugeot in Rome, only 2 days ago, and hit the Roman streets on the wrong side (right side) of the road! We’ve been staying at the Pisan coast for 2 days and are about to drive to Milan to see some of the Giro d’italia. Here are some of the highlights so far:

• The old badly built building in Pisa
• Learning how to count to 10 in Italian while eating yummy gelati
• Discovering that the restaurant we thought was a pizzeria was a seafood restaurant (great if you like seafood!)…mussels, baby octopus, fresh sardine…blah. Antipasto will never be thought of the same again!
• Riding from Marina di Pisa to the leaning tower – motorists here rock! The roads are seriously crappy but still they go out of their way to NOT give us grief like Aussies do.
  
• Italian coffee is really good! (like Sergio’s)
• Floriana found out she still has a job…yay. It is still a bit crap though cos lots of my good work buddies won’t be there when I come back : (
• Figuring out what everything in the supermercato is…we have managed to cook pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakies!

Love Floriana and Sergio

Our holiday has started!

Right now we're sitting in Hong Kong airport...1am Australia time...waiting for our flight to Rome! We are very tired and had a whole tour group of Chinese people sitting all around us on the flight here...aaaahhhh!!! Hopefully this flight will be a bit quieter.

The airline food rocks! For dinner we had Italian beef with potatoes, apple and cinnamon creamed rice, a delish salad...and as much wine as we can drink. Scotty saved some and it just got confiscated in security. D'oh!

We've managed to knock off 2 Qantas blankets (good for covering up stuff in the back of the car) and we just spent about an hour sampling all the duty free stuff incl $100 lip balm, renewing eye cream and fancy perfume. So refreshing...not.

So far we have taken 2 photos...check em out : )

le Holiday Route

This is where we will be heading for the Euro part of our trip! The dates may be a bit out but we're hoping to follow this general route...please email us if there is something we should absolutely not miss in any of the places we go through!!

The first stage in our trip preparations - totally redo the 70's bathroom so that our house-sitter Kris can enjoy luxurious winter mornings under the heater.

And not have tiles stick to her feet or slide off the toilet.

We're off....!

Counting down until Monday May 26