One Last Castle, then Heading Home

 Remember the other day when I said that Lorie loves a market? We awoke this morning to a bright and sunny day here in Weesp, Netherlands, to the sound of work going on under our window. I glanced out and what did I see but a Tuesday market being set up. Lorie flew out of bed and we went down to see what was on offer.

Early morning view from our room

So many great cheeses (Kaas)

I think that we were the first customers on the day

What a nice surprise for our last full day in Netherlands. We bought some fantastic cheese, a nice rustic rye and corn loaf, and a bunch of olives for a picnic. After coffee we took a long walk to Muiden, a small town that borders the Markemeer Zee. We visited the Muidserlot castle, which was really a lot of fun and very interesting.

Muiderslot castle

And gardens

Of course it has a moat!

And formal gardens

 

The owner's suite

The drawbridge

We walked back to Weesp along the river the entire way and enjoyed watching all the activity. Locks, bridges, lots of boats coming and going. Absolutely beautiful.

 

We say goodby to Weesp early tomorrow morning and head to the airport. This was a totally random place for us to visit -- we knew nothing about it. But the town is simply charming. Don't miss it if you are in this part of the world.

Weesp as the sun sets

This will be the last entry in this blog. (I hear a cheer!) Tomorrow we fly home and we are looking forward to it. After two months on the road, we long to be back home. We miss family and friends and critters at home, and we both have a ton of things that need taking care of.

Doing a blog like this has always been a love/hate thing for me. On one hand, it takes a fair bit of time and sometimes causes us to search out an internet connection where there are none. On the other hand, it lets some of you know what we're up to and where we are, and I hope that some of you actually enjoy my ramblings. In the end it is a lot of fun and is rewarding. I wouldn't do it if it weren't.

Take good care and we will see you soon.

Au Revoir, France!

We have the bike all boxed up and ready to go. We have a taxi / van lined up to take us to the Bordeaux airport tomorrow morning. We're ready. I thought that I would do a bit of a France summary to bid adieu.

One of our favorite type of evening meal, a charcuterie planche and a glass of wine

Lorie loves markets in France and can't pass one by.

Vegetables are very, very inexpensive at the markets

So many types of olives. We tried a lot of them but have more work to do

"Cobblestone" bread

 I will miss a lot of things we've come to love in France. The people, especially. You often hear that the French can be standoffish, even cold and snooty. It isn't true. As we have traversed and crisscrossed this beautiful land we have met hundreds of French men and women and have yet to meet anyone who was anything other than kind. Oh, you might say, what about the Train Nazi. It is true that she was pretty stern, but she was doing her job. And at the end of one train ride she did actually help me get the tandem off the train (she was surely glad to see me go, but she had a smile on while she lifted the back of the bike).

We try our best to speak French in our small way, whatever the circumstance. We're getting better at it, but the point is that the French may respond in English but they really appreciate the effort that we make to speak their language, even if we are terribly inept at it.

I will miss the food, the bread, the wine, the coffee. Our favorite morning routine is to ride 30 or 40 km then stop for coffee and a croissant. We'll miss that greatly. And the bread. Nobody makes bread like the French. It is a national passion and it shows. At the market yesterday in Bordeaux I came across these rectangular loaves with rough, uneven surfaces:

Pave -- French for "cobblestone"

Delicious bread with a clever, tongue-in-cheek name. There is so much good bread in France that we could never work our way through it all. There are hundreds of local styles and ingredients. All are excellent. I will miss the bread!

Riding the bike as a daily task. It gets tiring but we just love to ride the bike every day to a new, unexplored destination. There are always surprises along the way, frustrations of getting lost and getting rained on, joy at seeing amazing sites and satisfaction in finding our way to our destination.

Wine. Oh my, France can really do wine. We've been in Bordeaux now for about a week and while it is probably the most famous wine region in the world, both Lorie and I prefer the wines along the Loire, and especially those in the tiny and unheralded AOCs. Pouilly Fuise, Pouilly Fume, Sancerre, Chinon, and so many others. The white and rose wines are especially drinkable. And the wines from Burgundy, lighter in character with blends of Pinot Noir and Gamay, and Chardonnay, are in our inexperienced opinion, are easier to drink than the "bigger" wines from Bordeaux with their Cabernet Savignon and Merlot blends. The wine is priced so that no matter where you are, you can get a fine bottle for much less that 10 euro. We'll miss the wine!

Beautiful sights. We will miss the cities and their stunning architecture and culture. 

Pont de Pierre, Bordeaux

The Mirror Pond, Bordeaux

And we will miss the beautiful countryside, so varied in all respects.

The mountains

Col d'Aubisque

A

The history

The agricultural lands in the valleys

Yes, we will miss France for a lot of reasons. But it is near time to go home. The bike is packed and tomorrow we fly to Amsterdam. Given some flight glitches, we have 2 days in Netherlands so rather than hang out near the Schiphol airport we will leave the bike boxes at the airport in storage and head to Weesp for a few days. 

Measuring to get the dimensions right

All boxed up

Time moves on and we look forward to getting home. I will do a final wrap up in a day or two. 

Until then, adieu and bon soir. 😊

Back to Bordeaux

We had an excellent ride from Saint Emilion back to Bordeaux. We departed after a great breakfast from our Dutch hosts and hit the road under sunny but not too hot skies. The ride was about 75 km, but at least 60 km was on a dedicated bike path. And of that, 35 km was downhill. Hard to beat that combination.

The wildflowers were out along the way.

Wildflowers adjacent a biodynamic vineyard

And gloriously, the sunflowers.

Lorie had to walk fairly deep into the field of flowers to get these shots since the flowers do what sunflowers do, turn their faces to the sun, and the sun was opposite where we rode by.

We passed lots more corn fields, vineyards, and chateaux.

Our shadow chased us along

In amazing time (for us, at least) we were crossing the Garonne river and riding into the heart of beautiful Bordeaux.

The Garonne. An apt nickname would be The Big Muddy.

A local told us that they are trying to ban these monstrosities from the city.

A very old gate to a city that was once gated.

One of four clock towers located at compass points around the old town

We were on a mission this morning: to procure bike boxes to pack up the bike to get ready to fly it home. I had reached out to several bike shops in Bordeaux in the past week but hadn't had any luck. Before arriving yesterday, I mapped out about 10 different shops that were fairly close to were we are staying. The first one didn't have any boxes, but the shop guy suggested an e-bike shop a few doors along the road. That shop wasn't on my list, but we stopped in. Bingo! The guys in the shop were (a) fascinated by our tandem (they had even heard of Co-Motion), and (b) only too happy to supply us with all the big boxes we needed. We ended up spending a lot of time there, telling them about the bike and sharing riding stories. It is always a joy to meet kind people in random ways.

We stashed the bike at our apartment, in the heart of the old city, and went back to pick up the bike boxes. Mission accomplished, and it was barely 1330.

When I had been calling bike shops earlier in the week, I had randomly called a shop called "Musette and Coffee." The guy who answered relieved me of hacking the conversation in broken French, and in perfect English explained that he'd moved to Bordeaux over 20 years ago from Kentucky. He was a teacher and said that he just had to get out during the Bush administration. I laughed and said that those were the good old days. Anyway, he didn't have any boxes but told us that if we wanted to ride out to watch the Tour de France stage on the day we arrived back, he'd love us to join in.

So we dashed to the Musette and Coffee shop and arrived just as a group of about 15 cyclists was preparing to ride. Rob, the owner, is the teacher I mentioned. After a decade of teaching in Bordeaux he opened the bike shop, which had been his dream forever. It is a great shop with lots of steel and titanium bikes. They'd all heard of Co-Motion and loved our ride.

We headed about 15 km outside of town to find a spot along the race route. We sat in the shade under a big tree and had lots of fun. About 10 ex-pat Americans and 5 French, all great bike lovers and all having a ball. There were wheelie contests, there was beer, and it was a beautiful day.

The gang

A few of the shop guys wanted to try a wheelie on our tandem. Rob said no way since he'd probably have to fix it after they broke it. I was glad Rob interceded!

I took a slow motion video of the race as it passed. They are going so fast that without slo-mo, it is just a blur.

Saturday morning here. We plan to take it slow. Coffee, the market, maybe sight see a bit. Maybe work on the bike. A day unlike we've had for 2 months now.