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

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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. 😊