Journal notes: Paris

Part 2 of my EuroBikeTrip journal notes: Paris.  I’ll post Amiens to London sometime soonish.

6/8 – Paris

In the morning, we had breakfast with the rest of the folks staying at the B&B – the couple from Idaho and the eight British motorcycle tourists. We talked to Bill and Meredith, too, and after thanking them heartily and promising to pay their kindness forward, we set off into a cold and cloudy day. We stopped at a small grocery store and had lunch sitting on the sidewalk in front the store – I had a rabbit sandwich and a bottle of water. We took the country highways until we managed to get to the Orque Canal. From there, it was more or less smooth biking into the heart of Paris although we went through some of the very poor outer suburbs of Paris. We passed by a rickety trailer/squatter camp. A man was hunched over a bucket full of water – although it didn’t seem like the filthy water in the bucket was getting the laundry cleaner – in a field of debris underneath a highway bridge.

Once we were off the Canal path, the city traffic was hectic and fast. Scooters buzzed in and out of car traffic. Bike lanes were taken up by parked cars. The bike lanes that were still open for use were being bike salmoned, or even scooter salmoned.

When we arrived at the Hosteling International hostel, they said they had no record of our reservation, although Chris had talked to them just a week ago and was assured that our reservation was made. They did find room for us (as it turned out, there was plenty of room), but we would have to switch rooms the last day. The facilities were rather lacking – the luggage lockers cost money and were prone to breakdown, there was no bicycle parking (we locked our two bikes to each other with four locks, under the main stairway), and the showers were moldy. A throng of preteens crashed through the lobby after we checked in – not a good sign. After settling in, we got some dinner nearby at a nice little streetside restaurant. Back at the hostel, I had sweet, glorious internet access for the first time in a week.

6/9 – Paris

After free breakfast at the hostel, we headed over to the catacombs, where we waited in line for about a half hour, as they only allowed two hundred people in at a time. Originally built as quarries deep under the city, the catacombs were consecrated and repurposed to house the remains of thousands of Parisians as a plague swept through the area. Bones dug up from cemetaries all over Paris were stacked in neat, tight walls.

Next, we headed to Notre Dame for a free tour through DiscoverWalks. The building was enormous – one could imagine how a medieval Frenchman would’ve felt looking at the awesome structure. The magnificent facade, the frightening gargoyles on the side, the majestic flying buttresses on the back, the enchanting stained glass windows – it was amazing to think that this had been built hundreds of years ago. In the front courtyard was the “center of the world”, a marking on the ground which marked the center of Paris.

After the tour, we walked along the Siens river [??] to the Eiffel Tower. Along our walk were vendors of kitschy memorabilia but also old books and posters and artwork. I would’ve given into the temptation to buy, but I didn’t have much room to spare in my panniers. The walk also featured magnificent old buildings, but they were so numerous that we couldn’t keep track of what they were, even. Any one of them could’ve been the centerpiece of a major city, I thought.

We finally arrived at the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t as tall as I imagined and not very beautiful at first glance. After about an hour and a half wait, we took the elevator all the way to the top and looked around in all directions. The sweeping views of the city were amazing! We took the elevator partway down and then walked the rest of the way down, which gave more emphasis in our minds as to how tall the structure was. The police were all around, some with big, imposing looking guns. As we walked down to the metro station, we were greeted by the “unofficial” vendors who had been scattered from the immediate vicinity of the Eiffel Tower by the police presence.

We got some drinks before we headed to bed, tired from all the touristing around.

6/10 – Paris

In our last day in Paris, I got up early and tried to wake up Chris but he was sound asleep (I had told him the night before that if I couldn’t wake him, I’d be leaving early without him). I took the train out to Versailles. I know I’m reusing the same adjectives, but it truly was a majestic palace. The royalty that lived there lived such public lives (they often dined in front of an audience of noblemen), but they probably didn’t imagine their palace turning into a spectacle for the masses. After seeing the king’s and queen’s rooms, the dauphin’s and dauphine’s rooms seemed mild and subdued in comparison.

After Versailles, I took the train back to Paris to the Arc de Triomphe. From there, I walked down the Champs Elyssee and saw much by way of haute couture, but also mass market shops like Gap and H&M. I then arrived at the Louvre. After four hours mostly spent mostly looking at major French paintings, I gave up trying to soak everything in and went back to the hostel to pack. I had gotten quite greedy in my touristing and my right knee was pained – I hoped it would be better by the next day. Chris and I had some drinks at the hostel bar, and I chatted up a man from Montreal – a fellow Canadian! – and learned that the Bloc Quebecois’s hold on Quebec was broken! The NDP (or the NPD, as he called it) was now the ruling party. Amazing stuff!

 

What I’ve Learned While Biking Through Germany, France and England

Oops, I left my day-to-day notes back at home, so my Paris post will have to wait.  In the meanwhile, here’s some stuff I’ve learned while biking in Germany, France and England.

– English IPAs are way less hoppy and way weaker than American IPAs.  In fact, I haven’t found any hoppy beer since I’ve left the U.S.

– Driving on the left is an interesting mindfuck. Turning right is like turning left (and vice versa). As a pedestrian, you have to check the ‘other’ direction first. Lefthanded roundabouts!

– England seems to have way more towns but way fewer grocery stores than France. Germany has towns that start as soon as one ends, and has a lot of grocery stores and amenities.

– England loves free wifi! Oh what a joy it was to find free wifi at every other pub and cafe around town. France and Germany love to charge you for wifi, and access is not reliable.

– On the continent, the “A” roads are the mega-freeways – bikes prohibited!  In England, the equivalent are the “M” roads.

– The Dutch almost always speak English and are almost always awesome.

– The toilet on the trains (at least the Dutch and German ones) empty out onto the tracks immediately when you flush. No kidding! They have signs that say that you must not flush the toilets while the train is stopped at a station.

– When I first arrived and would ask people “Sprechen Sie Englisch, bitte?”, almost everyone here in small town Germany would shake their heads sheepishly or slowly say “Nein”. But I soon learned to add “Ein bissel?” (“a little bit?”) – they would almost all say “Ja” to that.  Almost everyone here speaks enough English to communicate everything needed in a shop transaction, or to ask direction, or even have a good time over a brew – but they’re too shy to answer yes when you ask if they speak English.

– In Germany, roadies – in full kits with bicycles worth as much as a used car – are actually quite fast. In fact, everyone else is fast, too. I got outpaced going up a hill by a grandpa in a squeaky town bike with a six pack in his back basket.

 

Journal notes: Wiesen to (just before) Paris

Someone had asked that I write some posts journal-style, with day-by-day ride notes, so here it is.  Part 1 is Wiesen to Paris.  I have a few blanks to fill in later, which I’ll hopefully get around to, including kilometer counts.

6/4 – Ochsenbuch 159.02

We had visited a bike shop in a nearby town the day before to get my bike in touring shape. The front rotor and brake mechanism were replaced with Shinamo, as they had no Avid rotors. We loaded up our panniers the night before as well, mostly, and we were off bright and early. Unfortunately, we had intended on staying at a hostel, but they were booked up. We called another place, but on the night watchman was on duty, and he spoke no English.

Chris’s “breadcrumb” navigation on his Garmin worked well. He had placed little waypoints that we were to navigate through as we went. As the afternoon wore on, we called both the booked-up hostel (in case of cancellations) and the other place, to no avail. Afternoon became evening, and we started asking people if there was a campground nearby. We got the tip around 6 or 7pm that there was a place not too far, and it was on our breadcrumbed route, so we headed over. An old rusty sign pointed the way in.

When we arrived at the gatehouse, the employees were just leaving. They said there was indeed a campground and that there would still be time for us to get beer and food at the chalet. We biked down and were greeted warmly by one of the owners, a Dutchman who spoke English fluently. He and another Dutchman had purchased the campground (it had been in bankruptcy) and reopened it only two weeks ago.

We set up camp and showered, then went to the chalet for some Grolsch and cheese toasties (grilled cheese). We talked to a group of German recumbant bike tourists as well. They were quite impressed with the distance we were covering – they were doing 80-90 km per day, and they had only arrived at the campground an hour or before we had. We talked about biking on the roads and on paths in Germany (we told them we had given up on paths after one path took us up and down very steep hills before deviating us from the road we needed to get onto – we had to drag our bikes across a ditch and road barrier to get back). It was a good night, and we very much enjoyed our stay at the campground.

6/5 – ? france 166.5

Our second day was warm and partly cloudy. Again, we made good distance despite the hills. Crossing over into France, the sign indicating a different country was less impressive than the signs in the U.S. indicating a different state – it was a very plain highway sign marked “FRANCE” with default speed limits for various road types listed.

Again, we weren’t quite going to make it to the campground we had wanted to get to, so as it became later in the day, we started asking people for campgrounds. Neither Chris nor I spoke French, however, and no one seemed to speak German, let alone English. We finally found a man working in his backyard who spoke English. We got directions from him for a campground not too far away, so we headed there. We made a pit stop to get dinner, but no one there spoke German or English, so it was a lot of guesswork and pointing to get what we wanted.

When we arrived at the campground, there was a wall and a sealed gate, along with a “no trespassing” warning in four languages. It was getting dark now, too, so it wasn’t feasible to go out into the French countryside looking for another campground. We were almost ready to stealthcamp in a field across the way, but, luckily, Chris found an unlocked pedestrian gate. We walked our bikes in and made our way to the campground.

It was mostly a campground for caravans (RVs), and it looked like most everyone was asleep. We found a couple of youngsters hanging out and tried to ask them if it would be okay if we set up camp, but they had no idea. We eventually found a Dutchman who was camping there, who thought it’d be no problem. We picked an empty spot close to the showers and made camp for the night.

Notably, the toilets had no seats (bare porcelain) and no toilet paper. The lights were activated by motion sensor, so if you were sitting still for too long, you’d be in darkness before too long. Good times!

6/6 – Ste Menehoulde 123.4

We woke up in the morning and went to the campground office. It was no problem at all. There were two goats at the side of the office. The brown one only wanted to sit in his chair, while the black one wanted nothing in the world but to get petted by me. He followed me as I walked to the office door, and then watched sadly as I rode off.

We rode against headwind through lots of hilly country (not to mention some rain, but it wasn’t quite so bad), so we didn’t make it to Ste Menehoulde until just before 9pm – we got there as the campground keeper was leaving. I learned later that Ste Menehoulde is significant in French history. When King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled Paris after the revolution began, Ste Menehoulde was where they were recognized – they were later captured and brought back to Paris.

As we were riding through the main drag to get dinner, some jackasses dumped a bucket of (what I will continue to assume was) water on us from their 2nd story apartment. Oh well.

Chris told me that Ste Menehoulde was famous for le pied de cochon, where you eat the whole thing – including bones, so I went to the Cheval Rouge [check] to check it out. The locally made pied de cochon was 9.50, whereas the imported stuff was 5.50. Like as sucker, I got the local stuff. It was good, but I couldn’t quite choke down all of the bones.

6/7 – Reuilly-Savignon 112

Our last day before Paris went through beautiful Champagne country. We passed by many vineyards, including Moet & Chandon. Unfortunately, not only the terrain against us, it rained on us all day. This was the day we stayed at Bill & Meredith’s B&B – take a look at Paying It Forward for the rest.

Okay!  That’s all I got for today.  Next time (whenever I get to internet again), I’ll post my notes for Paris.

 

Paying it forward

The day before we arrived in Paris, we rode through Champagne.  We saw fields and fields of grapes for wineries such as Moët & Chandon.  It had been a pleasant sunny day when we started the day in Sainte-Menehould, but quickly turned sour.  It rained nearly all day with a stiff headwind as well.  We had planned on camping in Château-Thierry, but halfway through our day of getting drenched with no end in sight for the rain, we called an American-run bed and breakfast in Reuilly-Sauvigny that Chris had stayed at in years past.

Bill, the owner, was very apologetic, but the place was full – there was a large group of British motorcycle tourists coming in.  He told us he’d try calling around to nearby B&Bs and hotels; we told him we’d call back in a bit.  On a particularly laborious uphill, Chris got a call.  He grumblingly answered, and it was Bill.  He said we could come by and use his barn for shelter, and we could also use his bathroom and shower.

We arrived at the B&B and was greeted warmly by Meredith, Bill’s wife and co-owner of the B&B. She allowed us to use the shower in their private apartment, did our laundry for us (the clothes we were wearing and also the laundry we had done the night before, which we had hung out to dry on our rear racks but which were soaked by now), and put us up in an adjacent building which was being renovated – very much nicer than what I thought we’d get when I heard “barn”.  They also invited us to join them for breakfast, which we gladly accepted.  They apologized that they had no food for dinner, but offered to let us borrow their car so we could go a few kilometers away to the nearest restaurant – we declined their generosity here, opting to eat our emergency rations instead.

As we left the next morning, Meredith and I talked a bit about her own trips.  She was a hiker – she was soon to go on a 1000 km hike in northern Spain which she had done several times before.  She told us how she was helped along the way on her long hikes by strangers, and that she likes to be helpful to other travelers in need.  She asked that we help other travelers when we can.

It didn’t take long before we got a chance to help another traveler out.  Our first day out of Paris, in Amiens, as we were eating our dinner around 9pm at the campground and caravanning/RV/chalet site, a Dutch bike tourist came in.  He had been staying at hotels but there were no rooms in Amiens (apparently there was a big judo tournament in town) – this was his last hope.  The clerk – again, very apologetically – told him that there were no chalets left.  The clerk and the Dutch tourist frantically tried to brainstorm any possibilities, but at that late hour, it seemed hopeless.  Chris and I offered the Dutch tourist use of my bivouac sack and I would stay with Chris in his two-man tent.  The clerk had a sleeping bag, so we were able to help this bike tourist out.
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On the road, plans go awry and conditions change in unpredictable ways.  A bike tourist is especially at the mercy of what happens around him.  It’s nice to know that there are people out there who will help, and it very much made our day to be able to help a fellow traveler out.

 

European Tour: First Impression

A recap of my Eurotrip thus far and the planned itinerary: I arrived in Frankfurt on June 2 and made my way to Wiesen (with some difficulty – the bus from the nearest train station to Wiesen was not running anymore because it was on holiday schedule!  lucky me).  After getting my gear ready, Chris and I left on our bike tour to Paris, then London. Today, June 8, we arrived in Paris via the Ourcq Canal.  We will spend three nights in Paris and then make our way to London, where we’ll be spending another three nights, before making our way to Holland, then down the Rhine River back to Wiesen.

Bike touring in Germany and France has been exceptional.  Drivers have been generally very respectful.  We have mostly traveled on two-lane highways with almost no shoulder, and I’ve never felt unsafe.  In particular, truck drivers in France have waited patiently behind us, passing only when they could do so completely in the other lane.

Eating on the road in Germany and France has been much better than during the Mississippi River bike tour.  During the Mississippi tour, we consumed mostly fried gas station food.  On this tour, so far, we’ve been eating fresh sandwiches made at delis or butchers, or, at worst, prepackaged sandwiches with smoked meats and cheese and yogurt. During the Mississippi tour, we drank Gatorade mostly.  On this tour, we’re drinking water – the house brand water at supermarkets is about 20 to 40 cents.

As on the Mississippi tour, the folks we’ve met have been exceedingly helpful and friendly.  There’s something about traveling on bike that seems to attract good people.  When we’ve been in a bind, on both trips, we’ve gotten a little help to keep us going.

Those are my first impressions.  I’ll have more to write as my Eurotour winds down – hopefully I’ll have internet access!

 

Keeping in touch from Europe (and beyond)

Certain goods and services that I’ve long taken for granted will suddenly no longer be available to me once I travel outside the U.S. – Friday night cartoons on Fox, terrible public transit service (outside of maybe 3 or 4 mega-metro areas), increasingly higher brow craft beers, and Netflix.  Perhaps more practically, I won’t have access to Google Voice.  There certainly are other options for VoIP, such as Fring, but I found that Fring is often nearly unusable due to latency issues.

This is where USA IP might come on.  They provide a VPN service across not only computer platforms but also iPhone and Android.  I’m hoping to run my Google Voice through the USA IP VPN service to turn my phone into a Google Voice VoIP phone.  I’ll check back in after some use to see how it goes – wish me luck.

 

Showers I’ve Taken

On tour, standards change in ways you might not predict beforehand.  I suppose this is true of any place you go.  When you’re vacationing in Hawaii, your standard for what constitutes a beautiful beach may change.

During my Mississippi River tour, we mostly camped, except in the major cities.  The ability to choose “nicer” campgrounds was a luxury not often afforded us – we were mostly at the mercy of what campground was within about 10 miles of our route (deviating 10 miles from our route would mean a 20 mile return journey to get back to the route).

Most of the campgrounds we stayed at were awesome. State parks in particular were great – they had great amenities for the most part and very few people (I suspect due to the massive flooding and the “cold” weather).  The two most important features that I look for in a campground are 1) a suitable place to pitch my tent, including having a flat grassy spot and being away from very loud noises and harsh bright lights, and 2) potable water on site.  I’ve never encountered a campground not have both of these features.

The third most important feature of a campground is one I could do without for one day at most – a shower facility.  Warm showers are preferable, but if it’s a warm day, I’m willing to take a lukewarm or even cold shower.  At Rocky Springs State Park, there was no shower facility but there was a spigot, so I took a “biker’s shower” – showering with my underwear and shirt on, which has the disadvantage of not letting me get as clean as I would like (and also the disadvantage of being less dignified, but conventional dignity leaves equation within a couple days of bike touring, I find), but has the advantage of letting me clean my underwear and shirt.

The first day of the tour landed us in a campground called Carlos’s Campground.   I called ahead to ask if there were showers, and whereabouts it was located, but I was too tired to ask about much else. We were deep enough in the middle of rural Louisiana that we had no hope of getting to another campground, and it was well past sundown.  I couldn’t find much information on the place online on my Droid, and most of the locals didn’t even seem to know.  When we arrived, I realized it was a long term RV and tiny-cabin camp for Hispanic itinerant workers, not a campground for recreational tourists.  We spoke to Carlos in his office, which was a relatively palatial house at least about three times bigger than the rows of single bedroom cabins that lined his dukedom.  Although the campground was full, Carlos was gracious enough to allow us to camp out at his expansion property on the levee and to use the shower facility there.

It was all very nice of him, and we have a beautiful view of the bayou.  But when I walked into the shower, I was hesitant to use the facilities. The concrete structure had mildew growing everywhere and looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in months, if not years… or ever.  Damp Spanish language celebrity tabloids sat on top of the toilet (I chose to believe they were damp from the humidity).  I eventually decided I would shower after all, but I wore my sandals so I wouldn’t have to touch the floor with my feet, even though this meant that I would have to try to dry the sandals out during the ride the next day and it looked like it may rain.  Chris cheerfully told me that this wasn’t that bad, and that he had showered in much worse facilities.  I regret not taking photographic evidence.

The next day, we stayed at a very nice lady’s doublewide trailer.  I was very, very glad to be showering in an actual residence, although the showerhead was held in place with duct tape and the bathroom floor was shag carpeted.  I felt good about showering again.

Contrasted against our first night, Fort Pillow State Park in Tennessee was probably the best campground shower facility we had.

It was clean and had very hot water!  Plus, the shower curtain actually worked!

It also had a segregated bench area within the individual shower stall where you could place your clean clothes and whatnot.  If this isn’t luxury, I don’t know what is.

And it wasn’t just the shower stalls.  The whole place was pretty immaculate.  A caretaker came by in the morning to “clean” the bathroom and sweep away the leaves outside, even though we were the sole campers that night – I’m fairly sure he must’ve cleaned the place daily.

Later along in the trip, we did come across facilities which weren’t as bad as the facilities on our first night, but were still pretty scary.  It was in Pleasant Hill, Illinois, a dry town with no 3G access on my Droid – a double whammy!  The campground was in an industrial part of town, next to a fairground.

The picture doesn’t quite do justice to the desolation of the place.  There were industrial parks across one street and sad houses across another.  Clearly no one had been here to camp in ages, although – to our relief – the facilities were at least functional.

This is what greeted me inside as I peered into the shower stall…

And here’s the inside of the shower stall in all its glory.  The water was hot, though!  And even though the floor was gross, I left my sandals outside the shower stall – I was so over grossness by this point in the trip, about two weeks in.  I had learned to shift my standards and expectations.  And you know what?  I didn’t catch any dread diseases and I haven’t had to amputate my feet.

Yet.

 

St. Louis to Minneapolis: the actual route

The last leg of the trip was the longest and hilliest, and where we had the worst luck with wind. We made great time, though, including the last two days when we rode over 140 miles each day. Here’s the actual routing.

Day 1: St Louis to Jerome C. Martin, Sr. Memorial Camp Ground, Pleasant Hill, IL

Day 2: Jerome C. Martin, Sr. Memorial Camp Ground, Pleasant Hill, IL to Nauvoo State Park, Nauvoo, IL

Day 3: Nauvoo State Park, Nauvoo, IL to Wildcat Den State Park near Muscatine, IA

Day 4: Wildcat Den State Park near Muscatine, IA to Delaware County Fairgrounds, Manchester, IA (little bit unclear on how we got to Hwy 38)

Day 5: Delaware County Fairgrounds, Manchester, IA to Perrot State Park, Trempealeau, WI

Day 6: Perrot State Park, Trempealeau, WI to Northeast Minneapolis, MN

 

Places I’ve Been

So far this trip, I’ve dined in Warsaw and in Vienna, spied on Keokuk from across the river, biked by Canton, and avoided Cairo due to local conditions. Tomorrow, I may visit Milan.

 

Whoa, new stuff!

Instead of writing a new post, I messed around with some of the sidebar stuff on the main page. Most of it is standard stuff, but I’m excited about / creeped out by the big-brotheresque Google Public Location Badge.