Biking Through France

I let Peter sleep in today because our train was at 1:00, and we didn't have a whole lot going on before then. We had breakfast in the room (the breakfast at the hotel was overpriced) and then wondered about town a bit, and sat and hung out at a coffee shop. We got to the train station early because Peter wanted to play the piano, after a crazy homeless person who was banging on the piano left; he played for about an hour before our train left. Another kid his age came up and sang along while Peter played. Getting on the train, and getting the bikes on the train was pretty straightforward. There was only one other person in our compartment, and they were all kinds of employees around who were helpful in terms of where to put the bike. Unfortunately our seats were facing away from the direction of travel, which was a little disconcerting. Also many times you couldn't actually see the countryside, because there were so many trees right next to the train tracks. But overall very s...

A second day in Nantes Our German biker friends, the ones we ate breakfast with yesterday, weren't around at breakfast this morning. Incidentally, breakfast at this hotel is probably the worst value we've had so far. 13 euros, and just not a lot of variety.  We took a bike ride today to Île de Nantes, the island south of the center, where the huge mechanical elephant is. That was fun to see, and luckily it was actually out and about, "walking" around (actually rolling). Interesting kind of post-industrial landscape, with lots of huge sculptures. I was hoping to bike around the whole island, and indeed that's what the city website says is a great bike ride, but the southern part is all blocked off and impossible to access. We tried a bunch of times, and then finally were able to start taking the bike path in the southeast area of the island. Lots and lots of government buildings, the palace of Justice, the regional government office, etc. They mostly look pretty ra...

At the breakfast buffet this morning we sat with the two German men, who arrived at the same time we did yesterday and were also touring the Loire, camping.  I had a really good conversation with them, we started out in English, but then switched to how I used to speak with my parents, they spoke German and I spoke English. It worked very well. They started at Nevers, and actually did make a big effort to see most of the famous castles along the way. I regretted a little bit, not making more of an effort to see the absolute most famous ones, but oh well. They actually missed the caves, that were east of Tours. They were using a Loire bike trail guide book, as opposed to the actual GPX file, which is what I was using.  They were both special ed teachers, and had done multiple extended bike trips together, they did the North Sea trail, in multiple stages, and many other bike trails. I mentioned leaving my daypack behind, multiple times, and it turned out that one of them had act...

Our last real day of biking, from one town to the next. We may do another city bike day in Nantes, but this is the end of our daily travels. From here on will be in Nantes, then we'll take the train to Paris, and then fly home. Feels a little sad to be getting close to the end of the trip. This morning we had breakfast at the bed and breakfast, I asked our hostess how her twin boys had slept that night, and it wasn't that good, one of them was up a lot, with a cold and teething pains. After getting all packed and ready to go, we were checking out with the husband, whose family is from Cameroon. A very engaging guy, we had a good talk with him, at least 45 minutes, he talked about the very high taxes in France, how he'd love to go to the United States, his impression of the political system in the United States. He said, using his hands to indicate high, medium, and low, "There's God, there's the United States, and there's France". We spoke almost exclu...

Instead of trying to get to Nantes in one day, I'm taking things easier and just doing 25k today. We've had quite a few days of about 50k, and that gets old after a while. Nice breakfast at this bed and breakfast, no baguettes but nice sliced bread, cheese. The hostess and her husband were also full of advice about the bike path, apparently he is a big biker and has been all around France, and done the same route as the tour de France bikers do. I took some pictures of a few pages of the biking guide book, to help in planning. We had a pleasant short ride today, lots of stops for plums, which are ripe and tasty. Oudon castle was where we went to take up some time until tonight's bed and breakfast is available. It's annoying that they mostly have a check-in time of around 4:00, though the past couple nights we were lucky and they allowed us in at around 2.  The castle was fine, medieval. We're getting to the point where we definitely won't do any of this kind of ...

Les Ponts-de-Cé to Saint Florent sur Loire I felt a little bad at breakfast, because our hosts at the bed and breakfast were willing to give us exactly what we wanted (I had mentioned oatmeal and eggs), for 6 Euros, which is the lowest I've heard of for breakfast here. We ended up just doing oatmeal and the standard bread, butter, and jam, I asked him to stop with the eggs which he was about to make. Overall a good stay, we also learned about the local rock used for building, which suddenly changed about halfway through the day yesterday from the white stone which you previously saw absolutely everywhere, to this flat dark brown rock that's stacked. I think he said it was called Ardoise.  Sunday seems like a very busy day on the trails. There were lots of groups out, bikers, dog walkers, walkers, an Aston Martin car group, motorcyclists, runners, and one large group of men that were all about 30, that looked like they were doing a camping trip on bikes. Also we ran across three...