Thursday, August 5, 2010

I'm on a bike!

Yeah, I know. I haven't been updating this very much. Sorry. The thing is I've been pretty busy lounging around French hotel rooms in fuzzy pink robes. No time for blogging, suckers! Oh wait. No. But I have been busy riding around the French countryside enjoying the sights, the food, wine, and of course the café.

We just got back from a sick ride through the hilly Parc du Morvan. Not sure how many k we went because guide L gave me and N some suggestions of extra hills (this is because we are "athletic" which is a lie; N is athletic and I'm the fatass trying to recover from my first year of medical school). Maybe 70 k (about 42 miles) but it was ALL rolling hills! The scenery is super beautiful: it reminds me a lot of Northern CA with rolling hills of farmland with forests mixed in. We even saw some banana slugs on the road!

As for the past few days, here's a (super) brief recap:
Monday: cycled through the hills of Chablis. It was hot and I almost died (not true). N and I got a little lost and ended up off-roading through vineyards to get back to a main road. We also had a good photo shoot at a vista point overlooking the Chablis valley that involved me trying to set up the self-timer on my camera in a tree. In the town of Auxerre, we went to an amazing chocolatiere who sold all sorts of macaroons and caramels and icecream. Yum!
Tuesday: umm I don't remember where we went (sorry, no route sheet on me and I'm in bed and I'm tired). BUT! It was a super great ride complete with a photo shoot on rounds of hay and a picnic next to ruins of an old fort (pictured). We ended the day riding along the river.
Wednesday: we left our hotel in Cravant (of fuzzy robe fame) and made our way to Avallon. We stopped in Vezelay, which is on top of a hill (mountain: I had to walk my bike up and even then I was panting and out of breath). Vezelay also has a basilica with relics of Mary Magdalene (I'm just going to say it: relics are weird and most of the time I don't understand them or they are gross... like the time I saw some saint's hand (HAND!) in Budapest). The town was touristy but still very cute and reminded me of a lot of the hill towns in Provence.

Okay. Obviously there is tons more I could talk about, but as I said before I'm tired. And my hands are kinda falling asleep from holding my phone up in bed.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

2 comments:

  1. Have I told you how much I love you ~ and your blogs? They make my day so complete! Glad you're having such a good trip. Love you and miss you tons!

    Creepy Lady... aka Mom...

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  2. P.S. Work on those photos! I'm tired of looking sideways!

    ReplyDelete