Cycling France: Le Tour de Yum!!!

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Before we arrived in France, I was worried it might be boring after all our adventures in less obvious destinations. In retrospect, that seems ridiculous … even blasphemous.  It’s a biking paradise.  The scenery is gorgeous, the roads are ideal, the wine is the sweet nectar of the gods, and the food must be their ambrosia. If I were immortal, massive quantities of both would be high on my list of indulgence priorities. As if it could get any better, we saw no hint of the rudeness with which the French so often get (mis)credited.   

First things first: the food! Many times, the more reputedly fabulous something is, the less likely it’s actually very interesting.  But the fact is that French food is divine. Even a small table d’hote or cafe in a tiny town will have amazing food prepared lovingly from scratch with fresh, local ingredients.   After marveling about this phenomenon for awhile, and pondering it over many sumptuous mouthfuls, we decided it’s because French people truly and passionately love food and are fiercely proud of their culinary reputation. Fresh food bursting with flavor is the norm, in any form. Whether it’s a housemade ice cream shop (oh. my. god. the best ice cream in the world), a bakery, a fromagerie (make note because this is where you go for local fresh cheeses), or just simple produce (fresh cherries from a Provence market would turn a die-hard junk food eater into a health nut), in France you're almost guaranteed that if it’s edible it’s delectable.  Interestingly, the food is actually better outside of Paris, and from the moment we set foot in Dijon until the moment we left Nice, we were very rarely disappointed, even though our standards became quite hoity toity as we made our way along. A large part of the charm is the diversity of cuisine. Each new area where we biked had its own distinct cuisine, cheeses and wine. Temptations were ubiquitous, so it was a good thing we were biking. Not like we would have done anything different if we hadn’t been!

From Shanghai we landed in Paris, where we spent a lovely week. The meandering days of sightseeing and café life got us all giddy and snuggly. We were sad to leave (despite the exorbitant costs caused by the horrific exchange rate), but excited to start bicycling again. 

Burgundy and The Jura

Dijon, in the province of Burgundy, was the perfect place to start biking – though I suspect few places in France aren’t. We first rode south through the Cote d’Or, a famous wine-growing region. (I know, I know – Aren’t they all famous?  Probably so, but this one is really famous – Nuits St. Georges and all that.) Our first day we seemed to be biking through an infinite post card photo, winding through medieval villages and vineyards to end in the highly charming small city of Beaune. Beaune has a lovely old town, unpretentious local wine experts, and mouth-watering food. There’s no better place to sample the fruits of the surrounding vineyards, which produce some of the finest wines in France. One afternoon we wandered into a tiny, very local wine bar while waiting for our laundry to finish. The walls were shelved to the ceiling with wine bottles, many of them decades old. Locals, who looked as though they might frequent a dive bar if we were back at home, sampled the wines and chatted with the owner. The lack of pretension put us right at ease, and we urged the owner to pick some wines for us to sample.   Each was different and delicious, and he threw in a lecture on the reasons French wine is unquestionably superior to California wine. I tactfully withheld from bringing up the famous tasting competition in which world-famous critics chose California wine over French wine not once, but twice. Ahem.  But, as we learned, there are many differences in the regulations that govern the two wine industries and in the sizes and techniques of individual vineyards. His argument was largely that wine from France is more complex and comes in a more nuanced variety due to the greater number of small vineyards and the lesser degree of interference with the effects of the natural climate. In any event, it was phenomenal wine and the conversation was entertaining. While in Beaune, we also had some amazing food, including our introduction to the classic Burgundy dish: Boeuf Bourgignon. Alas, we had to get back on the bikes and move on. 

We pressed east toward the Jura, which are more or less the northwest foothills of the Alps. The food highlight here was the Escargot Comptois. There we stayed with a very hospitable young family that runs a bed and breakfast at their snail farm. On the menu for dinner: you guessed it, escargot! I had eaten escargot before in Prague, and wasn’t impressed. But these people made amazing escargot, two different ways for one meal. And we got to see all the cute little snails crawling around on the leaves in the hilariously small snail “farm.” The next night, after a reasonable day’s biking, we ended up in one of France’s super posh campsites, which had a restaurant (with good food! even the campsites have good food!) and a beautiful swimming pool. We had to pay 15 Euros, which seemed like a lot to pitch a tent in the rain and have your gear and tent covered in monster slugs by the morning (yuck!), but oh well.  The following night, a very, very cool dude named Simon let us camp for free at his campground, explaining that the special for the day was that “Americans on bicycles camp for free!”

The Alps

As we finally approached the Alps proper, we were a little worried because even though by this point we were seasoned climbing bikers (cue chest beating), we had heard that the grades on many Alpine roads could be extreme. Our first pass, the Col des Glieres, was indeed pretty crazy as we huffed up 900 meters in the last 10 kilometers – a grade of over 11%. This would be hard on road bikes without bags, so it was definitely a bit tough for us. Some encouraging shouts from passing cars (“Bon chance!”) kept our spirits up. After clearing the pass we landed in Le Grand Bornand, a beautiful ski town where we stayed in a studio apartment for cheap and snarfed down a fabulous raclette dinner. When eating raclette, you use a mini oven to melt a half-wheel of raclette cheese in stages and scrape each freshly toasty/melty layer onto your potatoes/veggie /bread. Needless to say, I was ecstatically happy about this process, but more so about its results! When we finally tore ourselves away we tackled a famous Tour de France col (French for mountain pass), the Col des Aravis, which affords a great view of famous Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, from the top. Following that we biked over some smaller passes and eventually made our way over toward the Chartreuse region.

In the Chartreuse, we crossed the easy Col de Tamie but then got ourselves into a slight bind when a town we planned to stay in had no accommodations whatsoever. In order to reach a hotel without diverging from our route (and we didn’t feel like camping), we were forced to bike over a second col for the day, and it turned out to be extremely tough going. The Col de Granier is the first of a series of three famous cols that the Tour de France does in one day – however, the Tour does this particular Col from the northern approach, which is much easier than the crazy eastern approach we were stuck with.   When we finally (!) reached the top a sweet older woman who ran a restaurant called ahead to the next town to make sure we’d have a room. The rate sounded good and when we arrived, thoroughly beat and quite cold, our awesome hostess cooked us a mean, mouthwatering, heaven-sent boeuf bourgignon dinner. The next day we made it over the second and third of the cols, the Col du Cucheron and the Col du Porte, stopping en route for a ridiculously sinful galette with bleu cheese, walnuts and cream (hey it came with a salad!), and then flew down a gorgeous descent into Grenoble.

Grenoble is a pleasant enough city, and the mountain setting is dramatic and beautiful, but we immediately missed the charm, friendliness and better, cheaper food of the smaller villages. After a few days we set off again, climbing up, up, up into the area known as the Vercors. We could immediately perceive the drier climate. The mountains remained rugged and imposing, but imparted a starker beauty than the lush green of the Alps. We camped at a local campground in a village, and ate at a small restaurant that served us yet another unbelievably delicious meal for relatively cheap. This time it was Moroccan-influenced French, and I ended my meal with a ginger-lemon crème brulee that I have not forgotten to this day, going on eight months later. The next day we hit the moderate Col du Rousset, then experienced one of the greatest descents of the year. We practically flew down into the Drome region, amid towering hunks of granite and infinite views. Just past the town of Die we camped at another fancy campground, throwing back Leffes after pitching our tent amongst the summer family campers. 

En route to the small village of Bordeaux, we topped another challenging pass, the Col de la Chaudiere. As we were heading for the pass, one concerned motorist stopped to warn us that we should probably go a different way. Thanks dude, but we made it! Once back down in Bordeaux we lucked upon La Tulipe Sauvage, a lovely but inexpensive chambre d’hote (B&B) run by an older couple named Francoise and Bruno. It’s in a really gorgeous old home, and we had a massive room with a fireplace. The backyard has picnic tables and a swimming pool! It was so relaxing we decided we had to spend a second night in this sleepy little cobble-stoned village. 

Provence

We were stoked to finally reach Provence, where we found yet more amazing food and beautiful, challenging biking. We made our way to Vaison la Romaine, a small, touristy, yet charming Provencal town. In Carpentras, we experienced a revelation when we opted to sample Tunisian food at our guesthouse.  We’d never had Tunisian and were blown away by the preparation of the meats, the spices and the perfect cinnamony couscous accompaniment.  Rivaling our Tunisian dinner was our trip to the farmer’s market. A seemingly endless world of fresh goodness greeted us in the streets on Friday morning. Fresh massive cherries, a sea of olives, herbed-roasted Provencal chickens, and fromagerie carts supplied us with a picnic lunch for the day.

From Carpentras we tackled Mont Ventoux, a legendary Tour de France col. We knew we were in for it when the Canadian road bikers we met were incredulous that we were attempting to go up the thing.  But we thought, come on, we biked the Andes and the Himalayas – it may be hard but we know we can do it. And we did! Okay, yes, fine – it was hard. After the first 40 kilometers we dropped our bags at a campsite in Sault, then made our way up the final 30 kilometers.  Strangely, the top of Mont Ventoux is almost entirely covered in white sand. It was a grueling but gorgeous ride, for which we were rewarded by the 360-degree view from the top.  It’s the highest mountain around for a very long way, which lends it an almost vertigo-inducing vantage point of the surrounding countryside and mountains. At the top we experienced another random moment of French yumminess, as a guy was selling about 100 kinds of homemade sausages.  We opted for a peppered sausage, an herbed sausage and one with blue cheese in it. They were hands down the best sausages I have ever tasted or known to exist in my life. I didn’t even think I liked sausages! They were mind-blowing. I love France.

After Mont Ventoux began lavender country. We biked through seas of purple rows waving in the wind, and were inundated with the scent of fresh lavender.  Unfortunately the bees clearly also enjoyed the lavender, and were present in overwhelming numbers. You could see clouds of bees over all the fields, and I resorted to donning my rain jacket in the oppressive heat to avoid getting pelted by bees on bare skin as I tore past some of the more bee-filled fields. That kind of detracted from the experience a bit, but it was still really beautiful and good-smelling!  Tole had a minor bike breakdown during this leg of the trip, but one day off proved long enough for him to fix the problem.

Lavender country spilled into the gorgeous Gorges du Verdon.  Moustiers St. Marie, just east of the gorge, was one of our favorite villages in France – sure, a little touristy, but so ridiculously quaint that no human, no matter how cynical or travel-hardened, could possibly resist its charms. The entire village winds back and up a steep hill, climaxing in a medieval monastery where a golden star is hung on a line across the canyon.  (Hello? Yep, that’s about as quaint as it gets, folks.) The village itself is full of surprisingly local-feeling restaurants, artsy tourist shops, and pubs with homemade brews. We were especially lucky, because on the night we were there both a village-wide art installation and a craft fair were in full swing. After a lovely afternoon and evening wandering, we biked back down to our campsite, which happily was one of the cheaper ones in Provence. 

The next day we rode through the Gorges du Verdon. It was definitely beautiful, but not, as one British couple (who had never seen the Grand Canyon) suggested, remotely comparable to the Grand Canyon! That night was our final night of camping in France, thankfully at a quiet and inexpensive campground, and we had another fabulous dinner in the village of Compts-sur-Artuby.

Next up was Grasse, a beautiful old mountain city overlooking the Mediterranean from afar. We toured the Fragonard parfumerie, one of several in Grasse, where we learned, and smelled, how perfume is made from raw materials.  Surprisingly interesting! To my complete shock, even Tole enjoyed the perfume tour. 

After Grasse was our final day of biking – not just for France but for our entire year-long trip. Okay, that was pretty weird – how could it be over??? I remember feeling excited about heading down to the Mediterranean, but also pretty dejected and a little freaked out that it was really the last day of our cycling trip. At least the ride was worthy of a last day. For most of it we rode along the French Riviera between Cannes and Les Issambres, with views of sparkling, clear blue water and red-tinged cliffs and rocks. We were pretty disappointed we hadn’t budgeted a day to camp there and do some sea kayaking, but maybe next time. We finally rolled into Les Issambres after a long, hot day, and were greeted by Adavin & Sean, parents of our friend Dave, whom we met on our Antarctica cruise. We couldn’t have imagined a better way to end the trip.  Despite having never met us before we rolled up as sweaty, smelly messes, Adavin and Sean were extremely warm, welcoming and generous hosts, not to mention great conversationalists.  We had an amazing evening sitting on their veranda, drinking French wine, eating Adavin’s fabulous cooking, and talking until the wee hours.

Still we had one more city to see in France – Nice. We arrived by train and fell in love with wandering the narrow, maze-like streets of the old town. And Tole enjoyed rubbernecking (despite a mild case of whiplash) as we strolled along the topless beaches lining the boardwalk.  

We were definitely sad to leave France, but we were also really excited for our final destination: Russia. We flew on to Moscow to meet Tole’s parents and brother. The anticipation level was especially high since Tole and his brother, born in Moscow, had not been back to Russia since leaving there in 1979. Along the way we stopped over in Dublin to see Dave and Natasha, and had a rowdy fun weekend, including their party that featured Sumo Wrestling suits! It’s all in the attached pics.