Day 17 Rest Day

Slept in until 9am, then went for groceries before all the stores closed.  Turns out the French don't usually work in the afternoon, and on Sundays they don't work in the evening either.  But we needed supplies for the rest day (ie. pastries and beers).  After that I spent the day eating and drinking our supplies, watched some of the stage on TV, caught up on my blog, went for a walk and a coffee, then started writing this...

Did I mention my nap?  And we're planning to eat dinner soon.  Not a very eventful day, but a true rest day.  Only thing missing is a bath like last week... just not the same soaking in the shower.

I feel pretty good after riding 15 of the last 16 days, but I'm way overtrained.  The Pyrenees gave me a lot of confidence heading toward the Alps and I'm pretty sure things will finish up without incident.  I just hope the weather is nicer in the Alps than stage 12.  The last couple mountain stages were nice and I could really enjoy the descents (and conserve my brake pads!).

I have to say that the only things that have been a problem so far have to do with certain French customs; the riding's been pretty straight-forward and the drivers, etc are all really courteous to cyclists here (not so much in Vancouver).  But store hours here don't exactly jive with our schedule.  Hardly anything is open in the morning except bakeries and bars (for coffee).  Then in the afternoon, when it would be great to take a break from riding for a nice lunch and a beer, everything is closed up again.  Then when the day ends (usually when we get to the hotel around 11ish), all the restaurants are closed for the night.  And coffee to go is virtually non-existent.

My other beef is with road signs.  The rules of the road (like the roundabouts) are kind of an improvement in many cases, but there are hardly ever any street signs at all, and where they are posted, they're written so small that you can barely see them up close in the middle of the day... making it hard to find hotels driving along at night after a long day riding.  And on top of that, all the directions for the hotels are given according to streets, but signage is usually limited to the town the road takes you to next.  AND, streets have a tendency to change name as you drive along them and without notice.  We've gotten to the point where the expected time to find our hotel once we make it to the correct city is realistically an hour.  Anything under 30min is considered an achievement in itself and warrants a celebratory beer.  Anything over an hour is a failure and deserves a consolation beer.  Anything else usually gets a beer because they're cold.

Now I'm off to walk along the canals of Sete in search of some form of restaurant that has the guts to open on a Sunday in France.