Followed the French election a little last night, as everyone in the campground was talking about it. What a crazy result! What is happening in this world??
Very flat coastal day of riding from Argeles-sur-Mer to Narbonne. We cycled through many beach towns, very quiet for the season, but beautiful, as well as lots of cycling paths that form the beginnings of France’s EuroVelo 8 route. It’s far from compete and we had lots of various surface, and it went from shared roads to dedicated paths many times. The final part of the day was through the Narbonnaise en Méditerranée Natural Regional Park, where we cycled for over 10km on narrow strips of land besides railroad tracks, with ocean on either side.
We saw a few other cycle tourists today and rode part of the way with a guy from Germany who was on the 9th month of his 1-year around-Europe tour, heading back to Germany. Even with 23kg of gear on his sturdy mountainbike (about twice the weight of what we have), he was beating us to the top of every climb. Amazing what that much time on the bike will do for your fitness.
We spent a lot of time in Narbonne looking around this adorable city and getting food for dinner at the market. There are some historic ruins from 118BC near the cathedral and a very scenic river running thru the center. The styles here are quite different from Spain, which is refreshing. While we were shopping across the street from the cathedral, a security guard came up to us and said something really fast in French. We smiled and I said, “désolé, je ne comprends pas”, and he said, “fermé!” Closed. But we had walked right in with the lights on and doors open and never saw any indication the shop was closing. He said we had to leave and couldn’t buy the things in our hands. We protested, and the cashier took pity on us and re-opened her register to check us out. On Monday everything is closed in France, but we were able to find a bakery and one other shop open to complete our shopping for our dinner.
Speaking of food, France is definitely quite a step up in terms of average quality of the food so far. And I’m so happy to have a choice of hundreds of cheeses in the market. Too bad we aren’t here for that many days. Here are some pics of our restaurant and supermarket meals and snacks…
Omg, the French make pâte out of everything. Pâte of speculoos cookies?? It’s like liquid crack frosting. Steve and I ate the whole jar in 24 hours. ?
Tomorrow is a long day and it’s supposed to rain later in the day so we plan to start as early as possible and we changed from camping to a hotel to stay dry in Montpelier.
À demain !
Tim, Beautiful photos!! How are your French language skills serving you? Sooo envious! So looking forward to hearing Steve’s impressions of Paris!! Great plan for a weekend excursion! Love you both! xoxoxox (PS- To make the transition back home when it finally comes…Trader Joe’s has this same Speculoos cookie butter!!)