Merci Beaucoup France ??

It’s hard to believe we’ve already pedaled through the French part of our world tour.  It was a quick two weeks filled with lots of calories, a 36-hour whirlwind walking tour of Paris, and stunning coastline along the French Riviera.  It was colder than we liked and more rain than we had anticipated for this time of year, but I fell in LOVE with France for many reasons.

Merci for:

• baguettes under a euro
• crosiants, pain au chocolat, almond crosiants, beignets, and crepes
• croque monsieurs, truffles, camembert cheese, and all other cheeses we consumed
• Paris, Paris, Paris…will ? ever be the same?
• the beautiful colors of all the shutters on your homes and buildings that are actually used and functional
• Electing a new President for the majority of the people and resisting fear and racism from the other candidate.

No Merci for:

• the unfortunate bad drivers (except Patrice) that we experienced throughout our two weeks in what we thought was a cyclist friendly country
• the rain and 10-15 degrees Celsius 
• not cleaning up your dog ?

We had an amazing visit in Vitrolles with Tim’s (now my) friends Yann & Patrice.  We were able to take five rest days and get the grand tour of some of their favorite areas of Cassis, Marseille, and Aix-en-Provence.  Yann’s crepes are the best and Patrice cooks a mean sausage….Oh La La.

After we left our friends we pedaled to the stunning and picturesque French Riviera-Cote d’ Azur through the famous cities of Toulon, Cannes (where they are preparing for the 70th annual film festival coming up), Antibes, and Nice.

Today we were in 3 countries as we left Nice in an unexpected cool rain that we didn’t see in the forecast.  We had lunch in Monaco and went to the tourism office to get our passport stamped for another country, and arrived in Italy.  It was a beautiful ride all along the coast and the last 2km before our campground on the beach was cyclimg through a tunnel that used to be a railway.  It had a dedicated two-lane bike path and pedestrian paths as well.  Also throughout the tunnel were posters overhead with the history of cycling in Italy.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from France.  Looking back through my photos I didn’t take very many and blame it on the cold and rainy weather.  ?

This was the cutest site we saw on a bike path and had to turn around and just gaze at them.  I told the Mama that she had beautiful piglets and that I’d never eat bacon again.  I don’t think she believed one of those.

Cassis

Antibes