I heart the Mediterranean

The French Riviera supposedly sees 300 days of sunshine a year - but that still leaves 65 days of gray clouds and rain, and this is definitely one of them. No matter - makes me feel less guilty about spending a couple hours indoors in an Internet cafe, updating my blog and sending emails. I arrived in Nice via plane yesterday afternoon, and I'll be based out of Nice for the duration of my trip, until I fly out on Friday morning.

Nice is full of block after block of Belle Epoch buildings, and I think they are my favorite architecture I've seen on my trip. They have all of the intricacies and curly details of the buildings of Paris - wrought-iron balconies and railings, carved stonework decorations - but they also have the terra-cotta clay roofs and pastel building colors of a beach town. The combination makes me very very happy. Unfortunately, once you look down past the rooftops and balconies and onto the street level, you see the realities of Nice as a major city and tourist town as well - garish neon signs, tobacco shops, and asphalt paved roads (no more quaint cobblestone roads, and little in the way of pedestrian walkways, with the exception of the beach promenade). Still, if you start your pictures at the second floor and above, the buildings are beautiful in their light and peaceful colors and ornamental decoration.

To catch up on the last few days ...

on Wednesday I took my bike on the train back to Tours and biked from Tours to Chinon (roughly 55 km), stopping on the way to take pictures at the medieval fortress castle of Langleais and the fairy-tale castle of Usse. I took a bit long with pictures and had to book it to Chinon (including FLYING down the steep hill from the city castle into town), but I made it to the Chinon train station with a whole three minutes to spare before Andrew's train arrived. We spent the rest of the day resting up and walking around the city. Thursday I rode out to the small villages at the Loire-Cher river intersection and climbed up the bluff to enjoy the panoramic view over the valley, then rode on to a medieval abbey. Bike tire was flat again when I left the abbey (no puncture this time - just not holding air very well), so I inflated with my hand pump as best as I could then rode on the soft tire back to Chinon. After another rough ride on a soft tire, I was happy to be done with bike riding for this trip. Mental note to self: for serious touring, it's probably worth the extra hassle to bring a bike you know and love from home, and have it fully serviced with new or near-new components before heading out. Rental bikes are fine for rolling around here or there, but they're well used - you don't want to risk getting a bike whose tires/brakes/shifters (or all of the above, in my case) are on their last legs.

Friday we toured Chenonceau, the castle built on an arched bridge over the Cher River (according to Rick Steves, it's the 3rd most-visited chateau in France). The setting is almost Disney-animatedly perfect, and the castle is fantastic both inside and out. Weather for the day was pretty good too - sunny and warm. On Saturday we took the train back to Tours, then Paris (even managed to buy tickets and make it to the second train on time, with only an 9-minute layover between trains - props to Andrew for that one!), then whiled away our last afternoon and evening in Paris. The weather was absolutely perfect - sunny, calm breeze, neither warm nor cold, not a cloud in the sky. We felt like real Parisians living the joy of life, just lazily eating pastries and fruit and people-watching in the parks near the Eiffel Tower. I was content for several hours to skip joining the tourist masses at the base of the tower in favor of warming the park benches and enjoying the view from the ground ... but around 6 PM we decided to brave the throngs and go climb the stairs to the second floor of the world's largest radio antenna. It was fun circling the floors and seeing the skyline, recognizing the buildings and bridges we'd toured earlier ... and we had a great view when the Tower turned on its night lights. Spent the night at a hotel out by the airport, then Andrew and I were in transit for much of Sunday - he on his way back to the States, me on my way down to Nice for the remaining days of my trip.

Well, it looks like it may have stopped raining, and I should probably go find some food. Au revoir!