Tour de France

USA!

Phew, I'm glad this second week is over and I finally get to sleep in. I said I liked how active this trip has been, but I need a recovery period. Anyway, there's something about being out of the US on the 4th of July that makes you even more patriotic than you would have been in the US, or that could just be me. In any event, I was feeling the patriotism on July 4th, especially when the Tour de France came through Montpellier. USA! I actually did get a picture of one of the Americans on the Tour, though I didn't realize it at the time. The cyclists sped by so fast it was difficult to take pictures, but for real.

So, earlier in the day I had gone to the grocery store to buy lunch and among the change I received, consisting of 1 euro coins and 20 cent coins, was a peso. How strange is that? It looks exactly like a euro if you just glance at it, but upon further examination I was able to see that it said 'Chile,' '100 pesos,' and it had a non-European image on it. Strange. Long story short I was able to get rid of it and have now learned to check my change.

Hat hoarders

The whole Tour de France experience is pretty fun in my personal opinion. So we took the tram to around where the finish would be and we had been told to follow the crowds of people. There was no crowd, but do to good intuition we made it! I suppose the crowd had gotten there before we did, but we still had a good spot. It was so hot. I bought a popsicle and my tongue nearly froze to it. I'm not sure if that is an indicator of how hot it was, but I thought it was quite strange. The dangers of popsicle consumption. Who knew? So the caravan started at around 3PM and it's basically just a publicity parade of all the sponsors, only there's a degree of danger associated with the Tour de France caravan not usually associated with normal parades. The caravan consisted of cars with logos and sometimes creations that sped by, sometimes chucking promotional gear out of their windows, roofs, or truck beds. I myself got hit in the head by a madeleine, which is essentially a small cake. But there were also hats, scarves, wristbands, candy, newspapers, magnets, keychains, etc. The people in front of our group were serious hat hoarders though, so hats were hard to come by. In all, the whole caravan experience was fun to see speed by though I wish they had thrown more stuff in our direction rather than onto the side where nobody was.

The cyclists arrived around 5PM. I can't even imagine how on earth they do what they do! It was so hot and they've been riding for hours! I get tired just thinking about riding to DC in the summer. And on Friday, the day they left Montpellier, they didn't even leave in the morning, but at noon! To me it seems like leaving in the morning would be best because that way you have a couple of cool hours, but I don't really know anything about cycling let alone le Tour de France.

For dinner on the 4th of July we all went to a restaurant called Pirates Paradise. Imagine the Rain Forest Café only pirate themed. The food was okay, but we were mainly there for the tackiness and the sword fights.

Friday after the Tour left we went on a tour of the city center and we saw these old Jewish baths in a cellar type area, which was pretty cool and we also got to climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The views were nice, but the sun was brutal.