to Nancy and the Tour de France

Well! we can now say that we've done the Tour de France! but first you have to hear about us getting to Nancy.

We spent all day Wednesday driving the auto routes from Val d'Isere in overcast and rain. We did over 600 km which is quite a lot but managed well since we weren't going through a lot of small towns. The auto route is a toll road and we spent over 40euros on tolls but we made it safely. We stopped periodically along the way at the rest stops and got prepared food. Nothing fancy, but clean restrooms and lots of food to choose from.

We arrived in Nancy and moved into the 3rd floor apartment of Shannon's host parents. Steve and I stayed in and tried to catch up on the day's proceedings of the Tour de France on TV and Shannon and Anna went out to visit Shannon's rotary friends here in town.

Thursday morning we woke up to overcast skies and cool weather so took all our rain gear and walked over to the finish line of the Tour de France in Nancy. All the barricades were already in place at 11 am w/all the press vehicles stationed in a large square. There were already people staking out their spots to watch the finish. So we did too. Even though the race didn't finish till after 5 pm. Shannon had met one of her Rotary friends near Stanislas square (where the art nouveau gates are) . We took turns holding spaces for 5 of us.

What a scene! We stood there for about 6 hours mostly watching the vendors go by passing out free hats, key chains, food, coffee, water, pastries, neckerchiefs, phone cards and who knows what else. There was a TV across the road from us so we mostly watched the tour on the TV screen. About an hour before the racers passed the finish line stream after stream of vendor cars came by w/ all sorts of 3d logos/mascots attached to their vehicles (and of course pretty girls). We also saw a guy on a Segway passing out coffee.

Then 1 single guy raced to the finish line and several waves of riders came by and that was it. It had been raining off and on most of the day, so it looked like there were several crashes, since several riders came by w/some pretty visible roadrash.

We are at the cyber cafe in Nancy that has the web camera that I've been watching these past 9 months in hopes of seeing Shannon. Steve and I stood in front of the web camera and waved to "you all" today.

Tomorrow we are meeting Shannon's Rotary advisor and he and his wife will show us around Nancy for 2 hours and then we will have lunch with them. Steve and I also picked up a walking tour of the historic spots of Nancy so we may also do that too.

Shannon and Anna are w/Shannon's Nancy friends tonight going to a movie. Shannon is trying to hang out w/them as much as possible before they all go back to the states.

To answer some of your questions.... We've been drinking some wine, not a lot. It doesn't seem to be that expensive. Mostly, I've been eating lots and lots of goat cheese. It is very very reasonable. Also lots of very good bread. Steve has mostly been trying to find a reasonable beer. He's been drinking 1664 which is kind of like Michelob. We found small bottles of Chimay in Val d'Isers so he treated himself there. He also found a brand of Belgium beer that he seems to like.