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December 20 - January 5 World bicycle tour stalled on the French Riviera Sharon and I decide this would be a great opportunity for us to see the sights of Paris with French interpreters since all of the Lanteigne's speak French -- better than their English actually. I go with Roger and Sonia to the train station to check out prices as the travel office didn't have them. The train price turns out to be the same price ($200) as the plane, but it would take seven hours on the TGV, the fast train, and 10-12 hours on the slower trains, compared to an hour to fly. They decide to fly from Aix because that's where Sonia rented the car from which she drove to Cannes and they have to return it there. Sharon and I would have to take a train to Aix since seven of us can't fit into the little sub compact rental car. From Aix, we would all take a bus to the airport and then fly to Paris. I decide the price and hassle is too steep for me and I balk. We plan on going to Paris in the spring anyway. We think Paris will be cold and rainy now. We'll have to get two rooms in Paris for all of us. Food will be expensive. There will be lots of walking and wandering, trying to find stuff. What Sharon and I need right now is to just lay around and veg. Relax, eat, sleep, and read I figure. And that is exactly what we do. We sleep in. We walk along the beach. We watch sunsets from the balcony. We catch up on news and sports on CNN. It feels good to know where we will be sleeping at night, not worrying about trying to find a place -- although we are getting adept at finding good places -- and once it gets dark, which is an early 6 PM, it is difficult to find us. We're discrete bicycle touring campers. We are eating well. Lots of pudding, yogurt, baguettes, strawberry, cherry and myrtle berry jams, eggs, hash browns, potatoes, cheese, pasta, and Sharon found crepes that she puts vanilla pudding in the middle with sliced bananas and chips off a chocolate bar that she heats in the frying pan. Then I put ice cream on top -- either chocolate or a slice of Noel ice cream log. Divine. Fruit too -- oranges, bananas (expensive), pears, apples, plus we tried figs, and discovered dates from Tunisia in the market which are marvelously honey sweet. Nothing like the dried packaged stuff back home. On Christmas we have chicken breasts and roast beef. We both phone home to wish everyone Merry Christmas. It doesn't feel much like Christmas on the French Riviera -- no tree, no snow, no gifts. The girls have put up some tinselly ribbon around the mirror. We were going to buy each other new cycling shoes for gifts, but when we went back to look at them again we discovered they were pretty poorly made. The stitching was already coming apart and they all have cleat holes on the bottom that I can feel when I walk. We are told by the saleslady (again) that we can look, but don't touch. Ask if we need help she says and then she walks away to never return. We gave each other a sun check (rather than a rain check) and we walk away too. I buy glue and waterproof spray at the Intermarche to try and rejuvenate our worn puppies. The decorated trees here are hilarious. I am using the term "decorated" loosely. Only the top of the tree is decorated (I later found out they quit decorating the bottom because the baubles got stolen). It looks as if someone opened last year's box of Christmas decorations and heaved it at the tree. Gold and silver garland is heaped haphazardly over the branches. It doesn't look good at all. The French obviously haven't got the hang of tree decorating. No one says Merry Christmas or Joyeux Noel. We did see an anorexic Santa Claus outside one store when we toured the Cannes Film Festival building. No carols, no donations for Santa's anonymous or charity, no goodwill. (Roger asked a shopkeeper in Paris why lots of stores were closed and the guy replied because it's a statutory holiday. The government won't let us work with all the statutory holidays. The shopkeeper didn't even say because it's Christmas.) Imagine. And the French are supposed to be 90% Catholic. I don't get it. Tales from Paris. Cold -12º C with the windchill. Food was expensive. They ate at McDonalds, a Greek place, and TGI Friday (an American place with large servings). Saw the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre. They were outside Notre Dame for midnight mass with lots of other tourists. Stayed in a scummy hotel near the centre of town that Roger dealt the guy down in price saying "Look, I'm just a poor family man." Suzanne says the room was so yucky they slept in their clothes for three days and were too disgusted to use the shower. France wondered what the smell was on the subway and then saw someone had taken a dump on the windowsill and a big turd was laying there. We fed them the remainder of our Christmas dinner as they were starved and looked beat. The Intermarche closed twenty minutes before they got back. They'd fit right in with our luck as bicycle tourists. To top it off, so many people have checked into the hotel over the holidays that the hot water is no longer hot. Sonia tries to take a bath, but it is cold. Roger phones the desk to demand they send up hot water. But they have already gone home for the night. To hot baths, no doubt. The air surrounding the Eiffel tower weighs more than the tower itself. The force exerted upon the ground by each of the tower's four legs is less than that of someone sitting on a chair. Amazing, but true, facts from the world of architecture. The arc is massive. Roger says it has to be seen to be realized. The taxi from Nice to La Bocca cost $100 each time they have taken it. Everyone is tired from their Paris trip. No talk of going to Italy now. Paris must have cost a bundle. They had driven the rental car into Italy toward Rome. Just over the border no one spoke French or understood it. Roger tried mooing to get milk for his coffee -- all for naught. A hotel room cost $300 and they would only allow two people in it. The toll roads set them back another $100 and they have only gone about 100 miles. They don't like the N roads because they wind all over and go through every little town every five kilometres, so it is slow going. Hmmm. Just like on a touring bicycle. Last night we gave them what we had left of bread we had bought the day before. Sharon had wrapped it in a plastic bag to keep it from going stale and moisture in the plastic bag had caused the outside crust to soften. They loved it! Now they always buy their bread and keep it in a plastic bag for two days before they eat it! We bought Roger and Suzanne mugs for their tea, since they don't like using bowls like the French and the demitasse mugs the French use for coffee are teeny. Roger says he always feels like he's playing house when he drinks from them. Because Roger and Suzanne come from French backgrounds we are surprised at how much they don't like the way France does things. There's no toast here. Suzanne turns on the grill and puts slices of baguettes on the rack. They found Heinz ketchup for eggs and hash browns and mayo to make chicken salad sandwiches. I found popcorn kernels for Sharon and laid the bag on her pillow for a Christmas present. Modesty prevents me from saying what she gave me. Tales from Roger. When their parents would go out they would stick their feet in the oven and then run barefoot in the snow as far as they could. Roger has two brothers, one older and one younger. The younger by only a couple of years, but he was always referred to as the baby. And whatever they did, the baby wanted to try too. He ran out into the snow, but it got too cold on his feet to run back into the house, so he laid down in a snow bank on his back and stuck his feet up in the air. Just then their mom and dad got home. After a few minutes someone asks Where's baby? He is still out in the snow bank with his feet in the air. They have to carry him into the house frozen in that position. Boy, Roger says, did they ever get a licking that night. No supper either. School had wooden desks. Roger was drilling a big round hole inside his desk, scratching around and around with his compass point. Then when he had a big gouge drilled in, he broke off the heads of wooden matches and stored them in the hole in his desk. The next day he goes to continue picking at this hole and has forgotten about putting the match heads in there. Pick. Pick. Pick. Boom! His desk blows apart. His hands are blown right into his face. Pieces of his wooden desk imbed themselves into the ceiling. The teacher was flabbergasted. Roger says he told him he didn't know what happened. He was just sitting there and all of a sudden his desk blew up! Another time Roger and his brother built a gun and stuffed too much gun powder in it. One time the powder got wet. It clogged when they fired the gun. It blew up in their faces and blew part of Roger's finger off. He says he saw blood everywhere -- both of their faces were bleeding. When he saw it was only his finger he wasn't worried. As he says, I figured it was only one, so I still had nine left. They ran for home with Roger clamping his hanging bloody finger in his fist. He said to his brother, "Are you seeing everything in red?" Yes his brother answered. And are you running in slow motion. Yes. Kind of neat isn't it? They got home and Roger went to his room, still holding his finger. When he didn't come down for supper his dad checked on him. Roger opened his fist. Let's go to the hospital, his dad says. The doctor stitched it back on, saying he would never bend it again. "He lied," Roger says as he proudly bends his finger. His brother got expelled from university. They had shot a partridge and thrown it in the garbage can. The can never got emptied. Days later they found this maggot infested terrifically stinky bird. His brother cuts the feet off and dips them in black India ink and then proceeds to make little black bird footie prints all the way down the hallway, on the walls, and on the ceiling, and into another guy's room. The he sticks the smelly partridge in this guy's bed under the covers. Boy did he yell when his feet touched that partridge. And that is one way to get expelled. Roger flooded the guy's room below his by hooking up a hose to his faucet then swinging it in through the window and turning it on. When it ran for a while he shut it off and pulled the hose back in. The water seeped through the ceiling of the cafeteria. The guy got in trouble because they figured he must have forgotten to turn his tub off. Roger's brother still does practical jokes.
He took a sign from in town that they have a lottery with to
predict the ice break up and hauled it to the top of Sugar Loaf
Mountain. When everyone is standing around looking at it, he'll
be there in the crowd too, going "Will you look at that." We found an area with a great park. We often go to eat and read there. After days of searching the beach, Roger found a topless sunbather. He has a bet with his co-workers that there will be topless sunbathers. They say it's the winter and there won't be anyone and made him a bet that there wouldn't be any. Roger stripped right on the beach to put on the Mickey Mouse shorts the women at work gave him to take a picture in so they would believe that there were topless women here at this time of year. "You did it discretely?" Sharon asks. "Oh, no," Roger says, "I just went up to her and starting clicking away, then I sat down beside her so Suzanne could take our picture. You know, I wouldn't recognize her if I saw her in the lobby. She looked real good when she put her arms up like this. My, oh my!" As midnight approached for New Year's, Roger and Suzanne took out all of the kitchen's pots and pans, went out onto the balcony and started beating on them and yelling. What a racket! Fireworks and fire crackers were going off. The people next door to us came out on their balcony with pots and pans too and started to clank them together. I ran over to our suite and took a frying pan and soup ladle and started to drum out a beat. Soon, other people all around the complex, which is shaped like a U with everyone's balcony facing the pool and overlooking the Mediterranean, are out banging on pots and pans. It was hilarious. I could hear people drumming my beat long after I had quit. Hard on the wrists. I bet the hotel is going to wonder why all their pots and pans are dented. The people above have added a new twist -- they filled their pots with water and then poured them over their balcony into Roger and Suzanne's pots. Maybe they though we were all wet? Probably they were right because right after the pot banging, France, Sonia and Rachel ran down to the pool and fully clothed, except shoes, jumped in and swam a few strokes in the frigid water. Three guys in suits were passing by to a party and the girls somehow convinced them to jump in to. After shedding their suits down to their skivvies they jumped in too. People were yelling and clapping. By the time the girls got back to the apartment they were blue. It's chilly, even for crazy Canadians. We thought Sonia was returning to Aix to continue classes, but we just found out she flew home. She is continuing her coursework in Halifax. She has seen a doctor here and she has an allergy to mold. Mme Mayer's house is too scuzzy, cold, and stinky. All Sonia's friends have moved to other places. When Sonia arrived in October there were thirteen girls there. Now there are three -- oops, make that two. Sonia is allergic to the pollen and dust. Her parents are grieved she couldn't stick it out another three and a half months. It cost them a lot of money to send her. Good schooling and experience too. We went with Roger and Suzanne and France and Rachel to St Marguerite Island. There are monks there who make wine. An old fort is there. We walk around two islands. It is cold. In a shady spot there is still frost and ice on a puddle at 4 in the afternoon. This is rare everyone says. We hear that often while bicycle touring. |
