The Tour de France....in the blink of an eye (July 24, 2008)

Before my Tour de France report, let me just say that the winetasting last night was pleasant, interesting, fun because of the group I was with, but probably not worth 20 euros. Nothing major to report there. We were in teams by tables, and our team consisted of four Americans and our Canadian friend Valerie, so we named our team Yankinook, and after tasting the wines and taking the quiz we came in second place. No big deal, because the first place winners just won a wine glass from the establishment, and that would have just been another think to figure out how to get home without breaking!

Today we went to our first class, then all ten of us went to town to watch the Tour de France. We bought sandwiches and pastries and asked the police where the best place to stand was, and then claimed our spots and waited. And waited. And waited in the bright sun. The advertising caravan came through and threw trinkets at us. I got a few souvenirs. The only one of our group to have any experience with this was Kristen, and she warned us that when the cyclists came through we would miss it if we blinked, and not to expect to get any good pictures. So we all decided to try to video rather than take still shots.

I think some of the others got better video than I, and I hope to import theirs sometime. The unfortunate thing is, I was so busy trying to capture the event, that I didn't really get to experience it! Oh well, c'est la vie! Here is a still picture from the video I captured. Kristen was right....by this stage of the race (only 2 days left), there aren't many cyclists left in the race and it was over before we knew it! But it was still fun!

Tonight it's petanque (boules) and barbecue!

Ciao for now!