Baccarat to Nancy - With the Tour de France thrown in

The Tour de France is a funny spectacle. What they don't show you on television is the shit show that happens before the riders really even get going. There's a parade of sponsor floats that throw out swag and pump up the crowd. With loud MC's per float. And dance music. And some club dancers. All threw out free crap. People LOVE their free crap and people get into this race, it's crazy. We ended up getting to a very small town or village a few hours before the race was scheduled to arrive. We lucked out with a very beautiful day and so we enjoyed the sight seeing and down time. There were a lot of people and some were in caravans, apparently traveling the route with the race. There were parties and a few would-be tasty bits in very tiny dresses, I presume in hopes, to catch the eye of any professional rider zooming by at a 30+km speed. Yes madame, that heavily sponsor paid rider is going to stop to get your digits. Tour riders are to French women, as to pro baseball jocks are to Yank women, a hunky testosterone filled walking bag of money and fame. 

Views like this was worth all the pain in my thighs

He was a zesty man in very little shorts. Makes me want to do laundry

We managed a sample of these. They were dry. Not impressed

I'm sure it's totally worth it

This town has one AAA-mazing taxidermy store.

So the section of the race we saw was over in seconds(I'm sure I could make some reference to teenage sex but I think that would be too obvious), a bit anti climatic(obvious teenage sex comment withheld again) for all the floats and wait but I will admit, it was pretty cool to be able to see a leg of the race live. I'd do it again. As we left and a few days after, we had people pointing and telling us we were going the wrong way and the Tour was in the other direction. Yep, didn't get old.

I can't remember the name of this town but it wasn't the friendliest for bicycles and the people seemed a bit Mtv's Jersey Shore douchy

If you're keeping count, I think this is spoke #6. I don't even remember anymore

By the time we reached Nancy we were both tired. The race had set us back a bit on the time schedule so we felt a bit pressed for time. Plus there were hills-SURPRISE. We managed to find a tourist information sign that showed us a campground in town. What the map didn't tell us was the sheer epic monster size of the hill we had to climb to get to it. It was by far, the WORST climb on the whole trip. Even Greg said it was hell. I walked it 3/4 of the way and rode the rest. Even walking the sucker was extremely hard. It wasn't just steep, it was long too. I've looked it up on Google maps but the street view just doesn't do it justice or show just how steep the fucker was. By the time I got on my bike and psyched myself up to finish the ride, I saw another cyclist, sans 50lbs of gear, obviously training or exercising, DYING coming up that hill. He stopped where I was and we just shared a common knowledge glance and off I went to meet up with Greg.

Saverne to Baccarat

Getting out of Saverne was easy. Getting to Baccarat, not so much. The trails we were following were pretty easy but of course, at some point, we missed a sign or something and lost our way. At one point we ended up in the hills and found our way back to the canal on the other side. However, what started out as lovely paved trails next to the canal, turned into small dirt ruts. Having done that gig in Serbia, we were not about to have that again. At some point we found a bicycle shop in a small town and the shop owner, ex military, was able to help us find a way to Baccarat. I would like to note that the shop owner was an amazing guy. He pulled out a spare military map that had all the elevations and charted a shorter route to our end city. Unfortunately there was no getting around a few hills, one thigh burning puke worthy one, and we got to see some really great little gems. I'm sure he saved us a lot of extra kilometers. We are very thankful for that man.

This part of the route was an old canal route. People still live in the houses along it

our lives packed into 5 small bags

Just some cows saying Hi. No big deal

As in Germany, France is littered with memorials and reminders of the wars

sooo ugly. Bah

Home sweet home. We had a 3 person tent for our trip. Still tight with our gear

As with so many other cities on this trip, we only stayed for a night and didn't really get to explore. Oh well. We were in a hurry to catch the Tour de France! 

Seltz to Saverne

This day started out as one beautiful, amazing ride....When we went to leave our campground the attendees weren't there yet for us to pay. It was a weird place. It was mostly people who had permanent trailers and then a couple small patches of dying grass for the tent campers. So us and another touring couple were kind of sitting there all packed and ready to go but not knowing what to pay or do. Since we were on a tight schedule we opted to leave a payment of 13Euro and take off. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure we over payed. So here we are, kind of hauling ass out of town and we're imagining we're going to get chased down. It was kind of fun, not going to lie. On this day we experienced our first French pastry of the trip. Good great googly-moogly, it was a fantastic introduction. 

Apparently there are bike trails that follow the canals in France and apparently we could have somehow rode from Seltz to Saverne and on to Paris all on canals. We, of course, didn't do this, as it would have taken far too long. As the ride progressed we hit some major hills; Greg is a climber, so he loved them, of course. Normally I am a baby about hills but for some reason this day, I just rolled with it. There was some doozies but I took my time and took in the scenery. It was stunning. It was a good day. On our last climb we noticed some pretty gnarly looking storm clouds quickly rolling in, by the end of our epic down hill, it was raining. I'm also pretty sure we ended up on a Tour de France route that hadn't rolled through yet.

no, not an IKEA but a Volvo dealer. We just loved the contrast of bright colors

As with a lot on this trip, we got rained on. It started when we were getting to the city outskirts and I think we laughed. It had become so commonplace to get rained on. Once we got onto the city's main historic drag, we found the tourist office, a campground, and a store for dinner supplies. After a long up and down ride we finished with a little insult to tired legs - an uphill climb to the campground, but of course.

Still waking up. Damn good quiche though

you could get visually drunk on this city

Saverne is a very picturesque town(aren't they all?) but unfortunately we only spared an hour to check out a few of the buildings and the main drag. The tourist office speaks English and has free wifi, by the way. We found our way to the canal and headed west, towards the Tour de France route we were meeting up with and Paris.