Trying to be like Lance

---

---

As a group, we may have collectively overestimated our biking abilities. Since some of us don’t have class Fridays, today we attempted to bike to Villandry, a chateau known for beautiful gardens—it’s only 17 km from Tours, so like 10ish miles. Quick ride, right? No. There was supposed to be a super easy bike bath to follow once we crossed the Cher river, but it was nowhere to be found. So we were lost, slightly south of Tours for a while, Denise, Annie, and Allison ended up turning around because they needed to be home before too late, leaving me, Mackenzie, and Steph’s cousin Adam (who was visiting for the week) to continue to try to find the right path. Luckily it was a beautiful day—perfect for biking except a bit of wind coming straight at us for the entire journey.

However, getting lost and being tired caused us to arrive later than expected, and we realized that there was no way we would be able to make it home before dark or before the bike shop closed (and we needed to have the bikes back that day if we didn’t want to pay a lot more). Upon arriving in the tiny town of Villandry (population about 1,000) Mackenzie took initiative to find the Tourism office to figure out how to take a bus home. There are only buses on Wednesdays and Saturdays between Villandry and Tours. But there’s a train from a city not too far away. But only on Saturday. A taxi that would fit our bikes would be super expensive. The two girls working there were so nice though. They saw the kind of bikes we had a told us that there was a hotel across the street that rented that kind of bikes, and they thought we could return them there! The woman who worked at the hotel was so nice (and she told us our French was good—let’s be honest we were pretty much in love with her). Long story short, they took our bikes back there for just slightly more than it would have been to return them in Tours and one of the women at the Tourism office lived in Tours and offered to give us a ride home! Whoever says French people can’t be nice is completely wrong. They were so so nice.

The only catch was we had to pay in cash, which for the first time since I’ve been here I only had 5 euros on me. So, I biked 2km back to the closest ATM (haha) Although it was really beautiful and not a hard ride, so it was kind of fun. Biking through the French countryside really was beautiful. When I got back Mackenzie had bought some baguette with chocolate baked into it for me (she knows me too well) and then we went to check out the gardens at the chateau. They were so pretty! We walked around for about an hour taking pictures and were so glad we came! We didn’t go inside because we’ve heard that the inside of the castle isn’t all that cool, and also because we didn’t actually see a way to get in. As you can see from all the pictures it was fabulous!

After our jaunt taking pictures and admiring the beauty of France, we went back to the hotel and had a small coffee there and waited until the really nice person at the Tourism office drove us home.

I filled Marguerite in on the happenings once I got home (and the rest of the family when they got home) and they all thought that was hilarious and were shocked that a random person gave us a ride home. I think she was intrigued at the idea of American tourists in the winter.

We will return in the spring when there are flowers in the garden. I will bike again, and we will leave earlier. And it will be fabulous.

---

Comments

[Mom]

Biking adventure
Good fun! I'm glad it all turned out well. I look forward to hearing the about the next bike trip!

[Alex]

I love the optimistic certainty you end the entry with.