Mototour 2007 - day 4

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MOTOTOUR 2007

Day 4: Utrecht to Orleans
Distance: 614 km (of 8,667 km total)

Left the house at 8 am. - Paulien and Ferry had to leave for work. Once outside the house: packing everything onto the bike. That, plus tanking up: we left Utrecht by 9.30. We have got to get better at this!

We made a stop at Breda, the final Dutch town before Germany, so Zak could buy a good supply of Kreteks - Indonesian clove cigarettes going by brands such as Gudang Garam or Sampoerna. To Zak's delight, he found tobacco-bag and cigarillo versions of them.

We passed through Belgium and into Northern France. There were a few traffic jams on the way, but most people were nice, moving their vehicles aside and giving us wide enough berth to pass through, in between the lanes. We made sure to thank everyone who did so with a wave and/or nod.

Approaching Paris, the traffic got thicker and more hectic as it was peak afternoon hours just after work. Went onto the Paris Péripherique. Marion found it tough driving and very polluted, but Zak thought it was all exaggerated, and boiled down to Marion's anti-Paris sentiments 😊

There were lots of 2-wheeled drivers slaloming and zigzagging very fast through the traffic. We did our best to drive between lanes only in standstill traffic jams, but with our big-ass bike, we were in the way of other impatient 2-wheeler Parisians who honked agitatedly for us to let them pass! We understand now why French drivers are not very considerate of motorcycles: it's a 2-way thing - French motorcyclists themselves have no respect for others in traffic.

Out of Paris, we headed for Orleans. We figured this was as far as we could do for today and spent the night at a Formule 1 hotel. We had a gorgeous eat-all-you-can buffet at a Chinese restaurant with really great Chinese food for a change - most Chinese restaurants in Sweden have a way of cheapening the quality, rehashing food way past the expiry date. We gorged ourselves on meats, wantons, fresh spring rolls, etc.

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