Paris

We arrived in Paris on Thursday evening, and spent the night with our host Sylvain relaxing at his apartment. We told him about our trip and asked questions about his job as a map maker.The next morning, he cycled into work and we followed him on his way so we would know the best way to ride into the city. Sylvain is an avid cyclist around Paris, and knows all of the roads with bike lanes which make riding in the city much more enjoyable. While he was working, we went into the city to explore for the day. Since the weather was not particularly good, we decided to go the the Louvre and hope that it was nicer when we were finished. We made our way through the museum and ended up spending several hours there, leaving only a couple of hours before we were scheduled to meet Sylvain near his office.

At the Louvre

We decided to ride from the Louvre to another of Paris’ iconic sights, the Arc de Triomphe. This involved riding from the museum down the Champs Elysees where the Tour de France finishes each year. Despite this being a legendary cycling road because of the Tour de France, it is not very good for cycling since there is heavy traffic and it is all cobblestones. Still, we decided that we had to ride down and around the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe , which is probably the scariest thing that I have ever done on a bicycle.

Riding the Champs Elysees

From there, we made our way back to the river which we planned to follow out of the city and back to Sylvain’s office. When we arrived at the water, we realized that the Eiffel Tower was just a couple of blocks away, so we made a quick detour to see it up close. Sylvain had told us a good spot to see the tower from, but we didn’t have enough time to ride there, so we decided to save it for the next day and left the city. We met back up with Sylvain and followed him back to his apartment for another night of relaxation and conversation.

On Saturday morning, we decided to give our legs a break and loaded our bikes onto the train to head into the city. We arrived at the Arc de Triomphe and rode to the park that we were told would give great views of the Eiffel Tower.

From there, we went to the river and found the small island with the smaller statue of liberty. We rode down the island to the statue to snap a few photos before getting back on the bikes and heading to the Luxembourg Gardens.

At the Luxembourg Gardens, we parked the bikes and spent some time walking around the park. We stopped for a bit to listen to a school band that was giving a concert, before continuing on to find yet another Statue of Liberty, this one being even smaller and the model for the American statue. We found a grassy area to sit and rest for a bit, before getting the bikes and riding down the street to Notre Dame. The line to go inside was very long, so we skipped that and waited for Sylvain to arrive, so he could join us for the rest of the day in the city.

Once we joined up with Sylvain, we followed him around while he gave us a bike tour of the city. We went by landmarks such as the Pantheon, the Opera House, and Montmartre, the church on the hill which gave us an excellent view of the city.

We then continued our tour until we wound up in another large park, this one with a giant bicycle sculpture protruding from the ground.

After a rest break in the park, we rode up to another vista looking over Paris before coasting down the hill to try out some of the local pubs. After a couple of drinks, we made our way to l’International, which features live music every night. We were fortunate enough to see a Brazilian band playing rock music. Once the set was finished, we left to make the midnight ride out of the city and back to Sylvain’s place.

On Sunday morning, we said our goodbyes to Sylvain who was heading to a picnic for the afternoon, while we road to a nearby park to catch up on the blog and make plans for the next legs of our trip. After a couple of hours at the park, we went to a nearby McDonalds to use the free internet and charge up the laptop. While uploading blog entries and researching on the internet, we were surprised to see Sylvain show up. He was riding home from his picnic and saw our bikes outside, so he stopped to say hello. We chatted for a few minutes with him before parting ways to go meet Matt’s friend Thomas, who would be hosting us for the evening.

We met Thomas at a metro station and followed him back to his apartment. We met his wife and chatted for a while before eating dinner. After dinner, we all headed to bed to rest up before leaving Paris the next day.

Grenoble to Paris

After spending four days in the Grenoble area to watch the Tour de France, we hit the road again headed to Paris. We had a lot of distance to cover, roughly 600km, but since we were leaving the high mountains behind us estimated that it would only take us five days to make the trip.

The first night we rode to Lyon, where a couple from couchsurfing had agreed to host us. The day’s riding was uneventful, as we followed river valleys out of the mountains to avoid the big climbs. Not long after leaving Grenoble, we found ourselves in the flat farmland that occupies almost all of the area between Grenoble and Paris. Once we met our host in Lyon, Laurent, we cleaned up and they took us on a tour of the town.

The best thing about couchsurfing is that you get to meet locals who can show you the things that you would otherwise miss out on. In this case, we were shown a tunnel network in downtown that was originally used to move tapestries in order to keep them from the rain, and later as a hidden passageway during World War II. We also got a chance to try some authentic Lyonnais food, and see other tourists sights, such as the Opera House and a red cobblestone on a sidewalk to mark the spot where a former French president was assassinated. These are all things we would have missed out on if we had camped outside of the city instead of couchsurfing.

Our hosts in Lyon

The next day, we left Lyon for the famous wine town of Chalon-sur-Saone. We originally hoped to make it further, but we were slowed down by rainy weather and stopped in Chalon for the night. This left us with 145 km to cover the following day to make it to Ancy-le-Franc, a small village where another couple from couchsurfing would host us. Along the way to Ancy-le-Franc we found a cycling path that followed a canal, which gave us a scenic car free route to follow for parts of the day. While riding the canal, the sidewall of Matt’s rear tire tore, requiring a new tire. We made our way to the next small town and stopped to ask some locals if there was a bike shop in town. There was, and one of the locals rode down on his bike to show us the way. When we arrived, we realized that it was not just a bike shop but a bike, scooter, dirt bike, and lawn care store all in one.

Matt getting a new tire at a bike shop/lawn care store.

Fortunately, they had a new tire in stock and were able to solve our problem to get us rolling again. Despite more rain showers and the flat tire stop, we were able to cover the full 145km in one day, our longest ride of the tour so far. That night, we got to know our hosts better over pizzas before going to bed for some much needed rest.

The view from our host’s house in Ancy-le-Franc

The next day we set out with tired legs, but we were lucky enough to be able to follow the same canal trail from the previous day for the majority of the mornings riding.

Nice quiet riding

We noticed along the way that many people enjoy boating along the canal and stopping occasional to get off of the boat and ride their bikes along the path that we were on. It was not uncommon to see boats pass by with bike racks on deck. We followed the canal as long as we could before moving back onto quiet roads that took us past small farms and closer to the city. We stopped for the night at a campground in Sens, another small French city.

A boat with a bike rack

The next day, we started to ride with Paris in our sights. We followed the small farm roads as long as we could, but before long we were in the suburbs of Paris. Fortunately, we found a couchsurfing host that lives in the suburbs southeast of the city, which is the direction that we were coming in from. This eliminated some of the trouble of city riding, but we still had to deal with a few busy roads on the way in. After checking the map a few times, we found our way to his house, where we met up with Sylvain, who would be hosting us and showing us the city.