Having picked up a rental car, we travelled out to the Atlantic coast, which was packed with French holiday makers. Tried some of the local produce and relaxed on the beach for a couple of hours. Over the two days we made our way down the coast and then inland across the foothills of the Pyrenees to Pau.
Today we are taking the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux. Our plan is to start in the south west and loosely follow the tour east, finishing at Grenoble, before returning to Paris by train for the final stage, where Rabobank have a day of activities planned for us.
The TGV trip was quite eagerly anticipated, by me at least. Train travel is something Kiwis don’t get to experience often, and besides any train that goes at almost 300km/h has got to be good! The car GPS did have some trouble working out what road the train was driving on, but did show the speed accurately!
It was an unexpected surprise to have won the Rabobank trip for 2 to Paris to watch the Tour de France. It came out of the blue! When Pam handed me the phone and said it was BikeNZ, I assumed it was something to do with the BikeManawatu website. When I told my friends, I had a lot of takers for the other seat, but of course it’s my family coming with me. We decided to pay the additional money for our 2 boys, Oliver & Jeremy, and Rabobank were great about accommodating that. That was in May. Now we are waiting to depart at Palmerston North Airport.