So the travelling duo packed up and left the old fortress of St Malo and headed for chateaux country in the Loire Valley. We made it into the city of Blois where we had booked a hotel for a couple of nights... the traffic and steep streets were rather chaotic and there were a few (more) near misses to add to the ledger. We were unable to locate our hotel and had done a couple of crazy laps of the city so we decided to eat our picnic down on the Loire River as it looked quite pretty from up on the road. Well as it turned out, our riverscape was in fact good from afar but far from good... the dumping ground of the local homeless and the flight path of millions of tiny spiders who set sail on lengths of their webs and sink their fangs into you if they happen to snag a bit of flesh (we're still carrying the scars). Anyway, we managed to find our hotel after our less than peaceful lunch which left us involuntarily scratching ourselves and shuddering at the thought of those little suckers crawling all over us.
Aside from the spiders, Blois was a gorgeous old city with a huge chateau in the city centre with mainly pedestrianised streets. Our hotel (which we eventually found; never give up on that female intuition) was great... it even gave us enough room for some Marts' gym (did I forget to mention female ingenuity?!) which may have had the downstairs residents wiping the plaster flakes from their heads.
We went to sleep that night with the NZ France WC match on, turning it off after half time, figuring it a foregone conclusion... we were awoken by the crazy, elated French who proved our assumption wrong (but I guess they got their come-uppence in the end!).
The following day, two semi-well rested girls set off in search of the bike hire shop with the very ambitious aim of riding 60km through the Loire Valley and visiting the numerous chateaux along the way... the bike man was also optimistic telling us that it should only take us about 5 hours and that the terrain was completely flat so we would be fine. All I can say is thank god for the wrong turn we took which reduced our trip to a mere 40km. We only ended up vising one chateau, Chambord, the most distinguishing feature of which was the double-helix staircase in the centre which was believed to have been designed by da Vinci. We were so lucky with the weather, it was a perfect day with very little wind such that we were even able to dodge most of the flying spiders as we rode along! The leaves were all turning on the grapevines and trees and it was just gorgeous on the bike paths, which were were able to utilise for most of the trip, needing only to share with the cars through the villages... We even saw real life hunters (dressed up like Prince Charles) with hapless hares swinging from their belts, rifles slung over their shoulders and beagles, ever sniffing! I think Marts thought the pair of us would soon be swinging from the belt of one hunter as Ange skidded to a halt and excuse-moi'ed him before snapping away on the camera... turned out he knew the meaning of a kodak moment and stuck more than a few poses with his hound before we bid him farewell and continued our pedalling.
As for our bikes... the gears had been removed and set at a particular speed (picture Ange pedalling at twice the speed of Marts) and the seat had been hardened and enlongated to make the most of the cobbled streets (of that we were convinced... such bruising!!!). We did make it home in one piece, somewhat battered and very relieved for our wrong turn.
The next day we made the trek back to Paris where we were to stay out at the airport as our flight to Dubrovnik via Stuttgart was early. Remiss of us not to have estimated the time we would arrive in Paris, ie... to try and avoid peak hour especially as we didn't have a map and relied solely on our whole of France map and signs (and the intuition!). Bloody scarey! Saw a good handfull of accidents and nearly cleaned up a couple of motorcyclists as they zoomed by with a death wish... and they had the nerve to beep us for creeping over into their "lane-between-the-lanes"... hmph!!
And so the story goes, we made it finally and slept in one of those airport hotels which felt like a boat cabin but was comfortable enough despite Ange exclaiming to Marts in the night "Do you think there's bedbugs?", on account of all the scratching from both. No bedbugs, just those Blois spider bites reminding us of the good times...
