Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Loire Bike Trip: May 7th

Published on May 29, 2007 in France, Loire Valley Biking, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

The next day we went over to the tourist office and found out where the nearest campground was and got a map of the area. The camping season was just getting going and a lot of campgrounds were still closed. This would be a little bit of an issue for us as we went along on our journey. We had to make sure to get to a tourist office before it closed to get information about where we could camp for a night, which meant that we’d have to stop wherever we were at 5pm. I think ‘les and I were both fine with that since by 5pm were were both pretty exhausted.

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The closest campground was 8km from Orleans so we decided that rather than riding all the way our there and then all the way back right away we would just hang out a little in town and then head over in the afternoon.

So we went to the “medieval market” and hung out a little, sampling various old school meads and getting lunch. Then we walked around a little around the old town, on the look out for musical acts and weapons demonstrations. The festival was smaller this year because it didn’t fall on a weekend, but other than having fewer people and a few fewer presentations everything was pretty much the same as last year.

One thing that I don’t remember from last year, though, was a bear show. There was rather bored looking small white bear hanging out in a cage near the cathedral. Shows were at 5 and 8pm. Odd.

Across the way from the bear was a weapons demonstration. We watched them launch heavy things across the grass on the side of the cathedral. At some point they set off a small canon, which sent Xena heading in a panicked run towards the river. I’m really glad we had her on a leash because I think she really would have run the 10 blocks to the river and jumped in to get away from that noise. The poor thing was horribly nervous for the rest of her time in Orleans. She kept waiting for another canon to go off, which they did every once in a while. In her next life she’s going to have a phobia of Ren Faires and not know why.

I don’t remember if we did much of anything else in town after that. I think we decided to head for our campground shortly after the canon fire.

The woman at the tourist office was very helpful and marked our route to the campground on a map for us. We felt confident about making it there in no time as it seemed like it was a pretty straight short out of Orleans. As it turned out, we didn’t have much trouble finding the spot marked on the map. Unfortunately the spot marked on the map had nothing to do with where the campground actually was. We biked around and around, trying to find the campground. We ended up going on a little back road, hoping that the campground was just poorly signed. Sadly, no. We were just very, very lost. ‘les stopped a dude on a bike and asked where the campground was. He took pity on us and actually rode with us the several kilometers to the campground. This good luck, too, since I don’t think that we would have found that campground on our own.

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I have to say that I think the prettiest part of our trip was in the very beginning around Orleans. Throughout the Loire Valley other, smaller rivers come close to the Loire. The source of a small river called the Loiret is located about 10km from Orleans. The area around Orleans is a filled with tiny streams feeding into the two rivers. The whole area is heavily wooded and incredibly lush. Flowers of all kinds were in bloom and in some places we would bike past fields raging with purple, red, or white. The cherry trees dotting small open fields were starting to bare fruit and you could see red and yellow cherries peaking out behind the tree’s leaves. In short, it was outstanding. I would have been pleased to spend a couple of days camping at our campground in Olivet and taking long bike trips around different areas because it was so pretty.

Unfortunately, the longest ride we took through the area was on our way to find our campground and my camera was in a bag in the front of my bike. I had to take the bags apart to get access to it and opted not to fight with my bags so I don’t have any pictures of that particular ride. The photos of our campground should give you an idea of how it looked. Picture that only much, much prettier.

Our campsite was actually on the Loiret. The spot that we set up our tent at was on a little peninsula in the middle of the river. Ducks waddled across our camping area in the mornings. Crew teams rode by as we were getting up in the mornings. A bakery delivered baguettes and pastries in the mornings to the front office. Heaven!

After we set up camp, we decided to head back to Orleans for dinner. The night before the May 8th celebrations there are a bunch of events going on all over the city. There’s some sort of ceremony in the cathedral and then they light up the outside of it, give speeches, and play music. There are stages set up in squares with DJs playing and there are some interesting performers walking around including a troop of fire breathers. We managed to catch some of the cathedral lighting, which was pretty. We also caught the end of the fire breather’s set, which involved them setting off small explosions in the crowd. I was rather freaked out by that and poor Xena was terrified. Again. We walked around a bit after watching the cathedral light show and then decided that we needed to get some sleep and headed back to Olivet.

We hadn’t worked out a method for biking quite yet on that first day. I’m a bit faster on my bike than ‘les, especially on uphills. I was having trouble not tailgating and had actually run into Xena’s trailer once when ‘les stopped unexpectedly to look at a sign. On our way to Orleans for dinner I’d tried being in the lead, but Xena was really not having it. Xena really hated being in the trailer, she’d paw at the zippers trying to open up a side so she could jump out. She had actually jumped out the top of the trailer when we’d left the top open so that she could get more air while we were riding through Paris the day before. Riding behind her, I would call out to her, telling her she was a good dog. Being able to see me calmed her down a lot. If I was riding in front for ‘les, she would commence with the trying to escape and no amount of calling to her would stop her. So it was that I brought up the rear for the rest of our trip.

Riding behind ‘les worked out ok for most of the trip. I had trouble keeping my distance, which I’m still working on. The main issue I have is trying to stay behind while climbing hills. I tend to try to sprint up hills in order to get them over with. ‘les can’t really get much momentum going with the spring-loaded trailer and a 40 pound dog attached, so I find myself getting up some speed and then actually having to break on hills in order to stay behind the trailer. That first night I made the mistake of sprinting up ahead of ‘les on a hill and Xena completely freaked out, making it about six times harder for ‘les to get uphill. This was all in pitch black on a non-passing road with a car behind us. Yikes!

Biking the next day was much smoother.

.Loire Valley Bike Trip Photos.

Loire Valley Bike Trip: May 6th

Published on May 29, 2007 in France, Loire Valley Biking, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

We left Den Haag on a 10:30 am train to Paris on May 6th. We had only decided to buy our Bromptons about two days before we left and we had only figured out how to pack them the night before, so the short ride from our apartment to the train station represented the first time we’d actually loaded up the bikes and ridden them anywhere. I don’t recommend doing a trip like this with that little planning, but it worked out pretty well for us.

Normal bikes are not allowed on the Thalys trains. There isn’t actually much luggage space on these trains, which has always struck me as odd since it’s a freakin’ high speed train from Paris to Amsterdam. That’s a pretty big trip, you’d think they’d make more room for large bags. We chose to get folding bikes with the idea that it would make train travel much easier, and we were right. The Bromptons fold up into a smaller package than average oversized hard-shelled suitcase that is oddly popular here in Europe. The trailer that we bought for Xena also folds up into a smallish package so we were able to fit all our big bags into carriage luggage are with no problems and the rest of our bags fit nearly into the overhead shelves.

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Once we got to Paris, we had to transfer to another train station across town to get a train to Orleans. As soon as we got off the train, we unfolded and loaded up our bikes, getting ready to ride across town. It used to take us about 20 minutes to load or unload the bikes, now I think we’re down to like 10. I found moving the bikes around on trains to be the most exhausting parts of our trip.

The bike ride across Paris was really amazing. It was a sunny, warm day. We stopped by our favorite neighborhood bakery on our way and got some bread and croissants. So tasty. I miss France. We biked along the covered portion of the St. martin canal and crossed the river near the Bastille. It was election day and there were cops everywhere for some reason. I think they were worried about the impending protests if Sarko was to get elected. One of the best things in the whole world is watching scary French police notice that Xena was in her trailer see their faces change from their normal stern sneer to huge, charmed smiles.

From Paris we took a TGV train to a town near Orleans and then had to transfer to a local train. Trying to drag our luggage across the station was exhausting. The bags themselves were ok, but trying to get a bike and the dog trailer across a train platform at the same time is unpleasant at best. The trailer needs tiny wheels or something.

We got to Orleans just after the tourist office closed for the day. It was about 5:30pm at that point. We weren’t totally sure where the closest campground was and so we ended up staying at an Ibis hotel that I’d spotted across the street from the train station. As chain hotels go, I rather like the Ibis. They almost always in a good part of town, the rooms a decently priced most of the time, they have luggage storage, and they allow dogs.

Once we got the room situation figured out, we headed to the old town center for dinner. Orleans has a cute old town, but unfortunately most of the food is sort of eh. Lots of pizza joints, indian food, or restaurants with no vegetarian options. We ended up at a pizza place that night.

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While were were eating, a group of guys in a table next to us started changing something about Segolene Royal. Which is how we found out that Sarkozy has indeed won the election. We left the restaurant, intending to walk back to the hotel when we ran into a semi-impromptu anti-Sarko protest marching down the main drag towards the cathedral. It was incredible. There are about 200 protesters out carrying banners made out of bed sheets. The crowd was very young and racially diverse. They marched down the street and stopped to give speeches before moving on. People were calling all their friends to get them to come out an march. During the short time we followed it, it picked up more and more people. This protest was really touching to me. In the US, people only protest and rally before things happen. You have to write letters before the law gets passed because once it’s on the books there’s no idea that you can just, you know, repeal it. There’s no idea that you can turn things around and change things after the fact. Once the election is over everything is done and you just give up for four years and that’s that. That’s not how it works in France. In France you just need to organize enough people and you change anything. All those protests about the CPE last year were about a law that had already been passed. It was the passing of the law itself that got the students occupying their schools and throwing rocks at cops. They protested and they changed things. The fact that the young people in the country were so upset by the election actually matters to people. These kids opposition will make a difference in what the current government can get away with doing. A little protest in a little city really means something because those little protests are happening in little cities all over the country and people care.

We left the march after a little while and headed back to the hotel. ‘les and I were both thinking about how different political participation is in France than in the US.

.Loire Valley Bike Trip Photos.

Loire Biking Part the First

Published on May 29, 2007 in France, Loire Valley Biking, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

I’ve finally started scanning my photos of our Loire Valley bike trip. I’m breaking up scanning into one and two day chunks and I’ve just finish the Orleans portion (6-8 May) of the trip. I’m going to try to write shortish posts, but we did a lot over the course of a few days so I think each of these entries is going to end up being pretty long. I’m also hoping to comment the photos with some detail. Because I am wordy.

LB_Olivet_Bromptons.jpgFirst I should say something about our plans and equipment. We’d been thinking about doing a bike trip similar to this one last summer before ‘les got sick. I had given ‘les a bunch of bike touring books as a birthday gift last year so we flipped through some of them and chose the one that outlined a trip that was the most similar to the one we wanted to do. It turned out that the smallest of our books, Cycling the River Loire had the trip we were looking to take in detail. We were armed with that book and two maps and figured that we’d do ok figuring things out as we went. We’d pretty much decided to try to rent bikes in Orleans, bike to Tours, and then take a train back to Orleans at the end of the trip to return the bikes. Then about two days before we were to leave, our friend Dave suggested that we look into getting Brompton folding bikes instead. His Dad owns a bike shop back in the US and he assured us that the bikes were of high enough quality to be used for the kind of touring that we were planning. ‘les had been drooling over these bikes since 2001 or so and was delighted to have a good reason to finally spend the money on it. We needed a dog trailer anyway so we might as well go for a test ride.

LB_Olivet_lesAndBikeRack.jpgI have to say that the Bromptons are in fact really great bikes. The folding is amazingly easy and they fold up super small. When they’re folded you can still roll the bikes around, pulling them by the handle bars. They’re also lighter and easier to carry once folded up than the bag that I attach to the front luggage rack. They feel solid once you’re riding them, more so than the other brands of folding bike we tried at the store. And once I’d loaded the front rack with luggage, the bike felt much more solid. My only complaint is that the back of the bike is on a hinge so that you can fold it under and use it as a kick-stand. This is a great feature, but the drawback is that it makes the bike really, really difficult to pick up and, say, get up over a curb. When the back was loaded down with our tent and a week’s worth of dog food, it had a tendency to fall over a whole lot. I cursed a whole lot at the bike during our trip, however, I think that some sort of work around can be found. I haven’t tried, say, trying the back to the seat post yet. So those are our bikes.

We bought a tent and a couple of sleeping bags for leaving. The Bromptons have an option front luggage rack, which we got for my bike. The rack is attached vertically to the bike and is designed to have special bags attached to it. While you don’t technically have to buy the bag with the rack, I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Any bag you try to attach to the front will begin to slip downwards as you go over bumpy roads, dragging on your tires. Don’t spend an hour each day swearing at your front rack, buy the special bag, We also got a few items of biking clothes. I got a skort that had removable padded shorts inside, a red bike shirt, and a pair of sleeves. I also brought a bunch of tank tops, a fleece jacket, and a pair of pants that zipped into shorts. I don’t have a pair of sneakers with my in Europe so I just wore my Dansko mary janes on the trip. Also, I have to start out this whole thing by saying that I’m not in all that great of shape. I haven’t biked more than about 10 miles a day in my life, let alone the 25+ we were planning on. I haven’t been riding my bike much in the last few months because I felt guilty leaving Xena in her cage for a long time and I didn’t have a trailer to take her on rides with me. So yeah. I wasn’t sure that this trip was going to work out. But it turns out that we had a really great time and I’m really excited about being able to go on more trips this summer.

So now onto the trip itself.

.Loire Valley Bike Trip Photos.

Jesus cleats for the new millennium.

Published on May 28, 2007 in DailyGrind, Netherlands, Paris, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

Last year when the weather started getting hot suddenly all the stylish Parisian girls were walking around in full, flounce-y skirts, practically see-through light t-shirts and these sandals. The girls looked comfy and terribly cute, even in the oppressive summer heat. I hate t-shirts that you can see my bra through and the kind of skirts they were wearing made me feel bloaty and overly large hip-and-thighed every time I tried them on.

But I like the shoes. They’re not as popular in Den Haag as they were in Paris, but I still see them around. White seems to be the popular color choice here. I think last year in Paris it was dark brown. I like the silver the best, though. They’re from the Hippie Filled Future.

I thought about getting a pair last summer, but decided that I didn’t have anything that I’d actually wear them with. I’m still thinking about getting a pair now, which is probably a sign that I should just go buy them. I have a hard time buying items of clothing that are a little outside of my usual style. I have a hard time figuring out if I’d like the item with anything I already own or if I’d actually wear whatever it is enough to justify the purchase.

Shoes give me particular hang ups since they tend to be a little more expensive and I have a hard time finding ones that fit properly. If they’re in need of breaking in but they go with everything that I wear, it’s totally fine because I’ll wear them constantly for the next year or two anyway. If they’re in need of breaking in and don’t totally fit into the rest of my wardrobe, I might never wear them. Sandals are a really hard sell for me. My feet are really wide, which means that they normally sort of ooze over the soles of shoes. It’s ok for a pair of oxfords or mary janes because the rest of the shoe covers my foot. But with sandals it means that the sides of my feet are practically touching the ground. But you know, these are Birkenstocks, right? Maybe they’ll be ok?

Queen’s Day belated blogging

Published on May 26, 2007 in Den Haag, Netherlands, PostsWithPictures and ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

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Man, I am way, way behind on both photo scanning and blog posting. I just took a look at my most recent blog entries and realized that I never posted anything about Queen’s Day! I just got photos of Queen’s Night and Day developed and posted them to flickr.

Queen’s Day, for those of you who do not mark your calendars with the national holidays of The Netherlands, is a yearly celebration held in honor of the Queen’s birthday. It’s celebrated on April 30th, which happens to be the birthday of the previous queen. Apparently they decided to keep the day on the old queen’s birthday because the weather’s nice in late April. I think this is a wise decision on the part of the queen since Queen’s Day is mainly just a really large, boozy outdoor party.

Queen’s Day actually takes place over the night before the holiday and goes right through the day itself. People tend to come into Den Haag to party the night before and then move on to Amsterdam the next day.

For Queen’s Night, lots of different stages are set up around town, each featuring either a couple of DJs or some live bands. People wonder around from stage to stage, checking out the crowds and drinking a lot of beer. A carnival magically appeared the day or so beforehand in the center of town so there’s also a lot of fried food to eat, games to play, and rides to make you very dizzy. I’m a bit weary of street fairs like this, so ‘les and I walked around for just a few hours before heading home.

All the action on Queen’s day is in Amsterdam, so we headed over there in the afternoon the next day to check it out. One of the deals with Queen’s Day is that it’s the one day a year that you can just go out on the street and sell things without a permit. People gather up all the stuff that they’ve been meaning to try to get rid of, set out blankets and sell stuff on the street. As we biked towards Den Haag central station, we spotted whole blocks filled with people selling random odds and ends.

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Queen’s Day in Amsterdam reminded me a lot of Pride in SF. People were out in goofy outfits, walking around having a good time. You’re supposed to wear at least a little orange in honor of the House of Orange on Queen’s Day. Some people just put on their favorite orange pants while others go all out in body paint and orange wigs. Seeing beefy straight guys wondering around in orange drag never stops being funny.

The happening people watching takes place in the center of Amsterdam. People get their friends together and take their boats out and drive a long the canals playing music and dancing. There was at least one brass band playing on a boat and another marching around the streets.

We had a good time walking around the city, but I ended up cutting the day short because I wasn’t feeling well. It was for the best, I think. The street markets are supposed to stop around 6pm and the party starts to thin out a lot by sundown.

The Dutch are really amazing when it comes to getting all evidence of holiday decorations down after the event has happened. All over the city for a few days before hand there were orange flags flying and shops all had orange displays in the windows. By the morning of the next day there wasn’t an orange flag to be found anywhere. Except for the occasional broken bottle, it was like the last 36 hours of partying had never happened.

Ok. So that’s Queen’s Day. I also got most of my photos from France back. I’ll be posting the first few days worth soon, I promise!

.Queen’s Day Photos.
.Netherlands Photos.

Too tired to post

Published on May 13, 2007 in ResidentHipster. 0 Comments

I’m back! For a few days before going to Berlin! But I lent my computer to someone and I might not get it back until after going to Berlin so it’s like I’m not really back at all!

Biking in France was amazing. Certain aspects were frustrating as hell but over all I had a really great time. We’re talking about doing another bike trip in The Netherlands later this summer. It would be fun, although with many fewer croissants. I really miss French bakeries.

I’ve got a lot of blog entries in by head right now, but none of them are, you know, typed yet. I also have six or seven rolls of film to get developed and scanned.

Right now I’m just fighting some really awful allergies. I’m having trouble breathing. This happened last year, too. I’d wake up in the middle of the night having asthma attacks, which hasn’t happened since my family moved to Apple Valley when I was nine. I should see a doctor or something.

Camping gear

Published on May 4, 2007 in DailyGrind, Den Haag, ResidentHipster and Travel. 1 Comment

Shopping for camping equipment in The Netherlands has been both strange and frustrating.  I don’t know if it’s just that we’re in Den Haag, which is full of rich people or if this is just the state of camping equipment in the Netherlands generally, but it is really difficult to find reasonably priced tents and sleeping bags.  Camping stores seem mostly focused on car camping – lots of chairs, day packs, and great big tents – rather than, say, hiking which would encourage ultra light gear and tiny tents.  One of the stores that we went to had a giant tepee!  With a stove in the center and a chimney!  Which I totally want in the distant, robot filled future when I have a compound on a river somewhere.

Ahem, anyway.  We’ve been having trouble finding inexpensive equipment here.  Most of the camping stores are ultra yuppie and I don’t know where the equivalent of, say, a Target or a Big-5 is.

Yesterday we went to three stores.  Two of which were within a few blocks of us.  Neither had much in the way of small tents and they all seemed to be good quality but expensive.  Then we went to “The Globe” outdoor sports store/gym, which is located behind the Holland Spoor train station.

The Globe, by the way, is insane.  It’s sort of a yuppie outdoor sports mall rather than just a store.  There’s a big bike shop which mostly has mountain and road bikes, there’s also a little outlet store for last season’s clothes, and then there’s a great big REI type store which spans two levels.  I had a feeling that we weren’t going to get any deal there when we walked in and saw the big rock walls on the first floor.  I really started having a bad feeling when ‘les spotted the ice climbing room which had a wall of real ice in it.  I should have turned right around and left when I realized that they also had a giant scuba diving tank.  Instead we went in and failed miserably at finding what we were looking for.  Seeing that tepee and the great big dome tent over the cash register was sort of worth the sticker shock, though.

We’re still looking for inexpensive camping gear.  It would be sort of OK to buy something nice, but we both have nice sleeping bags in the US and ‘les owns at least one tent as well, so these things won’t be that useful later.  I think maybe staying in hotels will end up being cheaper than trying to get equipment and staying in campgrounds, which just doesn’t seem right to me.  Hrm.

Travels with Xena

Published on May 2, 2007 in France, Netherlands, ResidentHipster, Travel and Xena the Dog. 0 Comments

A few months ago I went in search of guide books that had information about traveling with dogs.  I wanted something that would list hotels that let you have dogs, information about whether you can have dogs in restaurants or shops, maybe suggestions of good places to take the dog for walks with information about where you can take the dog off leash to run around.  I wanted something that would give you information about regulations as far as taking your dog across borders and wether they’re allowed on trains and public transit as well.  Ideally all this would be included with normal guide book things listing like blurbs about museums and churches and local history.

I couldn’t find any books with this information.  I already knew the Fordor’s, Lonely Planet, and the Rough Guides didn’t list this information since I have copies of these things at home.  Does anyone know if there is a series of guide books that has this sort of information and covers Western Europe.  We’re looking to travel in Italy, France, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries this summer so it would be great if I could find something to help make planning easier.

Anyway, I’m thinking that since I’ll be traveling with a dog this summer, I should try to post information about how my experiences are.

Today we bought tickets to on the Thalys to Paris.  They let you take very small dogs for free on the train, but if you have a dog that won’t fit in one of those tiny carriers, you have to buy a separate ticket for it.  The ticket is around 35 euros.  The dog does not get a seat, however.  It’ll have to sit on the floor at your feet.  Also, it has to be wearing a muzzle!  Poor dog.

Old Orleans part the second

Published on May 2, 2007 in DailyGrind, France, Netherlands, PostsWithPictures, ResidentHipster and Travel. 0 Comments

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‘les and I spent some time this afternoon making crazy travel plans for the next month. ‘les is done with classes now so we have the rest of the summer to do stuff. We’d considered trying to move back to Paris for a few months and take French classes at the Sorbonne, but a moving now only to have to move again in September wasn’t sounding so hot so we’re staying in Den Haag over the summer and traveling a lot instead.

We’re going to theJoan of Arc festival in Orleans again this year. It’s next week and we just bought train tickets today. We’re going to be in France all of next week. After spending two days in Orleans, we’re going to take a few days to bike to Tours. We’re actually going to be going on a similar path that Joan of Arc took after she lifted the siege at Orleans.

The trip between Orleans and Tours is not very far. We have a bike tour book that recommends taking three days, biking about 25 miles each day and stopping at towns along the way. I tend to be able to bike comfortably at about 8 miles an hour (I base this on the fact that Leap Frog was four miles from my apartment in Oakland and it took me about a half hour to bike there), so it’s not really that much biking in a day.

We went to Tours in January of last year, but we didn’t have much fun. The tourist industry really shuts down in the winter so there wasn’t much for us to do. The town center is really charming, though. I’d hoped that we’d be able to come back when there was more going on.

The area around Tours has a couple of interesting things going for it. First off, there’s a small wine growing region there. They’re mostly known for their white wines and sparkling wines. We tried going wine tasting last winter but it really didn’t work out. Hopefully more vineyards will be open this year.

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The other interesting thing around Tours are the houses built into caves. They date back to pre-Roman times and people still have little cave houses. These dot the hills outside the city. It’s exactly as Hobbity as you’d expect. There are a few old caves that you can go into and we’re hoping to be able to look at them.

I think this trip will be fun. The Loire isn’t as touristy as, say, Bordeaux so there’s a lot less set up for tourists as far as getting outside the cities easily. You sort of need a car or a bike to go see things. Having bikes will make things much easier.

Our plans for what we’re going right after going to Tours haven’t been made yet. We might just come back to Den Haag for a little while or we might stay in Paris for a little while. This month will involve a lot of traveling in any case.