It is a fine morning here in Sydney. The sunrise at the international airport was rewarding. But not as rewarding as an express path through immigration and the popcake automated pancake machine in the lounge.
I would add a photo of the popcakes, but they are all gone. Besides, my ipad has no camera!
The photo that Kym couldn’t take – oh the technology.
Biggest decision of the morning… what type of cereal. Of course when presented with a range of options the only solution is a bit of everything, topped with yoghurt and fresh fruit.
Like Close Encounters of The Third Kind there has been one though that has dominated Helen since Australia.
Noodles in Narita!
Noodles in Narita!
Noodles in Narita!
Well we are in Narita. So where are the noodles?
We could have got some at the Hotel Nikko, but no… We have to be authentic.
So it was on to the Shuttle Bus to the old town centre. We walked to the shrine and back, saw competing groups preparing for next weeks star festival. We looked for plastic noodles, we could have gone in to the Barge Inn (english pub) or the Jetlag Club (same time zone, thus no jet lag) or the friendly Japanese restaurant with Engrish menus.
But no…. We went for the upstairs smoky bar with no English menus. Somehow with a combination of very bad fooood japanese and bad English we muddle our way through. Had very nice soba, grilled pork, omlette and tempura. The complimentary fried tuna was scrumptious. Beer and plum wine the perfect accompainent.
So it’s good to be singular in your thought, sometimes!
Instead of paying for breakfast at the Nikko Narita, we took a gamble we might have access to the business class lounge. Thankfully the gamble paid off, enjoyed a Japanese style breakfast of fish, rice, miso soup, salad, and French crossiants. Delightful! Although the dinning area was full, so no time to mess around taking photos. Currently sitting back reading the news waiting for our boarding call, and thinking about the past days highlights in Japan.
We have completed the first ride of our bike trip. This wasn’t one that has been agonised over for weeks, days or even hours. We had a need to find our car hire place.
We walked out of our hotel across to the train station, just happened across some fine French pastries (oops) and then we found the Bicloo stand. It was like a siren calling a captain. We gravitated helplessly toward the Bicloo stand. Hey we had 30 minutes surely thats enough to see Nantes???
We stood in front of the device haplessly pressing some buttons (the English button is particularly useful) shoved in my credit card (Why is it that everyone expects me to enter a PIN, but the machine never actually wants it???) to the machine and €2 later we were on our VERY HEAVY 3 speed bikes. While they could not possibly break time trial records they were easy to get going even up an over some bridges. In fact, we saw quite a few nice spots of Nantes. As you can see from our photos below.
The best thing, is that you can just drop it off and leave it. I reckon there is no better way around town. Can’t wait to try them in London, Paris, and Copenhagen. I hope it catches on in Melbourne and that perhaps we see more in Australia.
Leaving Nantes we headed for the feed station… Well at least we attempted to head to St. Mars de Coutais. However, surprisingly when you type in the name of the town on the GPS guide it doesn’t exist. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not familiar with the roads here…. So you can imagine the few choice words uttered in the vehicle. Thankfully we saw a road side information bay (hooray!), it was then I worked out we were onto wrong side of Nantes with under an hour before the caravan was due to pass the feed station.
Thankfully, we were able to enter a larger town name into the GPS, and we were off again. You know you are on the right road when you see a large number of French people on bikes. After parking the car on the side of the road (along with everyone else) we walked towards the route to wait for the caravan to drive by.
You may all be expecting a TDF report, but you probably have a better idea of what is happening than I do. We stayed the night in a gorgeous (well priced) guest house at Les Rosaires beach. It has no wifi or tv in our room. A great break from it all (sounding like a person who has been on holiday for weeks and not the actual few days we have).
I digress, the purpose of this post is to share with you the wonders of the French boulangerie and what were described as American sandwiches. They are quite simply what subway should be. A well sized (I.e. Not overdone) piece of fresh baguette (yes, real bread) with a very simple but tasty fillings (no choice overload). Best thing is you can get a fresh pastry and an oragina and the cost for all of it is €10 (for 2 people!!!), that’s cheaper than a footlong and Subway meal deal for one in Australia. What gives?
The photo is one of Helen’s.
Okay… It’s big and white… But what does it have to do with the Tour de France?
Darn good question… But it does help to pass time.
TDF post to come. Too tired.
