Calculating Route…

Not much has changed since I last posted here: Denise is still in the U.S., but there’s now a plan in place for her to return, so that’s a relief. My days are still mostly centered around long dog walks in Porto, where Coco and I choose a general direction or landmark, and then make a morning of it. Porto has a charming and concentrated central historical district but there are many interesting neighborhoods that sprawl outward from that relatively small area and my goal is to walk through as many of those as possible. The upside of this plan is that I can largely avoid the tourist throngs that descend on Porto from May through October and more clearly see the city in an effort to evaluate its livability. I love Porto but the number of tourists here — and their impact on basic enjoyment of the city — is really stunning. I have mostly avoided the main tourist spots, partly because of the crush and partly because most of them don’t allow dogs.

I consider Denise and myself to be travelers, not tourists, and I know there’s some problems with that claim since we are using Airbnb for most of our housing, and they contribute to more problems than they solve, especially in places like Porto. But we are here to learn about the culture, pick up some of the language, and, most of all, try to blend in with the locals rather than stick out like a sore thumb. Since there aren’t many adventures to report, I’ll just do photos here and let the captions (and the hyper-links) do the ‘splainin’. Denise sent along some more pictures of her own from California so I’ll include those here as well. Off we go!

Okay, that’s my roundup of Porto photos. Let’s see what Denise has from L.A. She is getting to see family and do some great eating.

That’s all folks, at least for now. Hopefully, Denise will be back soon and our real adventures will resume. We still have a month in Porto before we head south for some time on the beach.

While I was traversing Northern Spain and getting settled in Porto, Denise was in Los Angeles, where she grew up, helping our son Finn get back on his feet. Of course, she still had time to take some pictures so I thought I’d do a bonus post — included in your subscription — that’s really just the random shots she took in and around the City of Angels. I know it’s not Europe but, as the name of the blog reminds us, we’re always recalculating the route.

Coco and I have been here in Porto for two weeks and I’m not sure which one of us misses Denise more. After a few days, Coco stopped looking around for her at every turn and gradually accepted me as the best she could do for the moment. Denise is very busy dealing with our family matter in Los Angeles and things are going much better, so thanks for all of your concerns. I’m hoping that she will be back in a couple of weeks and we can start enjoying Porto together. 

My arrival in town was a bit stressful, as I had to balance the drop-off of our five-month long car lease with the check-in at our Airbnb. Since I had to drop the car by four p.m. but couldn’t check in until that same time, and I had a car full of luggage, I had a logistical conundrum to solve. If Denise had been there, or if I had planned better it wouldn’t have been an issue but, with Coco totally unwilling to carry any bags, and the doorway to the apartment being on the busiest downtown street in Porto, I needed help. Luckily, we had met and made friends with former Lush (and Servants, and Felt, and Jesus and Mary Chain, and too many others to name) bassist Phil King on our 2019 trip here and he was more than willing to step in and be my roadie. Phil and I bonded back then over our experiences as foot soldiers in the alternative rock wars. I picked him up at his place and we drove over to the apartment to drop the luggage. Phil stayed with the car, which was parked in a loading zone, distracting Coco, while I shuttled our belongings up the stairs. Luckily, Porto parking control is pretty lax and we were able to do the drop and get to a restaurant without any hassle. Whew! 

The apartment, located right across the street from the renowned and recently renovated Mercado de Bolhão, was immediately impressive, with good-sized rooms featuring high ceilings and lots of light. The balcony is big enough for a table for two as well as the all-important laundry-drying rack, and overlooks the interior courtyard of our block — nothing spectacular, but it sure beats the parking lot view back in Castiello de Jaca. The neighborhood is pretty touristy and the place is crawling with restaurants, souvenir shops, and hotels. Every day, all day, there are hordes of travelers dragging their roller bags behind them across the tile sidewalks and cobblestone streets, either arriving or departing in a never-ending tide. I’ve heard English spoken here more than anywhere we’ve been, outside of Ireland. I’ve become so accustomed to listening to the sound of the languages spoken around me rather than the words that it’s a bit jarring when I hear the mother tongue being spoken. Portuguese is surely the most foreign of all the languages I’ve heard over here: it’s fairly harsh and often angry-sounding, like something you’d hear in an Eastern European country. In Spain, you could, for the most part, get away with the phonetic pronunciation of a word but here the accent and inflections make that difficult. Even a simple word like “two” — dois in Portuguese — is a lot trickier than it looks. I end up asking “fala inglês?” a lot and, since I’m in the tourist district, there’s usually someone in the shop or the dog park who can help. In fact, most times that I enter a store, the person there will start talking to me in English. I guess I’m not fooling anyone. 

Most of my days begin with coffee and muesli on the patio, with Coco sitting nearby, ready to scavenge any dropped morsels. After that, we’re off to the dog park for some ball-throwing. Actually, it’s not legally a dog park — our host explained to me that that concept doesn’t exist in Portugal — but it’s been adopted by the locals for that purpose since the Covid lockdowns. It’s really just a grassy area above the Trindade metro station that we share with locals looking for a place to smoke a surreptitious joint or down a liter of super cheap Super Bock. Coco doesn’t mind, however, and will chase the ball until my arm hurts, and that’s when we leave for a walk around the neighborhood. There are many streets leading off of the Trindade plaza and I try to pick a different one every day and see where it leads. Porto has lots of old-world charm, even when it’s just a run-down residential district. It’s a very hilly place, and it often reminds me of San Francisco but, like that city, Porto has problems housing all of its residents, and many live on the street. This is shocking to me because I’d always thought that socialist governments would prevent this kind of problem. Of course, like that city, it’s a popular tourist destination and record numbers arrived this year, coinciding with a huge construction project to expand the Metro trains, making for a chaotic scene in the downtown. In 2019, I didn’t mind the tourists since I was one of them but now, as a long-term tourist, I wish they would all go home. 

After our morning walk and play, we come back home and it’s lunchtime for Coco and me: she has kibble and a dental chew while I opt for something from the human side of the menu, usually my leftovers from last night’s dinner. For the first couple of weeks, the Vuelta de España — the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France — was on TV in the early afternoons and I got hooked on watching that. I wrote earlier of my love for the French race but the Iberian model is just as fun to watch and there’s no shortage of incredible scenery. My favorite days were when they raced into France, crossing some of the same mountain passes that we had in our time there, even riding right through our old village of Pierrefitte-Nestalas, and up the Col du Tourmalet, and the day they covered almost exactly the same roads that I had on my way from Santander to Oviedo. That was usually followed by live coverage of the US Open tennis matches from New York — of course, we were rooting for Coco Gauff —  and I got sucked into that tournament as well. I hadn’t intended television to be a big part of my travels but it really did help fill the empty afternoons when I was feeling Denise’s absence most keenly. 

I have had a couple of actual human interactions since arriving, lest you think that I’ve been a total hermit. I went to a gig by Phil’s band, Population 5, made up of three Porto locals and two English expats, in the basement of a record shop not far from my place. They’re a great outfit and hearing live music is always a shot in the arm for me. Best of all, it was an early show and I was back home by nine!  I also had coffee with Meredith, a friend of my friend Bob’s in Chicago, and got to pick her brain about life in Porto. She and her husband have been here for a few years, working as digital nomads, and she had a lot of intelligence to share about the pros and cons of living overseas. Outside of that, I smile a lot at people who stop to admire Coco, and sometimes use the handful of words I’ve picked up, and hope that the shopkeepers I encounter can speak a few words of English. 

Somewhere between the finish line of the Vuelta and the marquee matchups of the Open, Coco and I set out on our afternoon walks, usually to a different park in a distant part of town. There isn’t a whole lot of green space in the center of the city so we often have to stroll quite a ways to find her a new place to do her business. Porto eschews the midday break that France, Spain, and Italy enjoy, so their rush hour is more in line with the US model: by six in the evening most people are at home or in a café, giving us a little breathing room as we explore the city. As is true everywhere, Coco attracts a lot of attention, and she has no problem stopping and preening for passersby as they give her curly head a scritch. But Porto also has a fair amount of people who recoil from her approach, as if I were walking a wild boar down the sidewalk, and I’m not sure which reaction entertains me more. Before arriving, the travel websites made Portugal sound like a dog-owner’s paradise, but the truth is that here, dogs aren’t welcome in businesses the way they are in Italy, Spain, or even France. I’ve even been asked to leave trashy souvenir shops, even though anything Coco could do in those places would only improve things. 

There are few things I enjoy more than exploring a city on foot, and these morning and evening walks are usually the highlights of my day. My dinners are usually pretty boring affairs, usually a protein and a veg or salad, washed down with some cheap Portuguese wine or a cider. I can buy a juice box-sized local wine — the perfect size for one person — for 60 cents or, If I want a step up in quality, a half-bottle of Alentejo red will set me back 1 euro 70. Even at the small, urban Pingo Doce supermarket located at the foot of the stairs to my apartment, the prices are comically low compared to US prices. I haven’t been eating out very much in an attempt to save money: with Denise in LA and me in Portugal, our food budget has doubled. After dinner, Denise and I connect on WhatsApp and she fills me in on Finn’s progress. As you can imagine, it’s very stressful to have a child going through a crisis when you’re so far away so it’s good that at least one of us can be close by. I feel kind of useless here but I think it’s best that Denise is there with him: she’s better suited to giving the kind of care that Finn needs. I would probably just suggest a STAT colonoscopy…

After dinner, I’d watch the tennis matches but, now that it’s over, I have discovered AMC, the movie channel familiar to US basic cable viewers, and have been watching several mediocre movies that I’d forgotten about or — like Forrest Gump — never got around to seeing (really? FG was a popular movie??Yikes! ). Unlike Spain and France, the Portuguese choose to keep the original actors’ voices and use subtitles instead. (Apparently, it’s also partially a financial decision, owing to the relatively small size of the country. Spain can afford a dubbing industry- Portugal can not.) Not only does this help me enjoy the movies but I’m also picking up a few words in the lingua franca. Here’s a couple of shots of the television…

The bed here is definitely more comfortable than the last couple places so my sleep is better. The nights here have been cool, a welcome break from the heat and humidity of the daytime, and I’m rediscovering the comforter, something we haven’t needed since Ireland. I’ll let the pictures tell most of the stories since, as you can tell, life without Denise here is somewhat regimented and dull. I’m definitely “batching it,” as they say, and I usually go a few days between showers and changes of clothes. There’s something nice about the solitude but it’s far outweighed by the monotony of the routine. It’s fair to say that I’m wallowing a bit but I’m not worried about it. I’m saving the cultural stuff for when Denise is back with me when we can leave Coco for a few hours and really savor the city. By the time she returns, I’ll know my way around town like a local. 

Denise has sent me a large group of photos from her time in Los Angeles so I am planning a photo-heavy post of those soon. Obrigado por ler!

It’s been longer than I planned between these posts but I think you’ll see why I’m so tardy…

Where to begin? Let me just tell you that, as I write this, Denise is in Los Angeles tending to our youngest son and I’m in Porto with Coco. This was definitely not in the program but you know what they say about plans. Finn is doing much better, so that’s a relief (Out of respect for his privacy, I won’t go into the details but he’s on the mend as I write this two weeks later. PM me if you know him and want details), but let me just back up and tell you about the crazy last few weeks. 

As I mentioned in our last post, the apartment in Castiello de Jaca was not all that we hoped it would be. In fact, it was really uncomfortable, from the bed to the couch to the chairs; there was just no place to feel comfy and that was galling. On top of that, there was the smell from the sink that just never went away. We tried candles and air fresheners but nothing worked. The hosts claimed to know nothing about the issue but there were tell-tale spent devices all over, speaking to olfactory battles fought and lost. The bed was the straw that broke the camel’s back — or my back, to be precise — and every night made things worse. With a week to go in our rental, we didn’t relish spending extra money to find a new place but we were both fed up with the situation. So, when I found a reasonably priced place with air conditioning just ninety minutes south in Zaragoza (best pronounced with a lisp), we packed up and let Ricardo know that we were outta there. 

The drive to Zaragoza was a crash lesson in the varied Spanish geography, and when we started climbing out of the Jaca valley we stopped to look back at the sight of the dramatic sweep of the Pyrenees in the near distance, with an empty, hilly desert in the foreground. It reminded me of the views you get in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe area: somewhat desolate yet gorgeous. We arrived at our place in the Arrabal neighborhood, a funky, working-class area just across the river from the downtown, and quickly cranked the splits in all three rooms. We’d avoided the worst of the European summer up until that week but, with the temperature rising in the 90s and 100s (40-45C) all over northern Spain, it was nice to have a place where we could cool off. 

Of course, nothing is ever perfect in the world of Airbnb — especially in our price range — and the internet at our new place was not working. Our host suggested we call the company and have them troubleshoot the issue over the phone. That quickly turned into a comedy when we discovered that, although they had an English-speaking customer service department, they couldn’t help with anything technical and, when we talked to the department that could, nobody spoke English. Frustrated, I sent off a sharp note to the host, insisting that she, not us, fix the issue since we needed the connection for our work. (I didn’t tell her my “work” was a blog.)

She promised to get a solution in the morning and so off we went into the city to find some food in the city’s popular El Tubo district, home of innumerable tapas bars. Unfortunately, that turned into a problem too, as the place we found with outdoor seating — to accommodate Coco — lost our food order, leaving us annoyed, hungry, and in search of another spot in the crowded corridor. We finally managed to get a restaurant to serve us food and then, with the temperature still hovering around 100 F despite the hour approaching midnight, we headed home to the cool comfort of our place. We collapsed into bed and about thirty minutes later, the power went out in the apartment, leaving us in the dark and without air conditioning, no doubt a consequence of running all three units at once. We spent many minutes searching for a fuse box or breaker panel to no avail before finally giving up and we went back to bed, spending a restless, sweaty night cursing our terrible luck. 

The next morning, I messaged the host and she came over, removed a painting from the wall which was covering the elusive breaker panel and quickly restored the power, but not without a perceptible eye-roll. She also informed us that the technician from the internet company would be there soon and I assured her that I had plenty of experience waiting for them. In the course of the technician’s three-hour(!) visit, much of it spent taking pictures of Coco and talking on his phone with his wife about Coco, we got a phone call of our own that would throw a spanner in the works, as the English say. 

Usually, getting our youngest son on the phone takes a lot of planning and, once we have him on the line, a lot of teeth-pulling to get him to tell us anything. He’s always been a quiet kid, monosyllabic at times, but possessing a sly sense of humor just below the surface. So, when I got a call from him at around five a.m. LA time, I figured something was up. He shared with me that he was not doing well and I immediately knew he needed to get to a hospital and get some help. After he assured me that he’d call a ride and got himself to LA General, we started making plans to get one of us to California. 

I jumped on the internet and, although we would have to wait a few days, was able to find Denise an affordable flight from Madrid to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, although we were anxious about our son, we decided to try to make the best of the city in the days before we headed to Barajas for her flight — we knew we couldn’t just sit in the apartment and worry. We visited the magnificent Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar with its frescoes by Goya and a whimsical installation of rhinoceros statues just outside the doors of the Cathedral. We toured the newly restored 11th-century Aljaferia Palace, dating from the time of Moorish rule over this part of Spain, and walked the banks of the Ebro River as it passes through town on its way to the Mediterranean. It’s a beautiful city, well-maintained, and filled with history. The city doesn’t skimp on public parks and the one closest to us, Parque del Tío Jorge, had just about everything you could ask for in a park, including a huge dog park and a nice café in the center of things. Europeans never miss a chance to plop down a café where it will do some good.

Unfortunately, we had to cut short our time in Zaragoza and started on the three-hour drive to Madrid so that Denise could catch her flight. Again, it was a beautiful drive across the varied terrain of north central Spain and, unlike France and Italy, we didn’t have to pay a single toll despite traversing many newly built tunnels and bridges. We said our fretful goodbyes at the curb and I went back to our hotel with a giant lump in my throat. As Denise pointed out at before she left, we have been side-by-side for seven months and now she was heading home on an open-ended mission. Even worse, Coco had no idea what was going on: her top human — Denise is the alpha of the pack — was disappearing and, despite numerous efforts on my part to explain the situation, she would spend the next few days desperately seeking Denise. My heart broke for her and I tried to make it up to her with extra treats and belly rubs. 

We had originally planned the next week to be a change of pace from our usual routine: we had even booked a nice hotel for two nights in Bilbao, celebrating our 26th anniversary and, after that, we were going to join our friends Eric and Coloma at their vacation condo in Noja, Spain for the weekend before checking out Oviedo for a couple of days. Now Denise was gone and Coco didn’t seem excited about the tickets I had bought for the Guggenheim. Oh well, there was nothing to do but point the car north and hope for the best. 

Leaving Madrid, I encountered my first toll plaza since entering Spain. I was relieved to learn that the electronic toll device we acquired in France worked as planned in Spain: it’s a great feeling of power to have the gate automatically lift up for you, especially after the payment headaches we experienced early in the trip before we got the transponder. Meanwhile, the road to Bilbao was another show-stopper: after you leave Madrid metro, the countryside opens in front of you and there’s farmland as far as the eye can see. In my limited experience, Spain outside of the cities is very sparsely populated: it’s a huge country but so much of it is open land. I stopped in Burgos to give Coco a walk and found a café serving the traditional Spanish tortilla, which would become my lunchtime staple for the week. 

Once you get north of Burgos, the land starts to change pretty dramatically: it goes from relatively flat and arid to very hilly and Oregon-style green, and you can’t believe you’re still in Spain. I’ve never driven into Bilbao and, between the hills surrounding the city and the curving Nervion River, it’s a pretty spectacular entrance. My hotel is right across the street from San Mamés, the Bilbao soccer stadium, affectionately known as “The Cathedral,” which is fitting since it is named after an early Christian martyr. No matches are scheduled during my stay, which doesn’t stop a large crowd of tourists from taking pictures or joining the hourly tours. I even joined the throngs and visited the gift shop to replace my lost Tour de France hat. 

Bilbao is a great food city and I had pintxos at El Globo along with a nice glass of Rioja, the “Napa Cabernet” of Spain, and walked around downtown, amazed by how many bars, cafés, and restaurants they had managed to squeeze into the district. It was a beautiful night and seemingly everyone was out enjoying a beverage. The next morning, I walked along the river to the Guggenheim Museum where I had reserved two tickets for Denise and me. You might think that the oft-imitated Frank Gehry design, built in 1997, would be showing signs of being dated but I still find it fascinating: I’m not sure how it works but it does, and the interior is just as bewitching as the titanium exterior. The visiting exhibitions were interesting but the real star of the day for me is the Richard Serra installation. I could spend all day walking around and through his weathered steel sculptures. The modern art in their permanent collection is pretty impressive as well. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend it: even the usually annoying Jeff Koons scores with his giant Puppy, placed outside the museum café. It’s a fantastic city and I’d live there in a minute, although it’s probably too expensive for us. I had a good time but couldn’t help thinking how much better it would have been with Denise. 

On Friday, I set out for Noja, the seaside town where I would meet and stay with our friends, Madrileños Eric and Coloma, at their summer place. Denise and I had visited them there in 2019 and had a great time at the beach and the local bars. I distinctly remember one delicious — and super cheap — lunch at a bar called SuEllens, so named because Dallas was hugely popular in Spain, but, sadly, that spot had closed, a victim of the pandemic. However, when we went back to that same town, Santoña, they were celebrating Day One (of nine) of the festival of the Virgen del Puerto (Virgin Mary of the Port), and everyone was crowded downtown, eating, drinking, and listening to live music. Although I was dearly missing Denise and I was preoccupied with our son, it was hard not to have a good time surrounded by so many happy people, many wearing the traditional festival scarf around their necks. Later that evening, we joined up with some of Eric and Coloma’s friends for drinks, which, in Spain, usually involves multiple bars. We started out at a grocery store where you were welcome to buy food and drinks and make your own picnic on their patio. After they kicked us out at closing time, we drove to a tiny bar in the next town that was located adjacent to a barn with cows. It was dark and crudely decorated, filled with locals, many of them very drunk. But, despite the rustic vibes, they had a kitchen that could really cook and Eric kept ordering the local specialties while Coloma bought samples of several Cantabrian liquors. We ended the night at a big outdoor bar overlooking the ocean that was cut short by a torrential rain storm that sent us all scattering for the cars. 

After another day of hiking, eating, and drinking, I said goodbye to our friends and headed west along an absolutely beautiful road that reminded me of being in west Ireland, stopping in Santander for a quick bite and a walk around the city. This was another place that Denise and I are considering living in and I was sorry she wasn’t there to see the charming downtown and waterfront. After that, I mostly stuck to the back roads, taking in charming small towns like Santillana del Mar, Cobreces, and Comillas that somehow all had gigantic, ornate churches despite their tiny populations. 

I eventually pulled into Oviedo and found my hotel by the main city park — always thinking of Coco’s needs — but the problem was there was no one home: the front door was locked and the office was empty. I eventually figured out that a small handwritten note on the door was telling me to call a phone number and, using my rapidly improving Spanish, I managed to tell the person on the other end of line that I was at their hotel door, ready to check in. After a few minutes, an older man shambled toward me on the sidewalk, signaling that he was the guy for whom I was waiting.

After check-in, I took a walk around the city, discovering an authentic sideria where I enjoyed an unmarked but delicious bottle of the Asturian specialty, along with some local cheeses. Coco and I then walked back to the hotel, stopping to check out the statue of Woody Allen that was erected by the city to honor the American filmmaker. Parts of Allen’s Vicky Barcelona were filmed here and he apparently fell in love with the city during the shoot. The sight of the native New Yorker this deep into northern Spain had me longing for a good bagel, something that has eluded me since we arrived over seven months ago. You’d think an enterprising local would open a chain of “Woody’s New York Bagels” to take advantage of the connection but mostly I just saw tapas places and burger joints. Go figure. 

I had my nightly phone call with Denise as she was waking up on the west coast and she filled me on the latest from there. She had a lot to accomplish but I was kind of envious that she was surrounded by friends and family and had a purpose.  I felt somewhat lost, driving from place to place with only Coco to talk with most of the time. She is a good listener but generally doesn’t add a lot to the conversation. 

I departed Oviedo the next morning, stopping in León to admire their enormous Catedral de León and have yet another tortilla at a local cerveceria before climbing some mountains and tacking west in the general direction of the Portuguese border. I purposely chose the smallest roads that would take me to my destination for the night, yet another hotel, the last before arriving in Porto the next day. The road did not disappoint, as it took me over miles of fire-scorched hills and through one or two small farming towns, about as rural a route as I’d been on all year. When I finally crossed the border, there wasn’t even a welcoming sign on the road, the only way I knew was the text from my cell phone company letting me know that my roaming minutes were good in Portugal and the extra hour I received by entering the UTC+1 time zone. 

My hotel was in Bragança, a town that no one in their right mind would ever visit except when needing a place to stay between Oviedo and Porto. The hotel clerk assured me that my belongings would be safe in the car as crime was practically unknown there. I had a hard time finding anything to eat as I’d arrived on a Monday and almost everything was closed. The few restaurants that Google Maps told me were open turned out to be closed for vacation so I made do with a slice of pizza and a bottle of Somersby cider, a drink I remember fondly from our last visit to Portugal in 2019. It’s an English cider and considerably sweeter than the Asturian or Basque recipe and I’ve seen it everywhere we’ve been in the country. I hit the hay early, watching a rerun of the previous day’s Vuelta de Espana bike race. Tomorrow, I’d be in Porto and able to settle down for two months. I put Coco in the car and told her that all this crazy traveling would be over soon and we’d be in the same apartment for two whole months. I swear I heard her take a deep sigh before she lay her head down on the seat. 

*A Spaniard in the Works is the title of a 1965 book of prose by the late John Winston Ono Lennon. Used without permission of the author’s estate.

Don’t get me wrong, we loved France and the French people (even the Corsicans, who insist they are NOT French!) and ditto for Italy and the Italians, but after a couple of weeks in Spain, we definitely feel more relaxed than on those prior stops. Why is that, I wonder? The first reason might be the language: we just feel more comfortable with Spanish, even if we don’t speak it anywhere near competently. Denise took a few semesters of Español at Portland Community College before we left and I had passable medical Spanish from my years in the GI department at the hospital — although most of that doesn’t come in handy in day to day conversation, as you might imagine — but we all know the difference between learning a language and actually speaking it among the locals is huge. Spanish just sounds familiar to our west coast ears. 

We picked up a little bit in France but it’s a very difficult language to learn, something that any French person will (proudly) tell you. Spanish is a more phonetic tongue so what you see is what you get. Still, we are able to do okay wherever we go and, of course, dear Google Translate is always nearby. 

Another difference is that the Spanish are a little more relaxed, in general, than the French, particularly when it comes to dogs. All three countries have very friendly people but the French, in general, tend to be the more prickly when it comes to following rules. Case in point: in France and Italy, as in most of the USA, the drivers tend to park in the spaces provided for them at public car lots; in Spain, they get very creative and fill every available piece of tarmac. When we first encountered this comical system, we thought for sure our car would be blocked in but, as if guided by some unseen theodolite, they always manage to leave just enough room for the other cars to escape.

When we arrived in Europe, we expected to find the midday break, or siesta, in Spain but were surprised that it’s widespread in Italy and France too. Everything but the restaurants and bars shut down for many hours and, on Sundays, don’t reopen. At least in our part of Spain, the grocery stores, even giant Carrefour, are completely shut on Sunday. It takes a while to get used to that kind of schedule but it’s lovely that they all seem to have lunch with friends and family — including alcohol —  and have a rest before going back to work.

Other things we’ve observed: 

-In France and Italy, everyone smokes, while in Spain, everyone and their brother smokes. 

-We haven’t run into any mosquitos here in Jaca, something we fought in the other places, which is nice — maybe due to our higher elevation — but there’s plenty of flies. 

-Thankfully, most Spanish drivers aren’t as impatient as their southern-European brethren and the tailgating and dangerous passing incidents are way down. 

-Mountain bikers on the trails, however, are indeed crazy, zooming past us on the Camino at breakneck speeds without so much as a “a su derecha.” We’ve had a few run-ins with them where we exchange greetings in the internationally-known sign language of the extended middle finger. But enough with the amateur, armchair, anecdotal anthropology, let’s get into our travels! 

One of our current hosts’ suggestions was to take a ride on the Petit Train of Artouste, which is actually back in France and, as the crow flies, not too far from our old stomping grounds in Pierrefitte. It is still just over an hour from us here in Spain so we packed the dog and a picnic and decided to make a day of it. The drive took us back to France through the Pyrenees, but over a road that we hadn’t traveled before and the views were stunning. We had no time to gawk, however, but promised ourselves we’d stop on the drive home and take in the beauty. 

Once we parked at the fog-enshrouded bottom of the mountain, we had to take a gondola to the train station, a ride that takes you up 2000 feet in just 10 minutes, an eardrum-popping experience, but one that gets you above the clouds and offers a terrific view. The Petit Train, as it turns out, is not much different than the ubiquitous “little trains” that run through many European city centers — like one that we took in Carcassonne — except that it rides on narrow gauge rails. On the edge of a mountain. With nothing between you and a 2000-foot drop into a picturesque, rocky valley should something go awry. They kind of soft-sell that particular danger on the website but we’d come this far and, despite my fear of heights, I couldn’t let the side down. 

We all squeezed into the metal seat of our row, Coco none too happy with the situation, and headed off to Lac d’Artouste, a dammed lake about 55 minutes away. The rail system was originally built to take workers from the town to the dam worksite but now mostly functions as a diversion for vacationing families. The train journey starts out with two claustrophobia-inducing minutes in a tunnel with just centimeters of clearance on the sides and top of the cars. It’s very dark and smells of the diesel fuel that powers our engine and it reminds me of the pitch-black start of the Giant Dipper roller coaster in Santa Cruz. Once you’re out of the tunnel, the views of the valley below and the mountains above you are breathtaking, yet I can’t help but think as we careen around another hairpin turn, that one errant rock on the tracks and we’re rolling down the hill, stopping only when we reach the river way, way, way down there. We do get some nice looks at the colonies of marmots who inhabit these mountains and finally arrive at the station below the lake. 

At the station, we discovered the other thing they don’t tell you: it’s about a thirty-minute, somewhat arduous climb up from the station to the actual lake, leaving you about twenty minutes of sightseeing time at the top before you have to head back to catch your assigned return train. When we realized this, we inquired about taking a later train back and were directed to the sign informing us of the eight-euro fee to change your return. You can buy an all-day ticket but that means six hours at the lake which would be a lot for Coco. We decided to make the best of it and started up the rocky trail to the lake. Once at the top, we wolfed down our sandwiches and took a scenic walk over the dam before we had to head back down to catch our train. At 27 euros a head (dogs free) for the day, it’s not cheap but I’m happy to pay for the guys who are out there all day clearing and checking the track to keep us from plummeting to certain death. 

Before we left the parking lot, we saw someone doing a pop-up wine tasting station and, of course, we couldn’t resist saying bon jour. We met Pierre, a charming French vigneron in his 70s, wearing a black beret, and serving up some of his Jurançon whites. The domain is called Cinquau, just west of Pau, and the wines are made from unusual grapes, including Gros Manseng and Petit Courbu, neither of which we’ve heard of before. After tasting a few wines — swish and spit for the driver — we bought a bottle of his white blend and bid him adieu. (We forgot to take his picture, dammit!)

On the drive back, we made numerous stops at the viewpoints we had sped past earlier in the day, each one more amazing than the next. These mountains are ski runs during the winter and a hiker’s paradise in the off-season. It’s all a national park which forbids dogs even on leash so, unfortunately, we can’t bring Coco for a walk so we want to come back and explore without her. There are grazing sheep and cows on the open land and she gets freaked out by that. Speaking of those milk-producing beasts, we stopped at a roadside stand and bought some aged sheep’s cheese from the farmers. It’s amazing to us that sheepherding and cheesemaking has existed in these Pyrenees for millenia and continues today. As always, to be able to buy the agricultural products from the farmer-artisans is a treat. We reentered Spain over the Col du Pourtalet and the road took us past several beautiful lakes before things dried up as we approached the Huesca valley. 

Back at the condo, we spend every morning hiking and most afternoons in the swimming pool attached to our charming complex. It’s not terribly hot here in August, thanks to the elevation — highest temp so far was 90F — but it’s a treat to have the pool, the only one we’ve had access to so far. For dinner, we cook something up using local ingredients and try to make enough for lunch leftovers the next day. 

Last Saturday, we hit the road to visit the renowned city of Pamplona, famous for the running of the bulls ceremony during the Festival of San Fermin. Luckily, we missed that spectacle by about a month and were able to enjoy the city with relatively few tourists. It’s a major milestone for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, however, and there were a few of them around, their faces red from the sun — the 120 km path from Jaca to the city is almost completely exposed — and straining under the weight of their backpacks. But this is a lively city and there are plenty of things for them to see, do, eat, and drink.  We stopped for a quick tapas of tortilla Española before exploring and the delicious serving, big enough for two, set us back two euros fifty. 

According to Michener’s Iberia, our unofficial guide to the area, Pamplona was a bit of a forgotten backwater before Ernest Hemingway fell in love with the city and immortalized it and the bull-running ceremony in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. He helped turn the town into a major tourist attraction — at least for one fortnight a year — a kind of Mardi Gras, but with bullshit instead of beads. We followed the path of the run and you can see the square holes in the street where the wood and steel guardrails get planted every July, and the bullpen where the whole thing begins. There’s a tremendous amount of history here — archeologists have found lithic tools dating back 75,000 years — and it’s been occupied by the Romans, the Visigoths, the Muslims before the kingdom of Navarre was founded here in the early ninth-century. Of course, that bastard Napoleon Bonaparte had his way with the city for a few years, and it was one of the first cities to fall to Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War.  We won’t mention City Slickers.

We passed on an pricey guided tour of the city’s bullring and instead walked along the old city wall to the Cathedral of Pamplona, an ornate and stately church finished in 1501. I have to admit, the place impressed even this non-believer with its beauty. Inside, there’s a great atmosphere with calming music and aromatic incense, and it doesn’t hurt that it is 15 degrees cooler than the blazing streets of Pamplona. I usually get bored in churches but I could have spent the afternoon there. 

After church, we found an al fresco pintxos joint on the walls of the old fortress and over-ordered — note to self: each plate comes with two items — some local specialties. The four plates and two drinks for each of us came to just over twenty euros, and we still had enough food to make a full dinner that night. We purposely skipped the street in the old town that was lined with Pintxos restaurants and stuffed with locals and tourists devouring the small plates but, if we went back, we would definitely go there for lunch and for the experience. After lunch, we walked along the fortress walls overlooking the residential part of the city — mostly ugly, modern apartment buildings, unfortunately — ending up at  Jardines de la Taconera, a tree-lined city park, and all three of us took a little siesta on (or under, in Coco’s case) a park bench. 

On the way back to the car, we passed by the storefront of a coffee roastery and, always on the lookout for excellent java, I ducked in while Denise went across the street to check out a crafts shop. My timing was excellent as the gregarious owner was making a pot of coffee for some other customers who were in the process of purchasing a pour-over set up. After we enjoyed our coffees, the other couple left and Roberto, the owner and a Venezuelan by birth, animatedly talked me through his bean selection, showing a knowledge and passion of the product that I appreciated. Good coffee is essential to our mental well-being on this journey and, to that end, Denise and I have accumulated a nice French Press (they call them presse in France, I learned, humbly refusing credit) and a compact but high-quality hand grinder. Although we can’t control the quality of the apartments we stay in, we can at least regulate the coffee experience, and that goes a long way to getting our days started correctly. As we bade farewell to Roberto, he let us know that we’d always have a home at this shop in Pamplona. 

To wrap up our second week in Castiello de Jaca, we took an evening walk to the church at the top of the hill to check out the last night of their three-night jazz festival. Earlier in the day, we came across a young couple on the Camino and were chatting about the weather when I noticed that the guy was playing a tambourine with such skill, I immediately put it together that he was one of the musicians featured that evening. They were a three-piece combo, featuring our new friend Alan from Brazil on percussion, a Spanish vibes player named Angel, and, the star of the show, Childo Tomas, a singer and multi-instrumentalist from Mozambique. Many of the songs would build from Childo’s simple bass guitar figures and grow into entrancing polyrhythmic mini-symphonies, the three musicians making a lovely racket under the stars. 

As we walked down the hill after the concert, we did a quick half-time check-in on how things were going for us in Castiello de Jaca: we had to admit that the apartment was not the best and that the weather was warmer than we hoped for. But we agreed that the area was incredibly beautiful in a very different way than the French side of the mountains, and that the townspeople, a few bicyclists excluded, were a lovely bunch of folks. 

Since things have slowed down a little with the heat, we’ll probably just do a wrap-up blog in a couple of weeks, before we embark on a week-long, multi-stop trip that will eventually land us in Oporto, Portugal, our home for September and October. Thanks for reading! Come visit!

Right before we left Pierrefitte in France, we found two books by James Michener at the little free library (in English!) that documented his time in 1960s Spain. Both volumes are full of Michener’s famous in-depth research, with a lot of history of the different areas and stories of day-to-day life in Franco’s Spain. To us, it reads like a blog, and it’s not unlike what we’re trying to accomplish here. Of course, neither of us are as talented a writer as good old Uncle Jim (we’re not related and he was adopted), but one thing that I definitely share with him is his wordiness! Here’s our latest installment and it’s a long one so pour yourself an extra-big cup of coffee and dig in.  Or you can just look at the pictures. We don’t judge.

Just about two weeks ago, we arrived at our current stop, Castiello de Jaca, a small town just north of Jaca, a small city on the slopes of the Pyrenees in the Spanish state of Aragon. It’s only 33 miles from our last place in France but the drive was two and a half hours, the bulk of that on narrow, winding mountain roads. The last part of the trip brings you through the five-mile-long, toll-free Somport Tunnel — about as long as that fifty-euro Fréjus tunnel – and, voila, you’re in Spain. The State of Aragon, to be exact.

You’re still in the Pyrenees (or los Pirineos, as the Spanish call them) but a lot has changed: it’s a much drier climate, so all the flora is different and there’s a lot more barren rock than on the French side. It’s also much brighter — our eyes hurt in the daylight — a phenomenon we finally discovered is due to the extra one thousand feet of elevation that this village has over Pierrefitte. In short, it looks like… Spain. It also takes about 15 minutes for my allergies — relatively quiescent since Provence — to kick in and I have to dig in my bag for the Nasacort. Just down the hill from the tunnel sits Castiello de Jaca, half historic old town up on the hill and, across the highway, in the lowlands, half resort housing.

We are, of course, in the resort housing, in the third of a trio of really ugly buildings built in the 1970s, when the area boomed with the opening of the Canfranc ski resort. Our apartment is on the third floor — and remember that in Europe, the first floor is zero — and it turns out there’s no elevator in the building. Gosh, I’m sure that I checked that when I was booking this in October, I assure Denise but she’s not looking happy as we lug our heavy suitcases up the stairs. Once inside, the apartment is immediately disappointing, like a 1970s motel room with really bad art on the walls. At least there’s a balcony, albeit one with a view of the busy parking lot. I try to log on to the internet but can’t find the log-in information anywhere so I message Ricardo, our host. “Oh, there’s no internet in the apartment, Stephen,” is his reply and now Denise is really giving me a nasty look. How can we live without the internet, we wonder. How can we deprive ourselves of Netflix and our friends of this blog, so essential to their lives? 

Before we can register our disappointment, Ricardo messages me back to tell me that he will have a technician out on Wednesday to install the wi-fi. I thank him profusely and ask a question about the dog. There’s a long pause and he writes back to inform me that the apartment has a no-pet policy. Now Denise is ready to throw me off the balcony — what the hell was I thinking when I booked this place? No stairs, internet, or pets? I thought I was being so careful when checking out properties on Airbnb but my filters must have dropped on this one. I immediately wrote Ricardo back to apologize and tell him that I never would have booked the place if I had known, adding that Coco is a quiet dog who doesn’t shed. He wrote back after a few minutes and said that it was okay, but we’d have to pay a little extra in cleaning fees. Phew! I dodged two bullets there but thought I’d wait a day or so before I asked him to install an elevator in the building.

Once we got outside, however, we realized that we were in a special place: for starters, the Camino de Santiago ran right through our parking lot and continued on its way to Santiago de Compostela, 853 kilometers away. As Denise pointed out in her essay on Lourdes, we’re both lapsed Catholics but I’ve been fascinated by the Camino ever since I heard two friends talk about their journeys on the road in the early 2000s. Shortly after that, I was home sick from work and watched The Way starring Martin Sheen, a picture about a dad mourning his son by walking the Camino, that moved me in a way that I blame on the flu medicine. I’m not crying, you’re crying. 

We took a walk a little way down that path and came upon a young German peregrina who was walking the Camino by herself. She had started in Toulouse — one of the historic starting points — and was planning to make it to León, time permitting. We didn’t ask her why she was doing it — it was none of our business — but we did ask lots of logistical questions, just in case we ever decided to do it ourselves. It’s an intriguing idea, at least in theory, and we did once take a bus from Porto to Santiago de Compostela, though that did not seem to impress the other pilgrims at the church. Coco loves the trail and frequently takes off on side paths to explore fields or the river. 

After our morning on the Camino, we had to deal with more secular matters and headed to the local Carrefour to stock up on grub. Like the French, the Spanish like choices in their supermarkets and the aisles are filled with dozens of cheeses, chocolates, and biscuits. Since it’s Spain, there was an entire section of jamón ibérico, all greasy and exposed, next to the deli section, and a whole aisle of sherry and vermut, from discount to top shelf brands. The Spanish, like the French, love their fresh bread but the pan de barra can’t hold a candle to a crunchy French baguette. It’s crusty but the inside is like sugarless cotton candy. I guess it’s okay for sandwiches but it’s still not my favorite. It’s too bad there isn’t a French bread shop closer to the Spanish border: I’d be all over that. The prices in Spain rival those of France, Ireland, and Italy, which is to say that our weekly shopping is about 40% cheaper than in the States. At least that helps balance out the lopsided difference in US and EU gas prices. Gas prices in Spain are about a nickel cheaper per liter than France and that adds up when the tank on our car is fifty liters. 

After spending most of Wednesday waiting for the cable guy — an ordeal that, trust me, gains no excitement when occurring in a foreign country — we headed into Jaca to visit the tourist information office. It’s a small city dating back to the second century BCE, and the old town was probably built when the locals recaptured the area from the Moors around 1063. It was once an important city for trade and the seat of power in Aragon but nowadays it’s mostly famous as the childhood home of Georgina Rodrîguez, model, social media influencer, and soccer star Ronaldo’s latest baby momma. We strolled the ancient streets and made mental notes on restaurants to check out on future visits. The gal at the tourist office hooked us up with tons of maps and recommendations, enough to keep us busy for the next few weeks at the very least. The best tip, however, was to check out the Folklore Festival that was opening that night at theaters — and street corners — all over town. We bought tickets for a few events and headed back to Castiello de Jaca. 

That night, after dinner, we explored Castiello de Jaca’s old town section. It’s a steep walk up to the top of the village, which is actually five ‘barrios’  loosely joined into a town. There’s a church, of course, but one that distinguishes itself by having several relics — conveniently kept in a reliquary — on the premises. The Camino de Santiago comes out of the hill behind the town and makes its way down through the streets before crossing the highway and traversing our parking lot. At first glance, you think the housing is all well-preserved medieval stock but, on closer inspection, some of it is period-correct new construction that fits in with the original homes while providing all mod cons. The stunning views from the top of town are of several Pyrenean peaks, stretching from France to Jaca and our little down-market development at the bottom of the hill. 

The next day we took an eight-mile hike up the Garcipollera Valley to the chapel of Santa Maria de Iguacel and made trail buddies along the way with a young family from Barcelona. We asked them questions about what it was like to live in Spain — it’s getting more expensive and wages not keeping up – and they queried us about life in the United States. The mom asked Denise an interesting question: she said that the movies and television shows she had seen depicted Americans as only coming home for the holidays and she wanted to know if that was true to life. It’s apparently a strange concept to Spaniards that families would only get together once a year. Denise told her it certainly wasn’t unusual, given the size of the country, to only see relatives at Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Hanukkah. She seemed flabbergasted by this concept. They pointed out that the valley used to be full of people but, sometime in the mid-century, Generalissimo Franco had ordered everyone out of the valley in order to enact some flood-prevention measures. One town, Villanovilla, stubbornly refused to leave, however, and there is still a hotel and a restaurant there. 

After the hike, we had a disco nap because our folklore concert started at 10:30 AT NIGHT!  We had a little dinner in Jaca, a delicious tapas plate with the local sausage, patatas bravas, and grilled padron peppers, and then walked to the theater, which was sold out. It didn’t occur to me until then that this was the first indoor event we’d been to since our weekend in Dublin, where I had caught Covid, and I was a little freaked out. A friend of ours recently caught the coronavirus and, after recovering, developed blood clots in her lungs, causing her to be hospitalized for a few days. (She’s doing okay now.) However, there was nothing I could do so I just decided to enjoy the show. The organizers had invited groups from all over the world and this show was a revue of six of those outfits, starting with a traditional big band from Jaca playing local folk music. After that, however, things got very interesting very quickly with KTF Radha Sarisha, a music-and-dance group from all over Indonesia, and a tango-themed troupe from Uruguay. The stage revolved, so when one group was finished, they spun out of sight and a new group arrived, ready to perform. The Ezimnyama Dance Company from Zimbabwe blew the roof off the sucker with their depiction of a hunt and the evening finished with a traditional Mexican wedding dance by Guadalupe Omexochitl. We both left with a new appreciation for traditional folk music and dance. What had we been missing all these years? 

Friday morning, we got up early to take Coco to her grooming appointment in Jaca. The gal who runs the place also has a standard poodle so that put Coco at ease as she got her beauty treatment. We used the free time to go to the Diocesan Museum of Jaca, which doesn’t allow dogs. Usually, when that happens, we try to give Coco a good morning workout so she’s exhausted by the time we sneak away. We wouldn’t leave her alone for too long at home, but there are some attractions we don’t want to miss. This museum has an incredible collection of medieval mural paintings that were removed from disused local churches (like the one we visited in Garcipollera) and carefully restored and placed on the walls of the museum. The artwork is Romanesque and functioned as the Nexflix of the time for the illiterate people, telling the Bible stories on the walls of the chapels. It’s pretty crudely drawn stuff, but Denise is drawn to this particular style of art. We picked up Coco, who now looked gorgeous, and walked around the Jaca Citadel, a garrison built in the 1600s. 

We chose this part of the Pyrenees because I thought the high altitude would correlate to lower temperatures but that hasn’t been the case. The nights are cool but the daytime temperatures have been climbing since we arrived. Luckily, one of the perks of this Airbnb is access to a nice community swimming pool on the grounds. We found the optimal time to swim in order to avoid the hordes of randy teens was during the traditional ‘siesta’ time (more about that tradition in later posts.)  We have been enjoying bobbing around in the deep end of the icy pool, getting our physical therapy even if kids splash around us. 

Saturday morning, we headed up the highway to the border town of Canfranc (which we can’t help calling “Cab Franc” after a favorite wine varietal), where there’s a historic train station, now converted into a hotel. A train used to run through here on its way between Huesca and Pau, but a giant crash in 1970 put an end to the service. It’s now a booming ski town and we took a loop walk around the town and the station, dipping into the hotel for a peek at how the other half travels. There’s a nicely designed hydroelectric plant there and the remnants of Linea P, a series of fortifications that Franco had built after the Spanish Civil War to defend Spain against Republican attacks from the north. We didn’t take any pictures because the place was crawling with young kids and we didn’t want to seem creepy but definitely check out the hyperlink.

Saturday evening, we attended another folklorico concert, this time with only two groups, each giving an extended performance. I was happy to see the Indonesian group again, this time performing different pieces from each of the many islands of their home country, all with different styles of costumes. The band is excellent, with many of the players switching instruments multiple times during a performance. Next up was a very professional group from Uganda called the Crane Performers, led by the jovial and rotund Gordon. He was interviewed before the set and spoke in English, which was then translated for the Spanish crowd, much to our amusement. For the next hour, the music and dancing did not stop and, at the end of the show, the group invited the audience up on the stage to dance with them. Of course, they didn’t need to ask Denise twice and she and others from the crowd quickly joined the celebration. I selflessly stayed behind to document the event.

The next day, all eighteen groups from the festival participated in a three-kilometer-long parade through the streets of Jaca and we splurged on a couple of tickets for chairs so that we would have a front-row seat. The whole festival — or at least what we’d seen of it — was amazing and I think there’s a circuit of these festivals in Europe during the summer and the bands just bus from one to the other. It’s a pretty amazing way to spend your holidays, especially if you’re coming from Africa or South America. I mean, not everyone gets to spend time in the childhood home of Ronaldo’s girlfriend. 

That’s a wrap on our first week — and semana dos is filled with lots more excitement that you won’t want to miss!  Please consider signing up for the newsletter. WordPress doesn’t make it easy but if you comment or send me an email, I’ll add you to the list. Hasta!

Have we told you how pretty our little town Pierrefitte-Nestalas, France is? Granted, it’s not as jaw-droppingly cute as some of the absolutely huggable French villages we’ve driven or hiked through but it has plenty of charm and class: I like how the townspeople, young and old, take the time to greet us with a polite “bon jour, madame et monsieur.” It’s kind of formal and old-fashioned and maybe not something you hear as much in Paris . The village — technically two villages that joined forces, maybe to save on administration costs — goes back to the 11th century and the old part of town has buildings with the cross of the Knights Templar carved into the window arches. The reason it’s not as cute as others probably has to do with the mining and mill history of the area, which all but closed down in the 1980s. The upside of that economic downturn was the creation of a couple of rails-to-trails pathways, including a paved and mostly level 20 km path to Lourdes along with a more rugged route up to Cauterets (which we will discuss later in the post).  We love walking around here and exploring the trails and all the streams but, like the other places we’ve visited, it’s mostly a great jumping-off point to surrounding towns. Here are a few of those adventures. 

Denise discovered an intriguing hike in the nearby town of Luz-Saint Sauveur (another town that discovered the power of the hyphen) and the drive over there — following the gorge containing the Gave de Gavarnie ou de Pau — turned out to be, well, gorgeous. On one side of the road is the slate mountainside and on the other is the deep gorge containing the river. Luz is one of those towns at the crossroads of outdoor activities: the river attracts kayakers, while the mountains around town are busy year-round with skiers, hikers on the GR10, and bikers. Our hike took us up to a tenth-century English castle that sits high above the town and then along a trail that crosses the path of an impressive stone hydroelectric plant, one of the first in France. Luz is also the site of an edgy, eclectic jazz festival held every year since 1990, and we took in a couple of shows (on a different day from this hike): a badass bassist from Brazil named Farida Amadou who, despite her jazz background, took us on a thrilling trip through noise rock that was more Sonic Youth than Jaco Pastorius. We also caught a set by a French duo called Boucan, consisting only of a double bassist and a banjo player. The crowd was amused by their lyrics but we had to make do with their stellar musicianship. 

One sunny Thursday, we found a bike shop in nearby Argelés-Gazost and rented two electric bikes for the day. I know, I know… e-bikes are for old people! They’re like the pickleball of bikes but, with my two recent surgeries and Denise’s ongoing leg pain, it was the best we were going to do. We told the owner that we wanted to climb from Pierrefitte to Cauterets on the old miner’s trail and he recommended a mountain bike. We were under the impression, having walked a small part of the trail, that it was paved all the way but this was our first hint that it was going to be more than we bargained for. We rode back to town along the flat rails-to-trails path and then started up on the trail to Cauterets. This challenging path is parallel to the road that the Tour de France riders took up to the finish of Stage Six and we gained even more respect for them — assuming that they weren’t using electric bikes. It started out fairly easy but got harder as it went along. At one point, it turned into a muddy single-track and we had to trust in the wide tires to get us through. Every few hundred yards, the surface would change — from paved to loose gravel to mud to grass to dirt and back again — and the grade went from 5 to 10 percent, uphill and even downhill at times, making it a struggle, even with the motorized help. In our defense, these were just pedal-assist bikes, not the motorbike-type where you just hit the throttle and go: you still had to do a lot of work to get the bike up the hill. In addition, the bike weighs over 50 pounds (23 Kg) and that’s a lot to haul up a hill. Once we reached our destination, we felt like we’d really climbed a mountain. Cauterets is a very cool town and another popular destination for the outdoorsy types.  It used to be a high-class spa destination and that shows in the beautiful architecture, which reminded us of Paris. Unlike the poor miners down the hill in Pierrefitte, there was money and sophistication here. We ended up putting about 25 miles on the bikes and we felt every mile on our sore butts the next day. 

The next day was Bastille Day here in France and we figured it was a good day to get in the car and explore the Col du Tourmalet. We started our ascent from the town of Luz and ran into many bicyclists on the route, all trying to replicate — in reverse — the route the Tour riders had taken just days before. When we arrived at the pass, it was so crowded that we couldn’t find any parking. Since it was beautiful weather and a national holiday, every tourist in the Occitane had decided to visit. We went over the top and found a dirt road turnoff not far from the summit and had a nice picnic while watching the amateur cyclists struggle up the last kilometer of the climb. We took a little hike and saw sheep and llamas grazing, as well as a stray Peugeot that someone had inexplicably parked there. As we walked, the llama herd started drifting towards us and I did a quick Google search to see what was the worst they would do. Thankfully, it came back that spitting was about as ferocious as they got so on we hiked.

Later, we followed the road down the other side of the mountain through ridiculously cute French villages, stopping in one of them to check out a flea market and a cafe, the only two things open on the holiday. Speaking of which, we were a bit surprised that Bastille Day was not a bigger celebration day in this part of France. We were led to believe that it was akin to our Fourth of July but, except for everything closing down, it was pretty low-key, or, as Denise is fond of saying, “a nothingburger.” Again, maybe it’s different in Paris. 

Not every expedition we undertake is successful. Our trip to the top of Hautacam, a nearby ski resort (and, as you all well know, site of the finish of Stage 18 in the 2022 Tour de France) was so shrouded in fog that the guides recommended we not hike as we were likely to get lost and devoured by the grazing cows or sheep. We had a somewhat similar situation the next day on our hike around the Col du Soulor, with the clouds moving in and out all day, but we were able to finish our 10 km jaunt around the summit without incident. The hike was in a pastoral zone and we had close encounters with four different kinds of grazing animals: cows, sheep, donkeys, and, most surprisingly, a small band of horses. I didn’t need Google to tell me that one of the horses was not happy with having us around and we gave a wide berth to that bucking mare, who was probably just protecting her young. They had bells on so we knew they weren’t wild — and they weren’t the only group of equines on the mountain either. As usual, Denise undersells these hikes to me as “easy” and “short,” but this one was almost seven miles with a fair amount of elevation gain and drop, all at about 5000 feet of elevation. Her app calls it “facile” but I would call it “modéré” and , I dunno, maybe mention that you’ll be dodging giant piles of manure with practically every step. 

My diary for the next day just says “too hot!” so I figure we just did our twice-daily dog walks and laid low inside. The temperatures here in the Pyrenees have mostly cooperated with my plan to escape the worst of the European summer heat but this was an aberrant 90 degree day. Even with a sweltering day like that, by sundown it’s generally down into the 60s, making for a pleasant sleeping situation. 

One of the more popular spots in the area is the Pont d’Espagne, a designated World Heritage Site, just up the road from Cauterets. It’s a beautiful area, with a century-old bridge built to accommodate trade with the Spanish, and a gorgeous river, perfect for fly fishing, that flows through the area. Denise tried to talk me into taking Coco up to Lac Glaube on the ski lift but I really didn’t want to be wrestling with a freaked-out poodle on a skinny chair 100 feet above the rocky terrain. Hell, I didn’t want to be on a chair lift at all: I hate the things. Instead, we cut the day short and made a plan to come back sans poodle a couple of days later and take the lifts up to a hiking trail to Lac Glaube. This turned out to be one of the most beautiful hikes of our stay here, with the impressive Grand Vignemale looming over the glacial lake.

With all these nature hikes piling up, I realized that I was missing the city and suggested that we drive an hour north to Pau (pronounced “Po”) to get my urban fix. It’s a beautiful and well-manicured city, with the grand Boulevard des Pyrénées running along the southern edge of the city and offering a stunning view of the Pyrenees, just a few miles away. That, of course, is on a good day — the day we went was foggy and visibility was limited to only a few peaks. That was okay with us, however, as we were living in that particular range and didn’t need the city slickers’ view of things. We enjoyed our walk through the ancient (and the newer) streets and tried to imagine ourselves living there: the climate is mild, with temps rarely getting below 40 in the winter or above 80 in the summer, and there’s a train that connects with Toulouse to the east and Bordeaux and Biarritz to the west. You can be at the Atlantic beaches in two hours or Paris in under five. I could certainly see myself living there so we added it to the list.

Later that week, we attempted a hike to Viscos, a nearby town perched high on a hillside above the Gave de Gavarnie ou Pau but were turned back by a steady rain and high undergrowth on the main part of the trail. Ever since my encounter with a snake in Italy, I’ve been nervous about trails that consist of tall grass. Of course, getting bitten by a viper is apparently not the worst thing that could happen to me as there’s been a recent uptick around here in viral hemorrhagic fevers caused by… a tick. I admit it, I’m not the most outdoorsy person you know, but give me a well-worn path with not too many inclines or too much sun and I can walk all afternoon. But, if it’s rain, high grass, and elevation gains of 2000 feet, I’ll always find an excuse to stop into a café. 

The last hike I’ll mention before we decamp to the Spanish side of the Pyrenees is an amazingly scenic excursion to Lac du Gloriette. We had originally planned on visiting Cirque de Gavarnie, one of the Grand Sites of France, but the parking was just insane and even Denise, who never gives up hope —to the point of inventing parkable spaces in her mind. agreed that it was too crowded to be enjoyable. Instead, we settled for the hardly second-rate Cirque d’Estaube, just down the road and hard by the Spanish border. We were able to find free parking near the dammed Lac des Gloriettes, have a little picnic, and do a moderately difficult seven-mile hike around the lake and out into the river valley. Coco turned six years old this week and is definitely slowing down a bit but these nature hikes bring out the puppy in her: she bounds ahead of us, smelling every bush and cow pie, and you can tell she’s enjoying herself immensely.  The hike was not nearly as crowded as the Gavarnie, which clearly is the Yosemite Valley of this part of France. Later, we discovered that you can take the bus from Pierrefitte to the trailhead in Gavarnie, and that is a much better idea.

Last night, I woke up at 3 a.m. to use the restroom and noticed that the night sky was ablaze with stars. We’d been talking about getting out in the wilderness far enough from the (relatively minor) light pollution of the surrounding towns but we’d either been met by cloudy skies or were just too tired to make the effort. However, this was a clear night and maybe our last opportunity to see it so I nudged Denise awake to gauge her interest. She was game and so we went in the backyard, where the view was pretty good, and took in the show. “What about going back to Hautacam and seeing if it’s better up there?” I asked. Our host Joel had recommended the mountain top as a good local stargazing site — hell, they even had an observatory up there —  and, unlike our last daytime visit there, tonight was totally cloud-free. We threw on some shoes and hopped in the car and were at the top in a half an hour, awed by the display above our heads. We could see planets — Jupiter, I think, and Mars — as well as several shooting stars and satellites. Most impressive was the blur of stars directly above us that I took to be the Milky Way. As I’m more of a city boy, I’ve never seen a sky with so many stars and I was speechless. Several campers had parked in the observatory lot but we were the only interlopers who were awake — not surprising for 4 a.m. It was pitch dark at the summit and the only sounds we could hear were the clanking of cowbells in the fields below. It was pretty magical. Once we had our fill, we made it down the mountain and back to bed and Coco was none the wiser.

The stargazing was a perfect way to wind down our time here in the French Pyrenees. This is such a lovely area but not one we often heard about back in the U.S.A. — I only found it thanks to the Tour de France — but we’d love to come back here again. In a few days, we’re swapping the French side of the mountains for the Spanish side so it will be interesting to see what the differences are. We are certainly looking forward to the change in cuisine as we love tapas. Denise has been studying Spanish for a while now so I expect that will make things a little easier for us in the communication department. I will say that the French have been, on the whole, extremely helpful and patient regarding our general ignorance of the language. They were always apologizing for their lack of English skills while I remind them that my lack of French is the problem. And when pousser est venu pousser, there’s always Google Translate. Viva la France!

Denise here! Steve is too busy watching Le Tour so it’s my turn to fill you in. Water is everywhere in the Pyrenees. It pours from the mountains, powering hydroelectric plants, runs through villages in charming little creeks and spillways, flows from fountains at every church and city square, and generally falls from the sky at some point most every day. I doubt the locals take it for granted given the lack of water in so many other parts of the world right now and we certainly don’t. 

 As it turns out, the water is also pretty famous for its healing properties.  Steve and I have ‘taken the waters’ in one of the many historic thermal spas near our town on several occasions with lovely results and I’ll describe more of that later, but first, a few notes from my trip to the Mother Superior of all water spigots: Lourdes. 

As many of you know, I was raised in a moderately devout Catholic family and, like any good Catholic, Lourdes — along with Father Damian —  loomed large in my upbringing.  Lourdes was such a fantastic idea to me:  I loved the notion that holy water from a spring in a cave could miraculously heal sickness!  It didn’t matter that I had no idea where Lourdes was or that the Virgin Mary appeared exactly as depicted in paintings of the times. The little vials of water that devoted pilgrims from our parish brought back to family and friends each year could have contained tap water for all I knew.  Who cared?  It was magical.  Later, it became a running joke in my family that Lourdes was always the fall-back escape for any illness that might creep up. 

I should mention that Steve was raised under similar religious circumstances and his mother even kept a cherished Virgin Mary-shaped vial of the blessed water in a special spot in their home.  But Steve, being the curious child he was, went so far as to drink the contents of the bottle one day, causing his mother to have a fit which, no doubt, added to his general disdain for the Roman Catholic faith. Later, their family dog chewed the now-empty plastic bottle into something resembling modern sculpture.  Needless to say, I made my sojourn to the Grotto alone.    

Pilgrims have been flocking to Lourdes in droves since 1858, when the Virgin Mary supposedly, miraculously appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous in a grotto at the edge of town, next to the Gave de Pau.  Bernadette claims to have seen Mary more than a dozen times and was instructed by Mary to tell them to build a chapel at the site, ask forgiveness, and bathe in the water to cleanse all sins. The miraculous ‘healings’ started around the early 1870’s and since that time over 70 medical miracles have been recognized by the church along with a very strict board made up of doctors, other medical professionals, and clergy. Unfortunately,  there’s been a bit of a slowdown on miracles of late, with the last documented one taking place in 2008.  However, that has not deterred thousands of pilgrims in various states of medical need from showing up daily to collect the water and pray at the site, a large parkland consisting of a giant cathedral built on top of the grotto and over 40 micro spots where faithful groups can gather for mass, prayer and evening candle lightings. Getting see the actual Grotto of Apparitions is a bit of an ordeal, not unlike waiting in line for Space Mountain or a Taylor Swift concert I suppose, the difference being that people here quietly and respectfully shuffle along — no loud chatting, jostling, or gum chewing in this crowd! It does help to be in need though, as I saw dozens of people in wheelchairs and walkers assisted by volunteer nurse-nuns, who are dressed in identical crisp white habits, get the VIP treatment and go straight to the front of the line.  Once you enter the grotto area you can see the spot where Bernadette must have been standing or kneeling in her moments of fervor. You are allowed run your hand along the rocky walls but forget trying to stick a  finger in the actual spring: several stout, stern nuns looking exactly like my eighth grade teacher, Sister Mary Elizabeth, held arms akimbo preventing anyone from actually violating the holy water. No doubt this is just one more of life’s simple pleasures of which COVID 19 has robbed us!  

 

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is visited by nearly five million people annually and it’s a decidedly international crowd with people coming from all corners of the globe.  The town itself has a population of only 15,000 people but if you need to book a trip for your entire congregation, Lourdes has the most hotel rooms of any city in France outside of Paris! The inns mostly sprang up in the area surrounding the grotto in the 18th and 19th centuries and not much has changed since then, at least on the outside of the buildings. 

I had my own reasons for visiting Lourdes. For many years I’ve suffered weird and debilitating pain in my lower extremities resulting from pretty serious fractures in both legs. So when we arrived, I’m thinking what the hell?  I’m Catholic, I’m only nine miles away from miracle central, and I feel fairly entitled, so I was willing to give Lourdes a whirl. It’s really no different than buying a lotto ticket for a one billion dollar Powerball prize, right?  Well, I’d probably have better odds with the Powerball, if you can believe that!  

After visiting the actual Grotto, pilgrims line up at one of the founts that are made available so the faithful can fill whatever containers they have brought along, and it’s an amazing assortment!  People carried everything from eyedropper bottles to huge 10L jugs to fill with the healing waters. If you neglected to bring your own container, no problem: the streets leading down to the Sanctuary site are absolutely jam-packed with shops offering every kind of Blessed Virgin Mary logo-emblazoned empty plastic receptacle you can imagine. I had brought along an empty Perrier water bottle for this very purpose but felt weirdly ashamed that I was going to put this supposedly healing water into such a crass (albeit top-shelf name brand) one liter bottle and ended up dropping two euros on two small, plastic bottles featuring the VM herself and felt better about that. I’ll let you know if it helps (or watch your evening news). 

Speaking of shopping….there is nothing like the lineup of souvenir stores leading to the Grotto.  It’s Disneyland Main Street for the Catholics. Never in my life have I seen so many shops devoted to the devoted!  There’s a dazzling array of everything from cheap religious tchotchkes to legit beautiful ecclesiastic arts and crafts.  I was stunned by the sheer volume of merchandise. Shopping never felt so heavenly! 

I’ll leave Lourdes with this final thought: the one thing I think is actually cool about Lourdes is that it’s a city entirely devoted to the only women in the Catholic faith that gets any kind of recognition. Europe, especially France, is so full of endless depictions of Christ on the cross. So good on you, Mary and Bernadette!  You own this town!  

Higher up in the Pyrenees, less holy but wholly more relaxing, the thermal baths await and it’s a real experience to make a day of extreme hiking and then retreat into a bath house for the mineral-rich waters, which used to be a destination for the wealthy but now mostly cater to the hiking and biking crowd. The area we are in are full of these baths and the one Steve and I visited — Luzea in Luz-Saint-Sauveur — was built by Napoleon to house and treat his recovering soldiers!  Nowadays, for about $20, you get two hours of bobbing around in pools of various temperatures and sizes and saunas of different steaminess but the real treat, for a nominal extra cost, is the private hydrotherapy treatment taken in the old original spa building. When we inquired about the treatment at the front desk, the lady assured us that the waters in the hydrobaths had actual healing powers and who were we to argue?  The experience lasts about 20 minutes and you end up feeling like you’ve had a full-body massage. The minerals in the water left my skin softer than I’ve felt in years and Steve even delighted in being able to touch his toes, and after two hip replacements, that’s no small feat. 

All in all, taking the waters at either of these locations, be it a holy shrine or a steamy mountain spa, is certainly worth your while, and the scenery is not too shabby either!  My Lourdes experience set me back only two euros compared to the double-digit spa bill at Luzea so there’s that. The hydrotherapy probably gave me more relief than the holy waters down the mountain but ultimately it’s all worth it, right? 

Coming soon: the old folks go for a bike ride and take in some live music. We’re wrapping up our time here in France before we head due south and a short distance to spend a month in the Spanish Pyrenees.

For years I denied the obvious about the Tour de France (and bike racing in general): it was full of doping and the organization — UCI —  was complicit in the whole scandal. The profile of cycling had exploded in the US and they weren’t about to kill the yellow-jerseyed goose who was laying the golden eggs.  In 2012, when Armstrong finally came clean, it took a lot of sorting in my brain to come to terms with the truth and I decided it was a dirty sport that needed to clean itself up before I came back as a fan. However, only six months after Lance and Oprah had their little tête-à-tête, I was back on the couch with my own performance-enhancing drug — coffee — in hand. The appeal of all those quaint French villages was too much and I just wasn’t getting my fix from Rick Steves. I admit it, I’m a mob wife. 

Our trip to see Stage Five in Laruns had only ratcheted up my excitement level and Stage Six, Tarbes to Cauterets, looked to be the most interesting race of the tour so far. They would be climbing Col du Tourmalet, one of the classic peaks in Tour de France history, before descending through a number of small villages and entering Pierrefitte-Nestalas, our home for the month of July. Although we could have just walked five minutes from our place and watched them speed by in front of Mr. Vagabond, the American food restaurant in town, I wanted a deeper experience, something where I could see the riders as more than a blur. We decided on a spot above town on the switchbacks of the road to Cauteret where the riders would be slowed down by the grade. We opted to leave Coco behind today because she had been a little freaked out by all the racket the day before. She’s pretty easygoing in general but four hours of just sitting in the sun on the side of the raod would have been misery for her. 

We loaded up our backpack with food and drink, grabbed the folding chairs from the back deck, and trekked up to our spot on the D920, about 14 km from the finish line. A lot of fans were thinking like us because, by 1:30,  the roads were already lined with people. We still had two hours of waiting before the Caravan appeared and another 75 minutes after that before we saw any riders so I took a little hike in the woods while Denise cracked a beer and made friends with our neighbors on the side of the road. This time, there were no big screen televisions on which to watch the race so I had to rely upon my TdF phone app and the spotty cellular reception on the side of the mountain to keep track of the stage. As expected, the GC leaders were packed together at the front and we’d get to see Pogačar and Vingegaard dueling it out on the final climb of the day. I had no plans to be one of those obnoxious Tour fans who chase the cyclists up the hill, set off smoke bombs, or hold up a sign in front of a rider, but I’d put in my dues on my couch for years and I couldn’t wait to see the riders up close and personal.  I’d let my emotions determine my reaction.

Finally, over three hours after we set up camp, news came on the app that the riders had entered Pierrefitte and were about to start their ascent up to our position. I switched out my sun hat for my official, made in China, Tour de France baseball cap and started getting nervous: these guys were going to be just a few feet away from me! It would be like standing in right field at Fenway while Dwight Evans fielded a fly ball. The motorcycles approached and you could see the official red lead car for the Tour in front of the riders. Then something unusual appeared; a phalanx of police motorcycles, something I’ve never seen in years of watching the Tour on TV. There’s usually a couple of motos but this was crazy: I thought maybe they’d finally decided to do actual crowd control on the mountain stages where the fans can sometimes get out of hand. Later, we discovered that the reason for all the extra security was that French President Macron had decided to ride along in the lead car for that part of the stage. Thanks, Macron! 

Shortly after that motorcade passed, the lead riders rode by in a flash. I guess the 5% grade didn’t slow them down as much as I expected. Man, these guys are strong! Even if the gendarmerie hadn’t kept me on the side of the road, I don’t think I could have gotten enough momentum to keep up with these cyclists. Various groups of also-rans rode past us on their way to the top and I felt bad for these guys: they had to go through this torture every day to support their teams’ lead rider with little chance of any glory for themselves. Maybe they’re well-paid but it’s a hell of a job. 

After all the riders had made their way up to the top of the D920, we headed back home to watch the finish of the race, exhausted but exhilarated by the spectacle. It’s truly an amazing thing to see and a great source of pride for France. It was a tremendous thrill for me to see the race in person and I even briefly pondered the possibility of driving over to Bordeaux for the next day’s stage. Nah, two days were enough for me, I finally decided; I’d head back to the couch for the rest of the stages.

Later that evening we took Coco out for a run in the big, open field near our house. This time, however, the field was full of trucks and buses: Tour de France support vehicles all packing up for the day. We stopped and talked with a trio of friendly Dutch workers who run logistics for the Tour every year. They told us that they barely sleep for the three weeks of the event but it’s worth it to them: they make a lot of money in a relatively short time. We had seen the face of the Tour on the roads in the last couple of days but this was the beating heart of the organization: without these guys — three of about two thousand workers total — the rolling circus that is the Tour de France couldn’t function. We thanked them for their service and they went back to work. They would drive to Mont-de-Marsan tonight and begin setting up the media infrastructure there and repeat that for three weeks across France. I don’t think there’s anything like the Tour in the world of other sports: it’s like if you took the Super Bowl on tour across the US for three weeks and played a game every day in a different city. You’d have to be crazy to participate in something like that! Just watching two stages was enough work for us.

Upcoming posts: Denise takes the waters at Lourdes and hilarious consequences ensue when we rent some bikes. Thanks for reading!

Once I started writing this, I realized it would be too long for one sitting so welcome to part un a deux in which we recount our two days watching the Tour de France. Also in the blog pipeline: Denise visits Lourdes for some old-timey healing.

As a child, I had a fascination with bicycles starting very early. From my first toddler tricycle, bought for me by my grandfather, to the last city bike that I bought about ten years ago, they have always represented a sort of freedom: I could get on and ride away anywhere I wanted. Well, in grade school, I could ride to the convenience store to buy a Slushie and a Yodel. As a teen, my friends and I would ride the twenty-or-so miles to the Rhode Island border and then come back, just to say we did. Later in my teens, In 1972, I bought a ten-speed Maserati racer at Lechmere Sales for $99 and decided to become a bike racer, probably because my small Massachusetts town was celebrating its dodransbicentennial with a Fourth of July road and bike race. As it turned out, the official route wasn’t well marked and I got lost, probably cutting miles off the race and, as I approached the finish line in front of the junior high school, found myself in first place. Just as I made the turn into the parking lot to take the checkered flag (actually, I doubt they bothered with anything like that), the real leader cut me off, causing me to crash into the school’s stone wall, bending the fork of my bike and giving me a nice road rash on my arm. My racing career — and my Maserati — were finished.

Starting in my early twenties, I frequently commuted to work on a bike — maybe because I couldn’t afford a car — and spent many weekends bicycle touring around Boston (and later, San Francisco). Still, it wasn’t until 1999 that, thanks to Lance Armstrong and the Discovery Channel, that I truly became a fan of bike racing. I was immediately drawn to the spectacle of the Peloton and the thrill of a mountaintop or sprint finish and began waking up in the early morning to catch the live broadcast from France. As much as I loved the thrill of the race, I have to admit that my favorite part was the French scenery, especially the helicopter shots of the Alps, dotted with medieval castles, and the motorcycle shots of the riders pedaling through quaint French villages that looked unchanged since they were liberated by the Allies in 1944. France looked like a storybook place and I pledged to, one day, visit and see the Tour in person. 

When I booked our place in Pierrefitte-Nestalas, deep in the Haut Pyrenees, sometime last year, I had an idea that the Tour de France would be coming through the area; after all, the sadistic race organizers can’t seem to resist these stunning, rider-torturing peaks year after year. What I didn’t know until afterwards was that the sixth stage of the race would be coming through the town, passing just blocks from our place, before heading up the hill to a mountain finish in the next town.  Needless to say, I was ecstatic and began making plans for the best place to view our stage. I spent months poring over Google Maps to identify prospective vantage points. I solicited advice from friends and relatives who had seen the Tour in person. Now, we were in the village and the time to decide was coming up. 

As the days counted down to the race, I pondered the options; surely, the most iconic setting would be at the top of the Col du Tourmalet, twenty miles away and at almost 7,000 feet elevation.  Or perhaps it would be better to just let the riders come to us, and take a seat at a cafe just on this side of the river, where the peloton would have to carefully navigate the roundabout before heading up to Cauterets. Or maybe rent an electric bike and ride the Tour route to the finish line at Col du Cambasque and watch them finish there? I’m sure I drove Denise crazy but I’d waited so long and wanted to do it right. Finally, we agreed on a spot on the road above Pierrefitte that we’d spotted on an earlier hike: it was a relatively easy uphill hike from the town and a big enough grade to slow the riders down. Once that was settled, I noticed that the Stage Five race was to finish in Laruns, only 35 miles away. Hmmm. 

I suggested to Denise that I drive by myself over to Laruns to watch the finish and she surprised me by saying that she wanted to come along. I warned her that we’d have to get there early to get a good spot and likely sit for hours, on what was forecast to be a rainy day, and the riders would go past quickly etc., but she was undeterred. I wasn’t so crazy about driving over two mountain passes in the rain and fog myself but, when the day dawned clear, we agreed to pack a lunch, along with Coco, and motor the 32 miles — but one hour, twenty minutes — over the Pyrenees to Laruns. I mean, what else did we have to do? 

A few miles from town, we started the climb up to the Col de Solour and immediately encountered large numbers of bicyclists, some no doubt on their way over to Laruns as well, climbing the mountain. Many of them were part of tour groups with support vans, while others were seemingly making the grueling climb on their own. All the waiting to safely pass them added serious time to our trip but I didn’t care: the road belonged to these guys and we were the interlopers as far as I was concerned. Also, the scenery was jaw-droppingly beautiful and the frequent bike jam slow-downs gave me a chance to enjoy it. After we went over that summit, we briefly headed downhill until we began the climb to the even more impressive Col d’Aubisque. The roads became skinnier, the drop-offs more intense, and the cyclists even more determined. I have a tremendous amount of respect for amateur riders who do this kind of thing for fun. Of course, the intrepid bicyclists and white-knuckled motorists alike are rewarded with incredible views: I’m no seasoned mountaineer but this range is some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen in my life. 

We arrived in Laruns only to find all the roads leading into town blocked off, the reasons for which we’d learn later. We found one of the last parking spots at a public park on the south end of town and had a picnic lunch by the river before walking a mile to the northern end of town where the race would conclude. Having watched dozens of Tours on television, I was unprepared for the rush that I’d feel when I approached the familiar architecture of the finish area: there was the yellow arch under which the riders would sprint; there was the stage where the jersey presentations would take place; it felt surreal to actually be there. It reminded me of the first time I saw a baseball game at Fenway Park: my mother and I walked up the ramp from under the bleachers (of course, it was the one-dollar cheap seats — she never would have paid the stratospheric price of $4.50 for box seats) and there before me was the field on which my heroes spent their summers. I didn’t expect to have the same breathless reaction half a world away and fifty-plus years later but wow, it was cool to finally be at a stage of the Tour de France! 

We found a spot on a grassy knoll above the road about 75 meters from the finish line and began our wait. Luckily, Le Tour provides some pre-race entertainment in the form of Le Caravane, a rolling parade of dozens of sponsor floats, each sillier than the last. Once the show passed, our attention turned to the giant flat-screen TV just beside the finish line where the race was unfolding in the mountains outside of town. An unknown Australian rider, Jai Hindley, had broken away from the race favorites and was leading the pack coming into the final kilometers and the crowd starting buzzing in anticipation of his arrival. As he came into sight, the noise of the fans yelling and banging on the barriers became deafening, and Coco (even premedicated) began to jump up and down on Denise’s back. Hindley raised his arms in triumph and, 30 seconds later, the chase group crossed the line. The gap between riders was enough to give Hindley the yellow jersey, a nice surprise for him and us. 

We got caught in a little pedestrian traffic jam getting back to the town, but it gave me time to see the presentation of the jerseys for the stage up close, another important tour ritual that I’d only enjoyed on television. Another unexpected treat happened when we started our hike back to our car: Laruns is such a small town that there really wasn’t anyplace to put the team buses and cars besides on the city streets to the south of the finish (thus the barricades we encountered earlier). The police didn’t close off the street to pedestrians so we ended up walking right through all the team vehicles, getting to see riders walking around and being interviewed. I don’t think we would have experienced that in a larger city where the buses are usually barricaded off from the crowd. It was like leaving a rock concert through the backstage area. Further along, we ran into all the floats of the Caravan, who were stuck in a very long traffic jam that stretched for many blocks as they waited their turn to get out of town behind all the other tour traffic. Amazingly, even the guy who drives the giant chicken has to drive from stage town to stage town and, in Laruns, there was only one way to Tarbes, the starting town for tomorrow. I almost felt bad for him and then I remembered that he gets to drive a chicken in the Tour de France, so let him wait. 

The drive back to Pierrefitte over the same mountain roads we came in on was a little more harrowing than the journey over to Laruns. The fog had set in, reducing visibility to a couple of car lengths, and we had to look out for the bicyclists who were still climbing and descending the mountain as well as the cows who filled the pastures around the road. We made it back to our place around 8:00 in the evening, making for an exhausting but rewarding ten-hour day. Lying in bed, I was still buzzing about the race we’d seen and the best — a mountain stage going right through our town — was still to come.