Day 15

Day 15 was a travel day. The fam and I got out of the Holiday Inn and drove three hours towards Paris. We are in an area called Loire. This is castle central for France. There are dozens of fairy tale looking castles and palaces throughout the region. We'll spend some time touring this area tomorrow. I'd love to make it to watch the time trial tomorrow as well, but not sure we'll make it or not. I'd suggest watching it if you have the opportunity. The top three riders are not known for their time trial abilities. The currently placed riders in positions 5-6 have some strong skills in this discipline. The excitement will be to see whether the riders in positions 4-6 can win by a sufficiently large enough margin in this one race to take over the top spot. It should be close. I am hoping for a close enough finish that the race on Sunday is more than a ceremonial ride.

Typically the tour winner has a commanding enough lead going into the last day, Sunday, that the race is more ceremonial than a meaningful race. The lead is sufficient large that while the race is contested for the win for the stage, the overall leaders ride the race simply to stay out of harms way of the sprinters and make it across the line to complete the race. It would be cool to see this race hotly contested. We have VIP tickets in the grandstands on the finishing area on Sunday. I am sure it will be a great day regardless.

We are currently staying in a small town named Amboise. It is largely a rural area, surrounded by rolling hills. The town is smaller than the cities surrounding Dayton, with no real industry here. It is hard to compare these towns with cities in the US. Each town is pretty unique with it own ecosystem of sorts. The towns are highly concentrated and not nearly as spread out (roomy) as towns/cities in the States. Most survive off tourist dollars and if the people are not involved in the tourist industry, they commute to the larger cities for work. The streets are narrow, very narrow. The shops and eateries close around 8 PM. On the walk to diner through the winding streets and past the many shops, I noticed people walking home from work, stopping off at a local bakery to grab a baguette, I assume for dinner or breakfast. It seemed odd to me that they'd walk home with their oversized bread sticks wrapped only in a napkin. It is interesting to me to see how differently life is lived outside our little corner of the world. I hope the boys notice it as well.

In the center of town is an old castle. The city streets radiate out from the castle, the former center of town life, and meander in an irregular path out of town. Along the routes, the streets are lined with shops, apartments and houses. Mostly brick and stone structures, the buildings are colored with the many planter boxes with bright red and pink geraniums and other flowers. Pretty cool, and fairly typical postcard perspective of what you'd expect in a small French town.