Day 16

On Day 15 we drove from a business travel hotel and town to Amboise, a town in the center of castle country and which had a castle of its own in the center of town. It was far more relaxing and we had dinner at a nice restaurant near the outer walls of the castle. The restaurant specializes on crepes for dessert. I could not offend the house, so I had a crepe with Grand Marnier. On Day 16, we covered a lot of ground. We visited 2 castles or palaces and drove 1.5 hours to the finishing town for the day's race, the time trial.

The castles were awesome. One was started in 1515 and took nearly 150 years to complete. It has bits of gothic and renaissance elements to it. It was initially built as a hunting lodge by the king who started it, but Louie the XIV finished it and turned it into one hell of a lodge. It was quite impressive. The most notable features were its 77 stone spiral staircases. Probably the newest innovation of the time, so it was over used; but still cool.

The second castle was built across a river. It was interesting to see the use of 4 archways traversing the river as the supporting foundation. The castle itself was then built on top of the arches. The grounds were the most notable aspect of this castle. The gardens were spectacular. There were two primary gardens. Both had water features. One garden used red flowers for the primary color and highlighted it with white rose bushes and greenery. The other garden used yellow flowers as the primary color and highlighted it with lavender and other greenery. I liked the yellow garden the best.

On to the time trial. The day time temperatures were hot, wicked hot and hard to find shade for shelter. We arrived at the finishing city with about 2 hours left in the race. We had a great parking spot and position on the race course. We parked within 3 blocks of the 1 km to go kite, and walked about 600-800 meters towards the finish to sit near the 250 m to go point, right after a chicane on the course. It was an incredible view of the racers. The cyclists were hammering; covering the 53 km in just over an hour; for non-cyclists, this is really moving. The last 2-3 km were pretty flat and the boys were smoking along at nearly 60 km/hr. The sound coming from the bikes and the look on the faces of the racers created an awesome sight and sound. Sastre had the ride of his life and retained the Yellow Jersey. No one would attack him on the last day. He will win the TdF this year.