Cycling French Life: Cycling French Life
by maribeth
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From Girly-Girl to Tour Aficionado
It’s been just over a week now that the Tour de France rolled into Paris on its final stage. If you’re at all like me, you may be feeling a bit of Tour withdrawal. Fortunately I’m in the throes of writing a book, a romantic adventure set in France (mais oui!), that also highlights the Tour de France. This way I’m on my bike and thinking about the dazzling peloton crisscrossing France most days, at least in my mind. So my Tour continues.
If you’ve read some of the recent posts in this blog, you may be wondering how such a super feminine gal became so hooked on this major sporting event. Well here’s the backstory.
I grew up with five brothers and no sisters. This meant I was destined to be either a tomboy or a priss. I became the latter. I learned French, how to tie a scarf and how to fix myself up with little visible effort put forth very early on. Eleven years of living in Paris followed. The die was cast, I had become a femme du monde of sorts, a well-traveled woman who valued the elegance and refinement a life in France has to offer.
Sports had little to do with my Parisian world; like most French women, I stayed in shape from all the walking I did in the French capital and by minimizing my portion sizes. The idea of watching any kind of a sporting event in person or on T.V. was considered by my then French husband (of noble descent) something for the masses. (Tuning into Rolland Garros, or the French Open, was acceptable, but anything else was for the most part considered plouc or hillbilly-like.)
Then I moved back to the States, discovered the thrill of road riding and met a super cyclist. I traded out my airy summer skirts and tops for an array of slick cycling jerseys and shorts, the same “silly” outfits I had seen many a Frenchmen squeezed into on Sunday rides in the French countryside.
I brought my bicycle and my American boyfriend on a trip to France and together we pedaled through the rich farmlands, the verdant valleys, the historic hilltop villages and the lush vineyards of my beloved adopted country that I had come to know so well. Yet from the seat of a bicycle I was able to embrace this glorious land in a much different way. My senses felt totally imbued with wonder and satisfaction as I crossed France’s vast fields of sunflowers, its neat rows of lavender, its bunches of grapes hanging from the vine, its Monet-esque meadows dotted with red dabbles of poppies. I readily encountered people as I passed through their villages, towns and hamlets at the tranquil pace I maintained cruising along on my bike.
Tuning into the Tour de France on T.V. seemed like a logical next step. By now I had come to know a fair amount about cycling: I understood that the sport required as much of a team effort as an individual achievement, I realized there was a certain hierarchy to be respected on each team and within the peloton and that it took great talent and lots of experience for one of those “young bucks” to become a top racer.
My American guy coached me about the sport both on and off the bike and I came to consider cycling one of the most demanding athletic feats on the planet. To me, the Tour de France, the grueling three-week bike race that takes place every July in France, seems like Wimbledon, the World Cup of Soccer and the Olympics all combined. Its international flavor also rivals the worldwide appeal of these other renowned sporting events and in the case of the Tour, the organizers put on a show that’s moved to some twenty different locales both in France and in bordering countries every day of the competition.
Enough of this jock talk. I’m a girly-girl, albeit a fairly sophisticated one. You can bet it’s the Tour’s pageantry, the awe-inspiring scenery, the beauty of the cyclists in their vibrant jerseys on their shiny, candy-colored bikes that thrill me the most. Seeing the peloton blow across vast stretches of rural France like a bright swath of Pierre Frey fabric flapping in the wind leaves me breathless. Then on the last day when they descend on Paris like a swarm of bees searching for a hive, I feel my heart quicken, my excitement mount as though I was seeing the City of Light for the first time.
All the years I lived in France, I never attended the final stage of the Tour de France on the Champs-Elysées. Ça ne se fait pas, or that’s not done, was the message that was conveyed to me by my very proper Frenchman. I never sought to explore the event on my own.
It took a move back to the States and a different perspective for that to happen. Here it’s somehow easier for me to be a fan of the Tour de France. It doesn’t mean I have to give up my girly-girl side either.
As I sit here and weave my impressions of this extraordinary event into my story, I replay the Tour’s excitement and pageantry over and over in my head. If you’re a Tour fan, I’m sure you’re doing some of that, too.
Relive Past Tours
Graham Watson, renowned photographer of the Tour de France for over thirty years, chatted with me in a Travel Fun interview. Hope you’ll take some time to listen to our conversation and/or read the story (and see some of his stunning photos)!
Being Green Cycling Paris Tours: Being Green Cycling Paris Tours
by maribeth
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Tour Mania Versus Zee Segway
I’ve been thinking about whizzing around Paris these days.
It’s July and I’m consumed with The Tour. I’m referring to the Tour de France, as I’m sure you might have guessed.
I love watching the undulating ribbon of the peloton weave its way through France, but it’s in Paris on the last day of this epic bike race that this colorful procession mystifies me the most. I think it’s because Paris is so familiar to me: I’ve walked the great length of the Champs-Elysées countless times, wended my way around the expansive place de la Concorde, strolled beneath the arcades of the rue de Rivoli from Concorde to Palais Royal. Seeing the Tour de France posse (caravan, cyclists, team cars, press and officials) dominate this familiar terrain mesmerizes me the most. How incredibly fitting it is to have some of the world’s finest athletes power over the same routes reserved for royalty and heads of state.
If you’re not able to be in the City of Light on the final day of this great race, I encourage you to at least catch part of the last stage on T.V. Even the lively commentary of the sportscasters can’t drone out the pack’s thunderous rumble over the cobbles, the resounding swoosh and whir as they travel along Paris’s centuries-old streets.
If you’re at all like me, you’ll also be envious of the racers having the streets of Paris to themselves. Quel bonheur! Can you imagine how great that feels, pedaling through these historic streets at lightening speed?
There’s nothing like experiencing a place from a bicycle or I suppose, even a Segway. I’m reminded of this every time I hop on a bike but it really hit home recently when a friend told me about how he breezed around Paris standing head and shoulders above the masses. He had taken a Segway tour and visited a good number of Paris’s best-loved sites and monuments in a flash, without the inconveniences of sore feet or having to get on and off a bus a ton of times.
Cycling French Life French Provinces Paris Podcasts: Cycling French Living French Provinces Paris Podcasts
by maribeth
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Listen to Graham Watson Talk the Tour
The 2010 Tour de France route was posted just over a month ago which means that hotels along the course are booking up fast. There’s still time, however, to plan a trip to take in some of this renowned bike race next July. Renowned Tour photographer, Graham Watson, will tell you how. Read about what I wrote about Graham and his book, “Graham Watson’s Tour de France Travel Guide,” here. You can also listen to Graham speak about the Tour and more by clicking on the play button here:
Podcast (bonjour): Play in new window | Download
Beauty Colorado Mountain Living Spas Telluride: Beauty Colorado Mountain Living Spas Telluride
by maribeth
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Telluride’s Beauty Boutiques
I love the notion of a beauty boutique. I frequented Beauté Boutique in the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris for many years. It consisted of a sectioned off little space where (mostly) women had a variety of body parts attended to with the efficacy and regularity of a man’s visit to the barber shop. It was a totally no frills operation but women maintained their monthly appointments for a short menu of treatments that included waxings, pedicures and facials. “In France, all this is part of la hygiene personnelle,” la directrice once explained to me.
The approach in Telluride is not too unlike what I encountered in Paris. Here the salons and spas are considerably more inviting than my neighborhood beauty boutique in Paris but these purveyors of poufing and pampering are indeed accustomed to meeting the needs of an equally demanding clientele. In Telluride, many women remain just as committed to maintaining their beauté as the French. This sort of fervent dedication to spas and salons is somewhat unusual in America but in my Rocky Mountain town where the air is often single-digit-humidity dry and the sun beams hard and bright most days of the year, personal upkeep is more of a necessity than a luxury.
Art & Culture French Life French Provinces: Art & Culture French Life French Provinces
by maribeth
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Pondering Provence
Ahhhh, mid August. Here in the mountains I’m already chagrined by a certain crispness in the air. Fall and the first snows won’t be far off. The weather has been glorious lately but I’m still longing for a blast of furnace-like heat, sweltering days that force me to retreat beneath a shade tree until the delightful oppressiveness of the day subsides and I can emerge to take in perhaps a cultural site or just sip a perfectly chilled glass of rosé on a terrace. The desert isn’t far from where I live now and certainly it provides plenty of warmth. But I am thinking of Provence. Sun-drenched days, shady plane trees, a plethora of cultural offerings, delicious wines and so much more.
We are approaching le quinze août after all, the holiday of all holidays for Europeans. Many people don’t even know that August fifteenth marks Assumption, a Catholic holiday that is hardly celebrated in Europe except for the fact that most everyone has the day off. People typically take a whole week off around August fifteenth (if they can’t manage the entire month!). So you can imagine it is the big vacation week of the summer, the biggest of the year in fact.
I have been in Provence during this period many times, battling crowds at the renowned markets of Saint-Tropez and Ilse-sur-la-Sorgue (you have to arrive early at these and most others). Yet somehow I always managed and it was always worth it.
But traveling to Provence in the fall offers a whole other experience. Yes, you might still have difficulty reserving a table on the patio at the famed Oustau de Baumanière, but you won’t encounter the throngs of tourists that invade this most delightful region of France in July and August. You’ll still find the weather to be glorious and the cultural offerings just as exciting.
So why not consider a small, escorted tour composed of fellow travelers of discriminating taste? I recently became in touch with Beatriz Ball, founder of Golden Bee Tours, a Brazilian-born woman that boasts a huge passion for France, especially Provence.
Since Bea’s Provence Arts and Scents Tour for the third week of September has sold out, she has decided to offer it the last week in September as well. The highlight of this tour is certainly a guided visit to “Picasso-Cézanne,” a much-talked-about exhibition at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence that explores Cézanne’s influence on Picasso. Being ferried about a beautiful place with a delightful lady in the know—now that’s what I call a real vacation.
Bea, a recent guest on Travel Fun, chatted with me mostly during our interview about why so many artists have been lured to Provence over more than a century. “I remember being so impressed with the quality of light the first time I traveled to Provence many years ago,” Bea said. Indeed the skies are so clear and vivid that they offer up a kaleidoscope of colors that changes throughout the day. Certainly this is largely why Picasso, Cézanne and countless other artists sought to capture this region of France on canvas. “The region celebrates your senses,” Bea added and I concurred. It didn’t take much for my thoughts to drift off to the ever present crick-crick-crick of the cicadas, the wafting smells of rosemary and thyme, the taste of a rich tapenade spread over crusty bread, the feel of rubbing a sprig of lavender between my palms, the vision of Abbaye de Sénanque in all its Romanesque splendor on a late summer’s afternoon.
Ah—haaaa. Mid August. I should either book a flight to France or go buy myself a nice bottle of Bandol and a few olives. No wonder it has captivated so many people for so many years.
Thank you to Bea and LCI/CDT VAR for the use of the above images.
Talking the Tour with Graham Watson
By now you must have figured out that I have a thing for France. But it has come as a surprise to many (mostly my French friends!) that I’m crazy about the Tour de France. How can I not be? What a wonderful display of French countryside and good looking men! Of course I also like the international flair of this epic bike race and cycling itself. (Once I figured out that it’s both a team and an individual sport, I became fascinated with how well the cyclists work together. Or not.)
So you can imagine when I was pitched the idea of interviewing Tour veteran Graham Watson on Travel Fun, I jumped at the chance. Graham, a renowned cycling photographer, has followed the Tour for about three decades. He’s one of those dudes perched on the back of un moto that careens in and out of the peloton. He’s one of sixteen Tour photographers that has that privilege. (There are 150 official Tour photographers in all.) “Being a photographer on a motorbike at the Tour de France is the best job there is,” Graham admits without a grain of conceit in his ever-so charming British accent.
I was thrilled to be able to chat with him on the phone from London, fresh off the Tour (that ended this past Sunday). With the exception of any mention of good looking guys, I learned Graham was attracted to the Tour for much the same reasons as those that have made me such a devotee. “It was the color, excitement, drama and the possibility of discovering France that drew me to the Tour,” Graham admitted. In 1977, during his first trip to the Gallic land and his first Tour de France, he realized “France wasn’t so bad.” Indeed the Tour has been a wonderful means for experiencing France for Graham and today he readily acknowledges that he’s a Francophile. (So much for the Franco-British and British-Franco rivalry!)
Graham shares his passion for France and the Tour de France not only through his photography but also through a newly-released book, “Graham Watson’s Tour de France Travel Guide,” a must-have for Tour enthusiasts whether you’re planning a trip to France or not. It’s an insider’s guide to the Tour, beautifully presented with lots of How to information, four-color maps, photos by Graham and others, history and anecdotes and more.
This book provides you with all that you need to happily navigate this exciting sporting event. It even tells you how to meet the pros, something that I was fortunate enough to do—totally by accident—a number of years ago. I ended up staying in the same hotel as the U.S. Postal Team one night and actually met Lance on the eve of his legendary Alpe d’Huez win in 2001. That’s the kind of amazing encounter you can have at the Tour. “Cycling is a very modest sport,” Graham says. “The riders do meet and greet the public. They’re not super stars that hide beyond a stadium.”
Graham has seen the Tour de France evolve from a parochial French event in the late seventies to the big international event that it is today. His career got off the ground along with the success of cycling greats Greg Lemond, Sean Kelly and Phil Anderson. Lance Armstrong has certainly given us all the ride of our lives at the Tour. Isn’t it wonderful though to be debriefed by someone that his been so entrenched in the peloton for so many years? Thanks Graham for marrying your two passions: cycling and photography. And I might add, for choosing to do it in France.
Tips for Attending the Tour de France from Graham Watson
-Target three to four consecutive days (stages) in the Alps or the Pyrenees and then spend about the same amount of time discovering some place else in France.
-Begin planning your trip once the Tour route has been announced mid-October. Graham feels that the Internet is a great resource for booking hotels. Know that many rooms are taken first by the Tour, so you have to get on it fast.
-Your best chance for meeting a cyclist is after the finish line when they often have to pedal out of the secured area.
Consult “Graham Watson’s Tour de France Travel Guide” for many more!
For up-to-the-minute news about competitive cycling, check out VeloNews.
Thank you to Graham Watson and VeloPress for the use of the above images.
Food & Wine Hotels & Lodging Restaurants Romance & Relationships Skiing & Snowboarding Telluride: Restaurants Romance & Relationships Skiing & Snowboarding Telluride
by maribeth
Comments Off on Night Out in Telluride Mountain Villlage
Night Out in Telluride Mountain Villlage
I almost can’t wait for the ski season to end. The key word there is almost. I’d love for the skiing to go on and on but I’m also yearning to spend more time at my desk, something that is indeed a big challenge when the slopes lie right outside your door and you’re caught up in the ski fever that grips every mountain town from late November through a good part of April. Plus I’ve been working a lot on the hill teaching skiing, a very rewarding job that not surprisingly leaves little energy for writing at the end of the day.
Then there’s the near grueling pace of the social life that one must endure in such a happening mountain resort. No matter how much you try to stay in, there’s always a concert (often free!), a dinner, a party or an impromptu gathering to take in. Telluride is a culturally rich, increasingly sophisticated town, which consistently goes off at the close of the lifts. more »