Days 12 & 13, July 23 & 24

Thursday was a travel day, we drove from Saint Saturnin to Grenoble.  Started the day in the usual way, early morning ride  through the vineyards surrounding our B&B  to Rouisillon, where their weekly market was just setting up when I rolled in around 7:15 AM.   

We enjoyed one last outdoor breakfast at the B&B,  said goodbye to all our new BFF's were in the car around 10.  Stopped at the post office to mail a box of goodies in order to keep our baggage under the 50 pound limit.

Stopped in the village of Gordes for some quick souvenir shopping, dropped off my rental bike in the village of Velleron, bought some groceries for lunch,  and were actually heading to Grenoble by 11:30 AM.

The ride to Grenoble is almost all highway, so we made good time, covering the 278 KM in less than 3 hours.  Checked into our hotel...thank you Garmin for successfully guiding us through the city of Grenoble, it seems their streets signs were only meant to be read by pedestrians.

We switched to Italian food for dinner and had a wonderful meal and returned to our hotel by 10...we planned on getting up at 4 AM  so that we can get to our Tour viewing site before the roads close.

FRIDAY

Well other  than having to get up by 4 AM, today  couldn't have gone better.

We had only a short, 75 km drive to the Col de la Croix de Fer where we watched today's race.  Arrivng at 6 am gave us the luxury of actually parking our car along the Tour route, only 1/2 km from the summit of the climb up the 2067 meter pass.

We spent ten hours at our spot, the racers not arriving until 4:15 pm, but the scenery, couldn't have been more spectacular.  One of our top two Tour experiences!

Trraffic jam after the race was terrible, we didn't move more than 1/2 km in 90 minutes, but once we got going we were back in Grenoble by 7 PM, just in time to enjoy a great dinner at the #1 rated Indien restaurant in Grenoble.  We me a girl from Bedford, NH, in the restaurant.  She's studying at the University of Grenoble for two months before returning to Harvard next month. Small world.!