We did it! We biked
61 kilometers today! I am so proud of us
for deciding to buck up and finish the bike tour. While today was long the biking was not
difficult. There were no hills really to
speak of and it rained last night and so it was cooler today by quite a bit
than it was yesterday. We were on our
bikes and going before 9AM. Angela woke
up feeling poorly this morning. Her
stomach was not feeling well. So we
waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to be well enough to do
this. We started a little later than we
had planned but it was still our earliest day.
We had planned to leave by 8 AM and arrive in Avignon by 2PM. We arrived at about 3PM. We would have met our goal but we spent an
hour trying to figure out the directions.
There was a loop that took you into a little town that was
optional. We decided not to go on that
loop but the directions for not taking the loop were wrong. After we had biked up and down the road a couple of times trying to find
the right way we finally decided to do the loop which then put us back on track
and made the directions make sense.
Unfortunately by that time we had lost an hour of morning coolness and
had biked an extra 5 or 6 km. But we did
glimpse a couple of great vistas in the village. Unfortunately we were so worried about
getting back on track that we didn’t stop to enjoy them or take pictures. We just glanced that way as we biked on.
Other than that the day was pretty uneventful. The directions took us on to what they called
a “dirt track” but it was actually a grass road. It didn’t look like it was driven on often
enough to be a dirt road. We were
blessed because it wasn’t as hot. We had
plenty of water. We started earlier. And
we didn’t have any stops longer than 15 or 20 minutes. It was good and we both have a great sense of
accomplishment. It was a triumphal way
to end our 3 week vacation.
So we arrived in Avignon at about 3 PM but our luggage
didn’t arrive in Avignon until about 5:30 PM.
We were expecting it at 5PM.
After we turned in our bikes and equipment we went and used the restroom
and then walked to the train station to get our tickets to Marseilles. We then sat in the shade talking and drinking
our victory Orangina until it was time to go get our luggage.
We got on the 6:23 PM train to the Marseilles Airport
station. It took about an hour and a half
to get there. We didn’t see nearly as
lovely as countryside on the train as we did on our bike tour until we got
closer to Marseilles and then we saw a few beautiful glimpses of what looked
like a bay.
When we got off the train, we knew our hotel was very close
by, but we weren’t sure how to begin walking there. We were standing looking at the tiered
parking lot and all of the stairs that we would most likely have to carry our luggage down when a man came and
spoke to us in French. I’m sure he asked
us where we were going. Angela told him
where our hotel was. He pointed and
talked somemore and then said that he would take us to the bottom of the
parking lot. Somehow I understood that
last bit. He is the driver of the
shuttle that goes from the train station to the airport and he took us to the
bottom of the train station and to a sign with our hotel on it and an arrow
pointing in the right direction. I
managed to say, “Mercy bouque, Monsieur.”
And we got off of the shuttle. As
we began to walk we said how kind that was of him and how grateful we are. I hope that God will bless him for his
kindness.
This is the "dirt track" we biked on for about 5 km. It was pretty rough.
This is the bridge that took us off of the dirt track.
This was the last sun flower field of the day and it was finally a field where the flowers were facing us. All day we had been seeing field of sun flowers but we could only really see the backs of the flowers.
Drinking our Victory Orangina.
We found our hotel room and it was almost 9PM. We went into hurry mode. We needed to shower and repack our bags for
our journeys home. We are showered, packed, have
downloaded and looked at our pictures and are ready for bed and it is only a
few minutes after 11PM. We have our
alarms set for 3:30 AM. My flight leaves
at 6:30 in the morning and it is always suggested that you arrive 2 hours
before an international flight. We have
a cab coming at 4:30 to come and get us in the morning.
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