USA!

Hello from the good ole USA.

We made it back to Minneapolis on Tuesday night at 8:00pm.

Let me try and update since the last time we posted. We ended up camping outside of Paris the two days prior to actually making it to the city. Paris suburbs go for about 100 miles or at least it seemed that way to us. We camped along the Seine river in a town called Melun at a campground. A lot of the other campers where visiting Euro Disney but we actually met several other bicycle touring people as well. Then we biked along the Seine river to Joinville which is just 20 miles outside of Paris. There we camped along with more bicycling tourists. We were surprised to get camping so close to the heart of the city.

The last day riding into Paris was really something! It was like the Beverly Hillbilly's come to Paris. I am not sure what the bigger attraction was in Paris that day, the Eiffle tower or us! Sure we didn't smell all that great after living in a tent the last 45 days, sure we were a little dirty and grimey after living in a tent the last 45 days, but we shouldn't have drawn that many stares from the so called "beautiful people" of Paris.

It was something going around some of those roundabouts where six cars deep are either entering or trying to get out of it!! We lived though, we didn't get hit by any cars. That wasn't the same for one guy from Toronto that we met though. He got hit at the Arc De Triumph roundabout which has to be the most insane place you will ever see. There are probably 12 roads that lead into that one round about and every drives about 50mph. He was shook up and his bike was hurt but he was laughing about it.

We got to our hotel to find out that they didn't have any room for our bikes. The hotel was tiny. We told the guy at the front desk that our bikes were very expensive and that we couldn't leave them on the streets. He ended up letting us put them in the very small lobby and he watched over them carefully for us. It was a great hotel and the best news was that it was next door to a Starbucks coffee! We had both been dreaming about a good cup of coffee. I am not exagerating when I say that at one place in France I ordered a coffee and it was in a dixie cup and was only half full!!! So to have a Starbucks right next to us was fantastic.

So in Paris..... we saw the Eiffle tower, it is impressive. We saw the Arc De Triumph and the Champs Elyse. We actually went to Sunday Mass at the Notre Dam Cathedral in Paris. That was quite interesting. We didn't have any idea of what he was saying but it was still inspiring and we felt more pure when we exited!! And, of course, we saw the last day of the Tour De France!! That was really very exciting. There are many, many thousands of people there lining the streets of the Champs Elyse. We got to see them come by 16 times. You can't believe the speed! It was a fitting end to OUR tour de France to see some other guys on bikes finishing their Tour De France.

We had planned on doing a lot of shopping in France. We thought we would buy some really cool chic Paris jeans or something but, it really just did not happen. The reason was we had to box our bikes for the trip back.

We didn't think this was going to cause us a lot of problems but we were WRONG. It basically took us the whole day! You see, most of the bike shops don't have bike boxes and they didn't seem to simpithetic to us that we needed them. We ended up going to a Decathlon store which are the Europe version of REI but maybe even better. They told us they would save a couple of boxes for us on Monday morning. Monday morning we were in front of their store when they opended. The boxes were there but they where huge! We broke the bikes down and put them in the boxes and taped everything up and were done by noon. However, the guy at the hotel who arranged our ride to the airport said they were too big for the van that was going to pick us up. We also got worried that the airport wouldn't take them because they really were huge! So, We unpacked them again and decided to cut the boxes up and just make them smaller. After taking the metro all over Paris for tape and box cutters and packing materials we finished up around 5:00pm!

We were fortuante that we did break them down as when the van driver did show up, they just barely fit into the van!!

We got to the airport 3 hours early which was just enough time. There was a bag left in the airport so they evacuated us to another end. We were sitting there having a sandwich when an enormous explosion went off!!! Scared everyone. However, I guess it is just routine that they actually blow up any suspicous bags!

The flight home went well. We both watched 3 movies on the flight back!! It is a long flight from Paris to Detroit! We both slept on the flight from Detroit to Minneapolis. Vanessa was nice enough to meet us at the airport with flowers and drive us home.

We are updating the pictures as I write this so take a look. We have about 300 photos to upload.