Today is Bastille Day, France\u2019s grand holiday. The plan was to catch the parade in the morning and then the fireworks tonight. At about 9:00, we hopped on our Velodi bikes at the rental kiosk and headed for Cours du de Gaulle. Light holiday traffic made the trip a bit less nerve-jangling than yesterday\u2019s ride\u2014this Euro bike thing is a bit new to us\u2014but when we arrived on the parade route we found no crowds, a few piles of empty water bottles and even the flags and bunting were gone from where they had been on Tuesday. Turns out the parade had been the Tuesday night. For whatever reason, we found no schedule for this event on the Internet machine (it\u2019s a series of tubes).\u00a0 C\u2019est la vie. Anyway, we had a nice ride on the bike and saw a few neighborhoods in Dijon we hadn\u2019t been to.<\/p>\n
This trip has been tagged \u201cTour de France\u201d for a long time, but one thing we haven\u2019t seen a whole lot of is le Tour. We\u2019re usually out doing \u2018stuff\u2019 and just get back in time to watch the final 20 kilometers or so. Since le Tour was heading to Gap, one of our favorite French villes, Laurel ran out and grabbed us a serving of frites to go with the lunch sausages we\u2019d acquired from the market the day before, we opened a bottle of wine and settled in to watch this medium climb day. Our day began warm and sunny, but by mid afternoon some pretty heavy thundershowers darkened the sky and cooled things off a bit. These showers also postponed the fireworks to Thursday. Again, c\u2019est la vie and Paris was clear, so we got to watch some boom-booms on TV.<\/p>\n
Dinner ce soir included a breast of poulet, with some freshly-shucked peas, carrots and a tomato and basil salad. All ingredients had been acquired at yesterday\u2019s market. The only rub was we\u2019d emptied our final bottle of vin with the sausage and frites so Laurel headed out once again (it was Randy\u2019s turn to cook) to try to find an open shop with a bottle of wine on this holiday evening. She was gone a very, very long time. After a half hour or so of unsuccessfully looking for someplace open, she spotted a couple of guys dumping empty bottles in the recycle bin outside of their apartment. \u2018seemed like a good local resource, so she asked them where she might find \u2018une bouteille de vin\u2019 and after a bit of discussion, the men decided they might know a spot and lead her on the way. When Laurel arrived at the shop she found wine\u2014four reds and three whites, not varieties, bottles. The wine and the chicken were great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday, July 14 Today is Bastille Day, France\u2019s grand holiday. The plan was to catch the parade in the morning and then the fireworks tonight. At about 9:00, we hopped on our Velodi bikes at the rental kiosk and headed for Cours du de Gaulle. Light holiday traffic made the trip a bit less nerve-jangling …<\/p>\n