Around Reykjavik

We got the bike put together and decided to take a ride around Reykjavik and then ride out to where we start our route around the Golden Circle.  Another beautiful day here – a bit chilly with a cool wind but the locals say this is the best weather ever.  Tomorrow it is supposed to rain.  Oh well.

We walked down to town kind of early and wandered a bit.  It is a very pretty town.  Here's some shots.

Pond in the middle of town.

Residential neighborhood.  Lots of public art.

The church.

The we found an open bakery.  It is open only 2 days a week and we got some bread and a few really yummy pastries.

Reykjavik's best bakery

The we got on the bike and rode west out to the lighthouse on the point of land that juts out from the west coast.  Tons of seabirds and the tide was out so the salt air, tidelands smell was wonderful.  Fresh air is a delight!

Lighthouse

Low tide

This area is pretty sheltered, but on the other side of the point is open ocean

Heading back to Reykjavik

The old harbour in town

Next we headed out to see if we could find the route out of town.  Reykjavik is a bit tricky to navigate so we wanted a head start on tomorrow’s journey.  We were glad we did, as we got lost a bunch of times.  After about 35 km we bumped into a guy riding a mountain bike and decided to ask him where we were.  He was a very talkative guy and he rode with us for about 10 km to show us where to go.

We had a nice talk about all things biking.  He’s serious into cycling, you could tell.  I mentioned that we’d ridden the Stelvio on the tandem and he thought it was a hoot.  He said that there’s only 2 other tandems in Iceland and neither are ever ridden.  Eventually we figured out why he knows a lot about cycling, he’s the National Champion MTB rider for 2016 from Iceland, Ingvar Omarrson.  He's also ridden professionally on the road.

Among other things, I asked if he is going to Rio for the Olympics.  He said “no,” since it is too hard for a small country to send many athletes to such things, and besides he said “it just isn’t that interesting.”  He lives in Holland so he can train throughout the year.  Nice guy to help us find our way.

Ingvar Omarsson in his National Champion's jersey

The direction we're heading

He showed us all the way to the one turn that we needed to make to connect to our route.  It would have been hard without his help.  Oh, we’d have made it eventually, but the helpfulness of random folks we meet never ceases to amaze.

We rode back to town, with some modifications in the route to make our pre-planned route easier.  We found kind of haphazardly a hot water water fall that the locals were enjoying.  There's a ton of geothermal pools on the island.

The water is very warm

And when we got back we rode to the “geothermal beach” that we’d read about.  The place was crowded but we wanted to feel the water.  It was cold, but there’s a couple of hot water vents in the shallow water that keep the water around the vents really toasty – you can see in this photo a round barrier just under the water – that’s where the vents are. 

The hot water is in the circle

We finished the day with a beer from a local brewery we’d spied when we rode to the lighthouse.  Good beer.  By far the best we’ve had on this trip.

Beer from bryggjan brugghús in Reykjavic

I am not sure if we’ll have any WiFi connection for the next three or four days.  If we do, I’ll try to update the blog.

Cheers!

Adieu Paris, Halló Iceland

We bid adieu to Paris yesterday and made our way to Iceland! I think that I am going to like it here in Iceland.

For our final night in Paris we decided to walk a huge route and have some fun.  We started with some art, wandering through the Rodin gardens (skipping the museum as we’d seen it before – the garden was an excellent refuse from Paris’s frenetic pace!).  

The Thinker...in the background at least.  I can't vouch for the two in the
foreground.

The Museum

The Gates of Hell, from Dante's Divine Comedy

Then on to nice chocolates from a chocolatier that had been recommended.  Fancy stuff, and really good.  

Yum!  The choclatier had never before heard the word "filbert."  Only
in Oregon!

And an eclair, for Annie!

Our favorite restaurant on Ile de la Cite

 Next on the list was a negroni.  We’d had a few great negronis in Italy and wanted to see how Paris’s best compared.  We found a dive bar called the Red House that is said to make the best negronis in town (a bit tough to find – no sign on the place).  The negronis were good but not nearly as good as those we’d had in Italy.  

Good negronis, but they don't compare to their Italian counterparts

The Red House in the 12th in Paris -- great dive bar, but don't look for a sign

Finally, we went to a Lebanese restaurant that we’d walked by and thought looked good.  Even though we weren’t super hungry we had a great dinner.

Our apartment in Paris -- the building on the left, 4th floor (US counting system), two open shutters

On arrival to Paris we had booked a large van posing as a taxi to take us back to the airport – Taxis are small, ish, in Paris and we need the size for the box.  We made and confirmed the taxi booking, and confirmed it again for a Saturday 1000 pickup at our apartment.  We were on the street at 1000.  At 1010 I sent a text to the taxi guy.  No response.  At 1015 I called.  No answer.  Damn!  Our options were to (a) huck the bike and all our gear to the RER station and take the train (the station for the Charles de Gaulle train is about 10 blocks away, not a pleasant thought), or (b) find another taxi.

At 1030 a small, ish, station wagon taxi came by.  I flagged him down to see if he could call another cab from his company, a van.  He said that he couldn’t but that he could get the box in, with all our stuff, too (us included).  I was a skeptic, but the guy rearranged seats and kept pushing, and it all went in.  Amazing.  He had to jump on the tailgate to get it to latch but he thought it was entertaining.  Merci beaucoup, small, ish taxi guy!

We enjoyed Paris but are to be honest, are glad to be gone.  Paris is on edge.  It is tense and there is a nervous vibe.  There are thousands of soldiers and cops patrolling the streets and on every street corner and they all carry machine guns.  There is a constant wail of sirens from police cars, as they apparently cannot drive without their sirens on.  Given the recent and frequent attacks not only in France but elsewhere in Europe, the mood is somber.  The only other time that I remember seeing security like it is in Paris today was back in Spain in the mid-1970s when I was there, shortly after Franco’s death.  Everywhere you go in Paris they warn you to avoid crowds (and that’s hard to do on a rainy day in Paris in mid-winter), so there is always an underlying tension.  We love Paris but are glad to be moving on.  Mostly, we’re looking forward to being on the bike again.

Iceland is beautiful. We arrived on the biggest weekend of the year for locals – a summer celebration that lasts 3 days.  Everyone goes to the countryside to music festivals and celebrations that go through Monday.  That left Reykjavik pretty much to the tourists like us, and there are quite a few of us about.  We grabbed a bus from the airport and the driver told us that this is a heat wave for Reykjavik – 16 degrees, maybe hitting 20.  OK with us, as the nice sunshine is perfect.

Iceland from the bus to town from the airport

Catholicism never did catch on in Iceland...

The church is inspiring

That's Leif Erikson in the foreground

Reykjavik

The harbour.  It is great to be by the sea.  The salt air is a tonic.

Seafood is a staple throughout Iceland, as expected

This little food cart has the best fish and chips, and the best price we've found

The ultra modern opera / symphony / theater house in Reykjavik

A few pleasure boats in the harbour

We checked into our “guest house” and walked downtown to look around.  Reykjavik is a fairly small town located on the edge of sea.  It is a gorgeous town.  More modern than most European villages, it has small, well kept streets with picture perfect houses and a sweeping view to the ocean.  We grabbed some food (OK, a beer is just shy of $10 and dinner costs about $30 – it is expensive here) and enjoyed a walk about at the sun moved lower on the horizon.

But at this time of year the sun never sets in Iceland – 24 hours of daylight.  We are just a few degrees latitude south of the Arctic circle.  My normal early awakening is exacerbated by constant light, so here I am hammering out a blog at 0430.  No coffee yet, either.  Things could be worse.

We’ll put the bike together today and take time to explore the local area, then set off into the interior of the island tomorrow.

Paris, Post Tour de Frane

We’ve had a great time exploring Paris for the past several days, catching up on the work that absolutely has to be attended to now, and storing away the other work projects that can wait until we get home.  It is fun to just wander and the small side streets are what we like the most.  The Latin Quarter is full of them and you can get lost for hours.  And we’ve taken a few side trips, one to Reims just to see the famous cathedral and one overnight ride to a very pretty valley just outside of Paris just to get on the bike.

Oh, and I should mention at the outset that Hancock Hughey LLP are pleased to announce the opening of their Paris office.  We’ll staff the office only when needed, so if you want an appointment please give us 2 week’s notice and your credit card number so we can pay for our disbursements and travel expenses.  Look for more on that later.  :)

Reims

About 45 minutes from Paris by TGV, Reims is home to France’s best example of a gothic cathedral, the Cathedral de Notre Dame (their all called “Notre Dame”)… I can remember studying the cathedral's architecture and history way back when, so many years ago, before I studied law.  It is an inspiring structure and has so much history.  Pictures do a better job than I do, so I’ll leave you with some photos:

They're doing some restoration work on the front facade, so the rose window and the front
can't be seen today

The flying buttresses were perfected when Notre Dame in Paris was built, and
they were put to good use in Reims

Gardens near the Palace of Tau, which is where the church Bigs
got to hang out so they didn't mix with the littles...

"Wait, I need that part!"

One of the three main portals

Reims is also the heart of Champagne country in France, so we took the opportunity to visit the caves of Taittinger.  It was a fascinating visit, mostly interesting to go through the caves (an incredible labyrinth of tunnels dug in the chalk structures under the city of Reims).  The caves are cool and have many millions of bottles of champagne in-process.  But it is the history of the caves and their role in housing the citizens of Reims during both WWI and WWII that I found most interesting.  The caves are carved out of chalk, which is soft but stable and absorbs moisture and hence is vital to production of champagne.  But because it is soft there are many, many carvings done by the locals who were holed up there during the wars.

Entering the Taittinger caves

Racked bottles -- one of the first steps of the methode champenoise

All of the wine produced in these caves is done by hand -- most champagne available today is produced in a similar way, but by automated machines that rotate the racked bottles.  But in these caves it is done the old way with hand rotation (prior to removal of the "plug" of yeast after fermentation).  The bottles produced here have a long neck and don't look like what I have associated with a champagne bottle.  The price per bottle of this stuff starts at about 100 Euro.

There are many stairways to who-knows-where?

One of hundreds of caves full of bottles during the "pre-racking" fermentation

These caves were originally made by monks, so there are some little chapels that
work just as well as spots to ferment wine as they apparently did to save souls

Racked bottles

Carved into the walls during WWI

These bottles have had the yeast plug removed (it is frozen then blasted out by
the fermentation) and the traditional cork attached.

A beautiful gothic arch, probably dating to the 5th century

The caves seem to run on forever

Back to Paris on the TGV -- the Reims to Paris TGV actually hit about 375 kph (around 225 mph)!

On the bike again!

On the train to Chamonix to watch stage 19 of the Tour we met a guy who works for Hewlett-Packard in Paris who is big in to cycling (he was on his way to the tour, too).  He mentioned that if we had time we might consider a ride out to the Vallee de Chevreuse, which is about 50 km outside of Paris and super rural.  Both of us wanted to get on the bike, so we put it together, hucked it down 6 flights of stairs to the RER station (the local train, not to be confused with the Metro), and hopped on the train to St. Remy les Chevreuse.  Our HP buddy also recommended that we stay at some fancy abbey, so we decided to make a 2-day trip out of it.

We grabbed a route off a cycling GPS site, then modified it somewhat to suit our needs, and hit the road in St. Remy.  We had a route of about 75 km planned and it was a beautiful day.  And our HP guy was spot on – it is a perfect place to ride.  But it soon became evident that this area is kind of like the exclusive suburbs of Paris.  Rural with huge chateaus.  Nice.  I think that I want an address here once the Hancock Hughey Paris office takes off.

At the train station in St. Remy les Chevreuse; the bike is
pretty stripped down for just an overnight ride.  Kind of fun to ride "light."

The new Hancock Hughey offices near St. Remy

A beautiful day for a ride

Km after km of quiet roads

And small villages

And getting lost...

One must eat...our standard fare on this trip at least

We got lost a bunch of times but eventually made it to the abbey.  Cool place and very fancy but we were definitely out of place on our bike; had the feeling that the folks at the hotel were peering down their noses at us.  I asked about a place to store the bike for the night and that caught them by surprise; I don't know that they've ever had visitors arrive by bike.  We ended up locking it to a tree...

The main courtyard at the abbey

The view from our "attic" window over the grounds

The bar 

An old, abandoned church

The rose window was surely beautiful at one time

The grounds near the lake

The abbey from across the lake.  This is where we had our picnic dinner.  Not a bad way to close the day.

This is actually the breakfast room

Most guests arrive by transportation other than bikes.  I guess that's why
they thought we were nuts...

Hancock Hughey LLP will get one of these for our daily commute

Another view of the abbey as we were leaving in the rain

But being outside the norm has never bothered me.  So we checked into our room and told them to cancel our dinner reservation (I didn’t have proper dress for their standards (no kidding)).  The abbey is totally beautiful.  We walked all around and it and the grounds are stunning.  We decided that since we were off the dinner invitation list, we’d buy a bottle of wine and some bread and cheese, etc. and have dinner by the lake.  It was an excellent end to a great day of riding.  It felt good to get back on the bike.

The abbey was a quiet as could be at night and we slept well.  Paris is, if anything, noisy.  Really, really noisy. At all hours.  Maybe if you live in the city its no big deal. But coming from the Sherm where the loudest sound at night is the odd coyote or a frog, the sounds of the city are tough to get used to. So a quiet night was much appreciated.  But apart from the quiet the abbey is in serious need of some work on its infrastructure.  Nothing worked in our cheap attic room and there was nothing but scalding water from both cold and hot taps.  Even the toilet flushed scalding hot water.  Ironic in so many ways. 

In the morning it was raining pretty hard and we wanted to fill our bidons for the ride back to Paris.  But not with scalding hot water.  So we had to ask the kitchen if they could give us cold water.  I think that they were pretty sure we were freaks.  Good for them.  Probably right. 

We're off to Iceland tomorrow.  We are still having some "issues" with the camera / computer connection and dumping photos onto the computer has been a challenge.  We'll try to do blog updates from Iceland, but we'll see how we do with fixing the issues.

Au revior for now.