Portugal

I'll let Laura go into more detail about our trip last week to Lagos, Portugal.

But in the meantime, you can check out pictures of our trip.

Also, added a new link to the sidebar so you can find our pictures anytime.

Mary's Wedding

We're running a little behind on our blog here, lets see if we can't catch up.

A few weeks ago, I went home for a short but sweet visit for Mary Carroll's wedding. For those of you who don't know her, Mary is one of my oldest friends (from Freshman year in high school). She and I have had many adventures together (traveling around Europe as well as Alaska) not to mention the fact that I lived with her and her mom (aka, my second mom) for a few summers. I was so excited to come back to northern VA to be a part of her wedding.


Mary and Misha were married at St. Francis church in Triangle VA and the reception was at Potomic Point Winery. It was a beautiful wedding!!

Unfortunately, I only gave myself 4 days in the states which was not enough time to do everything I wanted to do/see everyone I wanted to see. I didn't even eat any mac n cheese!!!! Thanks to those of you who came up to visit me!! It was great to see you. And to those of you I didn't see this time around: i'll be sure to allow myself more time at home on my next visit (whenever that is).

So, congrats to Mary and Misha. May you find all the happiness in the world together. I love you both.

Here are some photos from the wedding weekend:

Before the bachelorette party. Our super cute shirts say "the girls are out to mingle for Mary's last night single"

Mary and Misha at the rehersal dinner in Clifton, VA.

Married!!

Me with the other awesome bridesmaids.

I'll upload the rest of the pictures to Picasa soon so that you can see them all.

Tour De France - Part 5

Alright, seriously though, finish this drawn out series already, right?

Right then, just the time trial left. Our last adventure into le Tour de France and we went out strong.

It was a fairly easy 3-hour trip from Lyon to catch the time trial finish in Saint-Amand-Montrond. That means we only had to wake up at 5:30 on Saturday morning to get there "on time" (better known as "way too early"). We were rewarded with our early morning and punctuality with some fantastic weather.

At least the weather reminded me of home.

It was our first real case of bad weather on the trip, and the first point where I was glad I brought my rain jacket all this way.

We setup shop at the finish line, and started plotting our day.

Anytime you can take a picture with the devil, do it!

Our first real success was catching Will Frishkorn (my favorite Chipotle rider) at the finish line and snapping a picture or two. He event talked to us as we ran next to his bike (swoon). So I was super excited at this point, but only because we didn't realise was else was in store for us.

Frishkorn at the finish.

We re-grouped after seeing 'Korn, snagged some lunch (where my terrible French was ridiculed by some locals with no teeth), and then picked up the beer back at the car. We ran into some fellow Chipotle supporters from Oxford and invited them to drink with us (even though they've never tasted the deliciousness of a burrito the size of your face). At this point we started making our way back to the finish line and headed over to Team Chipotle's camper to see who we could find.

They'll be even bigger fans once they get a taste of Chipotle.

Our British companions were Team Garmin-Chipotle fans because the team managed to scoop up British National Champion David Millar at the beginning of the season. They were also really bummed out when we told them they missed Millar's ride down the course, he had passed by 20 minutes before they got to the race.

So, it was a fantastic surprise when we got to the team's camper and spotted a few of the guys relaxing after their races out back. Now, it's one thing to actually have the opportunity to meet some of the best cyclists in the world face to face. Then it's a completely different (and much more exciting) thing to drink a beer with them outside of their camper after they just finished posting some insanely fast times on the race course.

Danny Pate (left) and Trent Lowe recovering from their race.

Almost immediately upon walking around to the back side of the camper, Millar took a look at the case of beer in our hands and asked us if he could have a beer. It was our full intention to see if we could offer these great athletes a celebratory beer in order to gain their favor. But Millar took the words right out of my mouth when that (slightly warm) case of Kronenberg came into view.

We both gushed and immediately opened a bottle for him and Danny Pate (Trent Lowe wasn't down for any post-race refreshment). One bottled turned into two and we managed to chat with these guys for about 20 minutes. Just throwin' a few back with the boys after a hard ride. No big deal.

Just hangin' out with the boys.

Well, we ran out of beer, decided not to be "those guys" who just hang out with nothing left to say, so we thanked them profusely and moved back to the course to watch Christian Vande Velde come across the line.

The finish line of a time trial is basically a free-for-all. There are riders who, 15 meters ago, were pushing their bodies to the limit trying to edge out every last second they could. Now they're thrown into a crowd of people trying to shake their hand, pat them on the back, or (in the case of the 6 or 7 kids in front of us) snag a free water bottle. Absolute mayhem.

Vande Velde trying to make it past the finish line crowd.

We saw Vande Velde finish, the race was wrapping up for the most part (he was the 5th to last person to cross), but we had one more trick up our sleeve. We needed to get into the press area and meet the broadcasting legends of Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwen, and of course Bob Roll ("Tour DAY France").

A front-door approach wasn't going to work for this operation, obviously. We grabbed the remains of our bottle of wine and polished it off as we walked around the enclosed press section.

A plan was formed as we got to the back gate. We'd approach the guards, say that we talked to a producer on Versus ("Jim" was the oh-so-clever name we decided to drop), and that he wanted to get some film of Americans travelling with the Tour. It was genius. Of course they would let us right in. How could it fail?

Well, it failed. The security guard's broken English and my broken French were not working well and we went to the backup plan -- wait on the outside of the gate near the Versus TV truck.

It turned out that wasn't such a bad plan. We got to wave and chat with Bob Roll from the top of the truck where he was filming. Then, as Paul and Phil finished up their broadcast, we managed to wave just enough to look excited and not so much that we looked crazy. They both came over and talked for a minute and then posed for pictures with Jacob.

Jacob and Phil Liggett.

Jacob and Paul Sherwen

Hooray! Tour de France, mission accomplished! We may have only seen bikes on two days, but we certainly accomplished quite a bit on those two days. Drinking with the crazies on Alpe D'Huez, meeting our favorite team and enjoying a beer with them, meeting the guys we've watched for years on TV give us the play-by-play of the greatest event in all of cycling. Yeah, we did alright.

Pictures from the Time Trial.

The next day we packed up, drove back to Milan and then flew home to London. Jacob had one more day in the city and then headed back across the pond.

Now that we've had a taste, I just need to figure out how to convince Laura that the Vuelta d'Espana and the Giro d'Italia should be our next holiday destinations.

Wish me luck!

Tour De France - Part 4

(I thought I could get it all in one final post, but it got too long... here's Lyon, the TT is up next.)

It's all come down to this. We had our fun on the shores of Lake Como, got drunk on the infamous Alpe D'Huez, and even abused the little Peugeot rental car on curvy alpine roads. But here we are, the final penultimate installment of an epic Tour de France journey.

First off, we had been planning on waking up early after Alpe D'Huez to catch the start of the next day's racing. For some reason, after getting in past 1 am the night before, that didn't sound like such a good plan.

Instead we pushed off at a leisurely pace and had a fun little drive to Lyon. We stopped in the town of La Mure along the way for lunch. Jacob got to experience his very first Croque Monsieur, and it was just as delicious as my Croque Madame. (Please don't read anything too deep into our sandwich selections, or the fact that our hotel in Lyon had the beds pushed together.)

Not sure why, but I thought this door in La Mure was cool.

La Mure was really just a way to kill time so that we didn't get caught in hours of traffic following road closures from the tour, which mostly worked. We only hit a minor hiccup on the roads to Lyon, and before we knew it we were horribly lost in yet another new city. Yes, GPS would have come in quite handy at this point. However, a quick stop at a random hotel to steal a map and we were all checked in and ready to hit the town.

Lyon is famous for a few things, but the best by far is the food. In the "old city" of Vieux Lyon, the street is littered with bouchons, authentic (and delicious) food. Over the course of a few nights, we sampled a couple of different bouchons around that part of town, and were rarely disappointed. (There was an incident where part of the restaurant next to us collapsed, but people just kept on eating, so I guess it wasn't a big deal.)

Jacob on top of Fourviere Hill.

In addition to a gastronomic adventure, we also took in some of the famous sites of Lyon. First and foremost is the Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourvière, an iconic white cathedral perched on top of the hill overlooking the rest of the city.

Basilica in the background, with a mini-tower nearby.

The second day in Lyon we spent walking around Croix-Rousse and Vieux Lyon, investigating (and getting lost amongst) the many traboules that provide cut-through access to the streets. They're also some of the longest and steep stairs I've seen in a while. If either Jacob or I had been in any sort of shape, I imagine a crew-practice-stadium type run would have ensued. Luckily, we decided to ignore those instincts and hit the bar instead.

One of the many cut-throughs (traboules) we tackled in Lyon.

Market in Croix-Rousse

We had a great time in Lyon. And aside from a slight language barrier at one lunch stop, we managed to navigate our way around the city with ease. More importantly, managed to successfully eat our way all over the town for 2 solid days. Delicious.

Here are the pictures from the city. Up next (hopefully without all the waiting) is the time trial.

Tour De France - Part 3

(In what's turning into a much longer series than expected, we continue with Alpe D'Huez.)

The day had arrived, it was our first time seeing cyclists, and we jumped right into the deep end. People don't just casually check out Alpe D'Huez, it's more of a life experience. And somehow we decided that it would be a great spot to get our first taste of Tour de France spirit (not to mentions spirits!).

So, the plan was formed: wake up early and drive to Bourg d'Oisans (town at the base of the climb), pick up some beer and food in the town, pick out a low-key spot near the bottom, get drunk, cheer on Team Chipotle. Sounds simple enough.

We got to the town, followed the line of cars as we looked for parking, and then accidentally started driving right up the mountain. There was a lot of "oh crap, what do we do now?", "can we turn around?" and "this is CRAZY" going on in our car as we continued up and up the mountain.


It's not like we could just pull over and turn around to go back to Plan A. There were cyclists everywhere, cars everywhere, and drunk spectators everywhere (keep in mind, it's now 9:30 am). There's no going back to Plan A, definitely Plan B time. Our real worry was that Plan B (find somewhere to park NOW!) would turn into Plan C (can't find parking because people have been camping on this mountain for a week, driving over the top, end up somewhere back in Italy again), and we definitely wanted to avoid that.

Through some divine intervention, we managed to find a spot on the side of the road that wasn't taken up by a tent, car, motorhome, or group of drunk Germans, and pulled over. A very helpful cop informed us (in both French and through frantic hand gestures), that we had to turn the car around so that it was facing down the mountain (turned out to be a great idea when we were trying to get off the mountain later).

So, we were parked. Halfway up the mountain. With no beer.

We were in quite a dilemma, time for a big decision. We could walk back down the way we came, find a shop, and resume Plan A. Or we could walk up this mountain, find a shop, and resume the last half of Plan A (the drinking and cheering part). We decided it would be a waste to come all this way and let a silly thing like climbing a mountain get in our way. So we started up.

About 8 kilometers and 3 really long hours later, we made the summit. We picked up provisions at the top (baguettes, beer, wine... I knew bike jerseys were good for something). We then found our spot, just above the 3 km mark and began to enjoy the fantastic scenery of Alpe D'Huez.

A new plan to sew pockets like this into all of our shirts was hatched shortly after we realised how easy it is to carry bottles of alcohol in them.

The beer went a lot faster than we thought (stupid 250 ml bottles), but luckily the tour started to roll through just in time (for us to crack open the wine). The caravan came through about an hour before the first riders, and handed out loads of free schwag.

Luckily for us, our neighbors along the barrier had updates coming to their mobile and were giving us the heads up on what was happening down the mountain. Then the riders came through.

Carlos Sastre basically won the Tour at this exact moment

It was a fairly slow trickle of riders, all coming up alone or in groups of 2 or 3. The mountain had destroyed the main bunch and shattered them across all 23 switchbacks.

A slightly larger group makes it up the crazy, crazy mountain

At last, the peloton came rolling through (and probably still faster than I could ride on flat ground)

It was time to head back down the slopes. Along with a few tens of thousands of other fans. We met up with some fellow Chipotle supporters (Americans, but living in Switzerland now), who had been camping on Alpe D'Huez for a few days and they brought us down some shortcuts through all the switchbacks. We repaid the favor by giving them a (very slow) lift down the rest of the mountain.

All in all, it was a blast. Jacob got his picture on the Chipotle team website. We got to cheer on our team, and watch some fantastic cycling. Only a few hours later, and we made it out of the crowd and back to the hotel.

Check out the full Alpe D'Huez pictures.

Up next, the final part - Lyon and the Time Trial.

Tour De France - Part 2

Leaving Milan on Tuesday morning, the real heart of our trip (for me and Jacob at least) began as we set off to conquer Alpe D'Huez. With our trusty Google Maps directions in hand, we drove from one autostrade (Italian for highway) to another, a quick stop for one of the best lunches I've had in a while, and then on into France.

Our lunch stop... delicious

First a few points about driving in Italy and France.

• Petrol is expensive (€1.50 / litre = $10.60 / gallon, makes that $4 gas seem like a good deal, huh?).
• Tolls are even more expensive.
• Driving up mountains is both insanely fun and insane depending on if you're driving or in the passenger's seat.

So, once we got into France, things got interesting. Despite being the best (true that, double true), Google Maps is also completely out of it's mind. I'll direct your attention to steps 25 - 42 on the following directions. This is where we left the nice, fast, safe highway (with it's expensive tolls), for the craziest, most switchback-y roads I've ever driven on. First, up the Col du Glandon, where we got our first taste of the real alps.

On top of the Col du Glandon

Then we proceeded to go even futher afield and onto the D212f (that's the road name), aka, the smallest "2-lane" road I've ever been on. I'll highlight this little portion of the trip to give you a taste of Jacob's horror with me behind the wheel. (Just kidding Mom, I was completely safe and in control the whole time... no matter what Jacob tells you.)

Luckily we made it to the hotel (which was on top of another mountain, with fantastic views), and planned for the approaching day.

View from the hotel

Alpe D'Huez, coming up.

Pictures!

I still haven't gone through the 800 or so pictures we took of cyclists, but for now, check these out.

Jacob in London

Milan and Lake Como

Driving through France

The rest should be up whenever I get around to it.