Chad Is Everywhere

Visiting Verviers for the start of day 3 of the Tour offered a different experience to that of Dusseldorf. This time I was outside of the big city environment. This was the first true day of Le Tour starting in a small city along the way. Away from all the big crowds of the days before. This presented a unique opportunity to walk around the starting point with it's stage for the riders announcing their arrival and signing in. Walk around the promotional stands of the sponsors, and them also do my own Le Tour souvenir shopping while waiting for the day to start. I unfortunately didn't quite get all my timing right on the day. I had mistakenly thought the riders were departing at 10:15am. No this was merely the carnival. The riders didn't depart until 12:15pm. 2 hours later. It didn't cause a big issue. Just meant that whereas I had thought I had time to explore Verviers after the tour had departed mean I had to rush to a train I had booked at 12:40pm (alas it ended u...

In my planning for visiting the Le Tour I realised I should just add in an extra day following the tour. Not because I needed to, but because when the heck was I going to be in Europe again at the same time. This was after all a bucket list item I'd be completing. So after much back and forth on how to end my European leg of my holiday I settled on a plan of taking a train ride down to Aachen on the German border for the night, and then catching a train to Verviers for the start of day 3. In researching this option I had read that staying in villages or towns where the tours starts or stops for a night was often expensive, and accommodation hard to find. Aachen I found was the perfect solution. It was only an hour from Dusseldorf. And the next day the Dbahn / Belgian Rail trip cost all of 7 euro each way, a half hour of my time, and it had multiple budget hotels located close to the railway station for my ease of transit. So it fit my brief all round. I could leave my bags at th...

Day 2 of Le Tour was a new adventure. This was where I got to see all the riders as one big bunch. Originally I was not expecting to see it having been indicated we'd do a day trip. But traffic was to be impossible for a day trip. So a trip into the Tour start was as the best idea.  We managed to line up a position near the start within the ceremonial introductory riding area before the riders when to a presentation, and then were onto their bikes for a bit more before completing the neutral zone and game on! It also meant we could just waltz around the corner to get them a second time. Sweet. After that it was farewell to Oscar and Greg leaving Lina and I for a day walking around the city and all of the festival events of the tour before I departed on a train. Thanks Lina, Gregoire, and Oscar for spending the time with me in Düsseldorf.    at Le Tour.

Before I even go into my experience of the Tour de France I just want to give you all an insight to how I got there. And why this was a bucket list item of inevitability. I've for quite some time enjoyed watching the Tour de France each year as it traverses through the French countryside. Watching the television screen as the camera would take us up close as the pentalon of riders zoom through a small French village filled with tourist, to then cut to an aerial view of some 14th century chateau that's been held in the same family since the 1600s. It always captured my interest late at night as the coverage would not start until after 10pm at night when all of the day in Australia was done and there was nothing much to do but to curl up on a couch in the middle of winter thinking of my next trip. Not thinking of work. Mindless late night television for a night owl. I watch the tour like it's a television series. I love the food segments. I am seriously starting to und...