Down Time in Foix
Trip Start
Jul 02, 2011
1
21
24
Trip End
Aug 01, 2011
Foix, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Saturday, July 23, 2011
After breakfast we set about finding the laundromat and getting our washing done. Then the task of repacking our now very dirty bikes into their various containers for traveling back to Melbourne. Check out time at the hotel is 11am but they are happy for us to keep packing the bikes up and then leave them there until we need to leave in the evening.
We spend the day looking at the market that sprouted up in the morning and then visiting the main tourist attraction of the town which is a 10th century castle with 3 towers that stands atop a massive rock and overlooks the city.
Later in the afternoon the order of the day is to find a pub with a TV to watch the Tour de France, and what an awesome stage it was. Not only because of the massive effort that Cadel put in, but because we had actually ridden most of the course ourselves and could relate to exactly where they were and what they still had in front of them. We even saw the hotel we stayed in at Le Frenny. The pictures of the gorge between Le Frenny and the base of Alpe d'Heuz on the TV would have shown you what was "home" for us for 4 days.
After the tour it was back to the hotel to get our luggage and start the shuffle into the centre of town for dinner. We ate at the same restaurant as yesterday but our waitress tonight didn't speak any English which always makes it fun! One of the hardest things to communicate seemed to be how you want your meat cooked for some reason.
After dinner we realized that the buses had finished running for the night so we had to carry our bikes about 1.5kms to the station. Once there the ticket booth was closed and there was no electronic kiosk to print out our tickets (Bloody Pierre strikes again).
On the train the conductor tells us that we have to stow our bikes in 2nd class and we aren't allowed in first class (which we have paid for) because we haven't printed our tickets - so we end up sitting in the luggage area with our bikes for just over an hour until we reach Toulouse. Here there is a 2 hour stop and I can get our tickets printed and we then have access to 1st class. The surprise was we actually had sleepers, and they were quite comfortable.
