Friday, July 20, 2012

Rest day

Tuesday was a rest day for the Tour, and we used it as a rest day as well. We slept in, and got out of bet around 11:00 or so. We basically had a wander around Luchon, grabbed a sandwich at a cafe on Avenue d'Etigny (the main drag in Luchon) and then went back to the apartment for more resting. (I said it was a rest day, right?!)

Here is the one photo we took on our wander:

Apparently Luchon is proud to be a Ville d'Etape
(start or end town for a stage of the Tour)


We were having difficulty finding a breakfast place, so Nathan and I decided in the afternoon to go pick up some supplies at the small grocery store on the main street. We got some ingredients to make eggs and toast with jam, as well as a few additional essentials (Diet Coke, baby!) With that major task out of the way, we went back to the apartment for some more resting!

We had decided to take the rest day to drive down to Spain so Nathan and I could say we had been there, so that's exactly what we did around 5:00. We figured we would go to the first Spanish town inside the border and have dinner there, so off we went over the Col de Portillon. This was a really cool col in that it had houses, restaurants and lots of other stuff on the way up. This is not to say that they hill was covered with buildings, but there were some things here and there to make the mountain seem a bit friendlier and less intimidating.


More Pyrenees


A switchback on the Col de Portillon


Another peak on the way to Bossast


More Pyrenean views


Bossost off in the distance...


Another view of Bossost down in the valley


An awesome view (in my opinion) up a valley
in the Spanish Pyrenees


When we got to the top, we realized that we'd not brought our passports, but there was no need; there wasn't even a sign that said we were entering Spain (literally!) let alone some border guards.

We came down the mountain into the Spanish town of Bossost. It was very cute just like the French towns, but had signs in Spanish instead of French. We looked around and decided that we really didn't see anything that we wanted to eat, so we just drove back to France and our apartment (where we rested some more!)

Here are some photos of Bossost that I took while we are there:

The town hall of Bossost


A nice restaurant in Bossost


A windy street in a Spanish town


A very cute little restaurant with the mountains
in the background


The central square of Bossost


A view of Bossost from the distance


That night we had pizza in a little pizza place on Allee d'Etigny and then went back to the apartment, rested and played Mille Bourne (in actual French!) Not a bad rest day!

No comments:

Post a Comment