Ironman France - Thursday

Jun 18, 2008

Morning
It's just starting to get light here. It's 5:07, thursday morning.. It's still 11:07 pm on wednesday where you are. I just got up. The rest of the house is quiet.

This part of France is amazing. There are mountains all around us and the Mediterranean on one side. They aren't huge mountains but they are mountains just the same. The whole area is pretty hilly like in the moves where you see car chases going up and down the skinny side streets. The plants are beautiful; the first thing you notice is palm trees all over the place. But there are lots of other plants as well, a lot of them are flowering. Most of the buildings around here have Terra Cotta roofs (kind of a brownish-orange) so when you look out from our balcony it looks very colourful.


Nice from the balcony facing east.
Everyone speaks French of course and their English isn't that great so sometimes communicating is a bit of a problem. Some of the things that we take for granted, they don't have here. For example, we still need to shop for some groceries but as far as I've seen so far they don't have anything like a big mall here. Maybe they have something further our of town. Mostly what they have are little convenience stores scattered throughout the city. Apparently they have markets so I'm hoping we can get to the market early today because we don't have much in the way of food in our kitchen and that's a problem because I'm kinda hungry right now.

The waterfront reminds me a lot of the Toronto waterfront in that there is a wide bicycle path that travels all along the water front as well as a wide sidewalk for the walkers; this is the Promendade and during the day, even on a weekday, it is filled with walkers, runners, and cyclists going up and down the promenade. In front of that is a pebbly beach and behind it is a busy road. There are cars driving up and down it all day long but especially lots of scooters. The funny thing about the scooters is that they seem to be allowed to drive just about anywhere. So while the cars are all lined up behind each other at a traffic lights, the scooters will just drive up the middle between them to get to the front of the line. Behind the promenade are the hotels and behind that the landscape begins to rise and is dotted with buildings of all shapes and sizes and ages. Most of the buildings have probably been around for quite awhile. This place has a lot of history.

We'll no doubt be doing a lot of exploring today as well as get settled in. But first I think we're going to be going for a swim in the Mediterranean. There is supposed to be an open water swim between 7:00 and 9:00 am for the athletes as part of the Ironman event. We saw quite a few bike boxes at the airport and you could tell a lot of the pedestrians, runners, and cyclists on the promenade were athletes but today I'm expecting a much bigger influx of athletes as today is when the Ironman event really kicks off.

http://www.ironmanfrance.com/

Well... that's it for now. It's getting much lighter out now. I'm thinking it's time I figured out how the coffee maker works.

Afternoon
Actually, I'm recounting not just the afternoon but pretty much everything that occurred after my morning coffee. Yes, I figured out how to work the coffee maker. I made 10 cups. Funny how just after I'd made the coffee everyone seemed to awake. It wasn't long before Brian was making a second pot of 10 cups. Over coffee, we unpacked our bikes and put them back together then we went down to the beach for a swim in the sea. The salt water tasted kinda funny and the waves were higher than we're used to but other than that it was just another open water swim.
After the swim we went to the Expo to get our race stuff. There wasn't much to see at the Expo. There were a number of exhibitors but the stuff was grossly over-priced so we didn't spend much time there. The lineup was long enough even on this first day of the Expo that were glad to get it done early. The presence of triathletes was a lot more prounounced today than yesterday with quite a few people biking or running up and down the Promenade de Anglaise. I actually felt a little guilty not biking or running myself but Brian put it succinctly when he said "they're cramming for exams; we studied". Nicely put, Brian. Anyway, we got out of there and, after buying groceries, went somewhere away from anything to do with Ironman.

A fresco near the Expo site.

St. Paul de Vence is a small town lodged halfway up the mountains. Dating back to the year 1400, the old town is completely fortified by a stone wall. Within the walls, the old buildings are tall, the streets narrow, the trees old, and brick everywhere. I've never seen anything like it. Probably the nearest to this town that we have in Canada is the old part of Quebec City.
Anyway, it's past dinner time now and we haven't eaten. It's also Jim's birthday today so we're eating out (again). Ah life is hard.
-richard