urban bicycle journeys

Even at home, meals are important events in my day; sometimes the most important thing. Lyman and I faced an evening meal conundrum on the first night of our eight day bicycle tour of southwest France. I had big expectations. The French, they say, try to make every lunch, dinner or even breakfast as special as possible.

A little background: My only sleep the night before had been an hour or two on the airplane from America. I had landed CDG Paris at 6:30 AM. Walking through the airport, I saw already that having flaky croissants is a national priority.

The RER commuter train took forty minutes from the airport to Saint-Michel-Notre-Dame station on the edge of the Latin Quarter. My friend Lyman from New Orleans and Austin TX had arrived the day before. Both of us had checked on the flight a Bike Friday in a hard suitcase. In Paris on a busy city sidewalk we transferred them from hard suitcases to canvas bags.

Lyman had found an app called Nannybag that allowed us to leave our hard bicycle suitcases at a Latin Quarter grocery store for eight days. That store featured my wife Tootie’s hometown of Winston-Salem’s most famous treat “fabriques et livres cheque jour.”

With bicycles now folded into soft cases we took a taxi to the huge Gare Montparnasse for the noon train to Bordeaux. The bicycle spaces on the TGV had been sold out in advance so we carried the bikes onboard in bags that subsequently could be folded onto our bicycle luggage carriers. It was a speedy train; three hundred fifty miles in two hours five minutes. An app called Speed Box on my phone briefly showed 195 MPH.

On arrival to the Bordeaux station (exactly on time) we put our bicycles together. They do allow you to wheel bicycles onto the slower regional trains. From that Bordeaux station we took such a train forty minutes east to the village of Velines, rolled our bicycles off, and pedaled into rural France.

We stayed on tiny roads.

Lyman Labry’s family history search was the starting point for this eight day bicycle tour. Lyman’s great (not sure how many “greats’) grandmother on his mother’s side died at age ninety in New Orleans in 1893 but had been born in France in 1803.

Just like the clip above we were in Department Gironde and only an eight mile bicycle ride from Sainte-Foy-la-Grande. We cycled into the town’s historic central square. Current population is about twenty five hundred.

It is a lovely town but somewhat down-on-its-luck. Grand Hotel de Sainte Foy was not particularly grand but its reception was friendly and they did have two decent rooms. We later learned there were a few other guests but at 5:00 PM its courtyard was empty.

French restaurants generally offer dinner only from 7:00-7:30 PM to 9:00-9:30 PM. I was excited about an actual French meal. Unfortunately two of the key restaurants in this town were closed on Mondays.

Lyman and I walked up and down what seemed the town’s main drag, Rue Victor Hugo, a narrow street lined with shops or vacant storefronts. Young men of what looked to be Middle Eastern heritage hung on the corners. No one else seemed around.

Was I not asking too much for my first dinner of this trip in France to include a table for two with wine? Nevertheless, we were running dry, so to speak. There seemed to be no suitable restaurants.

The one restaurant open that had seating was a Middle Eastern place called Delices d’Orient.

Men were clustered outside around the sidewalk tables, drinking tea. I stepped inside and two tables were nicely set for dinner, although at this prime dinner hour of 7:45 PM no one was eating. A man cordially encouraged us to sit down, eat. I asked if they had wine. He said no. I asked we could buy a bottle of wine across the street at the mini-mart and bring it over here. He said no. I smiled and we moved on.

We couldn’t believe it but this was our reality. There seemed nowhere else to check. We would have to adapt. At that one open store we bought a bottle of local red wine. This very region produces some of the finest and most expensive wine in the world; First Growth producers like Chateau Lafite Rothschild are just down the road. To us, a randomly chosen twelve Euro bottle of red seemed a great idea. Lyman had brought a corkscrew.

The most popular looking of the two alcohol-less fast food takeout places was the apparently locally owned “Smash&Crispy.” It was not much more than a windowed storefront open to the pedestrian street. Smash burgers seem to be a thing in southern France. In a combination of French and sign language, a friendly guy indicated the chicken smash was the best.

“Deux, s’il vous plait.”

We now had food and we had wine. We walked ten minutes back to a table and chairs in the courtyard of our hotel, which we had all to ourselves. Paper coffee cups were procured from our rooms. Wine was poured. We opened our dinner boxes, which included little packets of a tasty sauce called Algerienne.

We had found the town of Lyman’s roots. We finally had dinner. It was not steak frites but chicken burger frites. It was actually delicious. The food, the setting, and the wine all seemed to come together. We talked about that crazy 1981 movie “My Dinner with Andre.” On this lovely courtyard as the sun was setting, life was grand. At least in a small way, this is what it is all about.

The next morning we headed out, but first: the hotel’s breakfast of flaky fresh croissants.

Forty something kilometers south was a canal bicycle path hundreds of kilometers long. That would be our mission for the coming days. Stay tuned.