Where are all the bugs??? O the birds ate em!

So today were on our way to a new hotel in a new town, La roque-gageac. I'm excited because our guides say it's an awesome town an our hotel will sit right on the Dordogne river, (the first river was actually just a tributary)..

So after breakfast, we hop on our bikes and start out our journey for the day, 58km lie ahead of us, and I'm a bit gun shy, or should I say bum shy...lol

Fortunately my butt seems to be getting used to this new bikes saddle so I'm starting to feel a bit more confident..and a bit less sore ;)

We start with a 5k climb to 'warm us up' and ' if that's the way we gotta do it, frankly I'd rather stay cold!!!' I think to myself..lol After a long fun fast, descent we enter a cute one street town of St Cyprien, it's quaint and nice. We ditch the bikes and walk down to check out the shoppes. Pretty cool place! There are little fromageries (cheese shoppes) bakeries, dessert places (Oooo-la-la!) and the cutest lil jewelry shop filled with French jewelry.


After doing some gift shopping (score!!!) we leave the town to continue on following a beautiful quiet bike path following litterally right along side the the Dordogne. It was quite nice, we passed by fields of corn hay and orchards of fruit trees and flowers everywhere.



I keep thinking to myself man, the French sure now how to use flowers to make stuff look beautiful! And also 'where are all the bugs?!? And how come whenever I cross farms In the U.S. I smell em 20 miles away, and here I dont smell a thing!!'

Continuing on we pass a tan horse and a dark brown colt, super sweet, they come right to the fence to say hello. We Break from the Dordogne and wind up a small hill to our lunch spot, a picnic in the country side!! And We had a guest!


After enjoying some delich food (and some of the local apple juice,most bestest I've ever had!!!) we headed to the castle Chateau des Milandes,the castle Josephine baker bought in france. It was huge, and an interesting tour, but my favorite was a falconry show they had in the gardens after..





Then we road all the the way to La Roque Gageac which had was right on the Dordogne and Trey magnifique!





We showered up, checked into our rooms, and had dinner on Le dome, a town on too of a big hill above the river. Check out el view-o!





After dindin we strolled the town and being super tired, headed in for the night...too tired to type no more......lol night...
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I'm a go Medieval in this Piece!!!

OMG guys! Wow today was soooo amazing!! I dont even know where to start, so as always, ill start with my favorite subject... food... ;) So we wake up and head Down to breakfast in our hotel, and try this stuff called something like, 'Confit du pedal de roses' er'some junk and wow! It was rose jam! It was like I put a whole floral shop in my mouth! Different but good :)

Then we all grabbed our bikes and headed to our pre trip team meeting, all 14 of us.. So I
rolls up right, in my brand new biker gear and ummm.. I'll be honest, I was feelin a lil self conscious, cus those biker spandex shorts don't leave much to the imagination :-/ ... But the tour company told me I better wear em cuz they got that padding inside so your butt don't get all sore and stuff so I just took one for the team (in this case the team was my two cheeks) and wore the biker gear... And I must say, after a while I was like hey!!!!, is that the black, handsome, Lance Armstrong over there?!? Oh wait, naww that's just a mirror...lol jk....



So anywho.. we saddle up and head out on our excursion, a 46km ride following the beautiful Vezere river north. We started with a pretty rolly section of tough climbs over the first portion. Fortunately they were broken up by some sweet downhills. After about 10km of this we arrived at Le Roque St. Christophe. Wow, this place was sooooo cool, and if your into Medieval stuff like I am then you'll love it too! It was like walking into king Arthurs day or Robbin hood er'some junk!

So in the middle of this gorgeous, green, lush fertile river valley, there's these huge lime stone cliffs that shoot up paralleling the river. And settlers from the middle aged totally turned it into a whole cliff/mountain village, with homes and a blacksmith shop and quarry and everything a town needs was cut into the cliff face! And they made one entrance that was the only access and totally hidden and guarded so none of the invading Normans could successfully attack their village.



And it overlooked this beautiful section of peaceful, fertile river valley so you could totally see why they wanted to protect their land and livelihood. As pic shows..




So they hewed huge chunks out of the cliffs and it was soooo cool, cuz they used all these lifting machines and stuff to make there job easier to lift up everything from water to like rocks and wood and tools and even animals... So I just found it really fascinating!






So I got soooo caught up in the old mt. Village that I got separated from the rest of the group, but not to worry all... Da Gabesta channeled his Jamaican speedster roots mon'! and peddled to the metaled to catch up...but I had one problem..

You can't pedal to the metal while your biking trough France, cuz theirs too many dang beautiful places!! (as if this could ever be a problem! Lol) I kept stopping to take pics, and deservedly so! First off I'm pretty sure I found Belles hometown from beauty and the beast. (I just couldn't find Belle!!! :( Darnit!















And then I had to keep stopping to take more pics! Twerent optional if ya know what I'm saying lol...












But i did find my castle! Its called Chateau du Gabser.. not bad huh?!?! (see above)

So after it all I caught up with em, and now my butt hurts super bad! Been a long time since I biked that far in a day...lol

Past 12pm here so I'm off to bed,


Gabser out

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Location:Fracois

Pics, France; Jour Un!

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my iPhone

Wowwwzaaas, what a day of travel!!!

Ok guys, thanks for all of your well wishes and hopes for a safe trip. I'm a do my best to come thru! :) da gabesta is on the job, and if da gabesta is his name then traveling is his game...lol.. So anywho, I left seatac yesterday at like 705 in the am and after two planes, one bus and three trains and 26 hrs later, I finally made it to Les Eyzies and met up with my group to tour the beautiful Dordogne river valley in France by bicycle.

So i arrive in Paris at like 830ish (check the cool pic of the paris skyline while we were landing! Yep thats the eifel tower in the middle of my o so dirty airplane window...lol.. And no Di, that is not food i spilled on it lol!!! ) i catch a bus to the train station which gets stuck in a Parisian traffic jam thats went medevil, and therefore miss my train to Les Eyzies! :( But not to worry all, double 0' negroe is on the job, crisis averted, using my seriously 'phisticated French, (more like asking every teller till I got an English speaking one..lol) i get my tick exchanged for the next train to depart from Paris montparnasse..

As I'm on the train heading out of Paris I'm soooooo tired, plus the constant gentle swaying of the rail car is just weighing on my eyelids like Greeces debt is weighing on the E.U....tbc...lol... But trying with all of my might to stay up to see the country side, I didn't wanna miss a single chateau sitting on in a field of sunflowers (no joke) but man you gotta do what u gotta do, and I had to sleep! So I made like a narcoleptic at an ambien party and CRASHED! Well jk, not that bad, I set my alarm so i wouldnt sleep thru my stops.. Good side is I got a lil shuteye, bad news was that I missed a bunch of beautiful pics...but wait, everythings not lost!

Turns out the place to which I was headed was sooooooo beautiful that I didn't need the pics, cuz this hillside village is amazing! Quiet, quaint, one main road, awesome classic French architecture with rustic old world feel, and a river going through the middle of the hotel!!! Yep, you heard me, a river!! Wow, hands down the most awesome ambiance I've ever seen in a hotel.. (see pics). Yes Nemakas, you'll truly love it here, quiet and peaceful, a true dichotomy of Paris with all it's hustle and bustle..

Well it's 1113 here and I've gotta head off to bed, early start biking tomorrow and well cover anywhere between 40-80k, so I gotta catch some zzzz's..lol

Hope yall enjoy the pics to follow,

Gabesta out