Whoosh!

Soooo . . . once we got back to France, updating our travel blog became less urgent, and gorging ourselves on cheese, bread, and steak became our main activity. Now that I've finally landed in Iowa (with Doug soon to follow after tying up loose ends in LA), I realized I had a video of La Tour de France whizzing through Perpignan that I forgot to share. We went to Perpignan because I'd heard that Salvador Dali called it the "crossroads of the world" or some such, and as luck would have it, our visit coincided with the Tour and we still managed to get a decent hotel room.

Before the Tour came through, all the French sponsors send these wild floats down the main street to get the crowd stoked up to cheer on the racing teams. After the video, I'm posting some of those pics . . . pretty goofy, but unmistakably French.









Here's the only piece of swag I managed to get (the competition in the crowd was fierce!): the brand is the French national horse-betting entity, PMU. Needless to say, I didn't think this was worth stuffing in my suitcase and bringing home to the fam.



All in all, a great afternoon and evening spent, even if there were sports involved. Maybe it signals a change in my attitude toward spectator athletics, if not actual participation in them.