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Mon Jul 23 2007: Le Mans & Tours |
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Whohoooooooo! We went to Le Mans! Sorry, I totally gave the ending away HarryPotterDies what? Who said that? ;) Just kidding about the Harry Potter bit, I didn't read the book and Neda's only on page 249 as I'm typing this right now. Normally she's finished a Potter book in less than 24 heures, ooops, sorry, another Le Mans reference...
Okay from the beginning, we got up at 6AM today! Which was perplexing when the checkout counter's clock reads an hour later. No worries, they're probably not changed over from Daylight Savings. Then more clocks started reading the wrong time. Newsflash: France is in a different time zone than GMT, which means we woke up late again! And that tomorrow, we'll have to get up at 5AM effectively. WTF?!
Matching rainsuits: Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum
As we left the Manoir, we decided against putting on our rainsuits, even though the sky was black with threatening clouds. As every biker knows, the minute you forego rainsuits, it'll pour on you 10 minutes after you make that decision. Which it did. So after the first toll booth, we stopped at the side of the road and put the suits on. Which came in handy for the next 5 hours of riding through pouring rain from Le Touquet to Le Mans. That's right, we went to Le Mans! Whoohoooo!!!!
At the gate of Le Mans, baby!!!
The ride there was not very exciting. Actually, doing 140 on the Autoroute in the pouring rain is a different kind of exciting, especially when passing trucks and their clouds of spray water. Even if you can't see their tail-lights, you can always tell when there's a truck ahead of you.
Pretty much what we went through all day
We got to Le Mans around 2PM, what a cool place! So much history and tradition on that one racetrack. I was hoping to get special Le Mans food at the cafeteria in the Automotive Museum, like a McQueen Burger or a Feel-It-For-24-heures Chili. But alas, they just had normal cafeteria food... It was nice spending a rainy day inside the Musee Automobile de la Sarthe (Le Mans Museium). The museum was interesting, but I wasn't into the older cars, and they only had a few motorcycles on display. Lots of Jackie Ickx, but no Valentino! Or even McQueen! WTF again?! The French...
Okay, it's not a 917 and I'm not Steve McQueen, but it's the thought that counts
1933 BMW Type R11
Ferrari Dino
Porsche 996 GT1. I'm sure all I need is some new bodywork...
We bought a ticket to take our bikes into the Le Mans stadium, which I found more interesting than the museum. Couldn't take them on the track but we got to tour around the paddock, the grandstand and the village. It isn't hard to imagine tens of thousands of people attending a MotoGP or 24 heures race here. I think our next trip will include a live MotoGP race.
BMW Boxers @ LeMans
In the grandstand waiting for something to zoom by...
Tooling around LeMans
The Audi Tower in the Le Man village
Our reflection in the Audi Tower. All the winners of the LeMans race over the years are etched into this monument
After a couple of hours wandering the track, we decided to make our way to south to Tours, about 80 kms south of Le Mans. Almost ran out of gas along the way, but while we roamed around Le Mans (the town) looking for a gas station, we stumbled upon the public section of the Mulsanne straight. So we rode on a section of the Le Mans road course! How cool is that?!
Our hotel in Tours
View of Tours from our hotel room
Arrived in Tours just before 7PM, there were signs for castles all around the area. Booked into a Best Western for the night. The front desk clerk was also a rider and he was gushing over Neda's ST. Apparently BMW didn't release the ST in France. It's not the prettiest bike in the barn, so it's rare that you find an ST admirer. At his recommendation, we went to a very nice restaurant called Le Relais Bure. Again, the French do not dissapoint with their attention to detail in their cuisine!
Tours, France
Tours, France
I counted and there are 12 occurences of the word, "Le Mans" in this note.
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