Day 39 - October 9 - Paris
We awoke early and metroed to the Fat Tire Bike Tour offices near the Eiffel Tower. I love the musicians in the metro - we have been serenaded by guitars, bands, saxophones, accordians, violinists - some good, some not so good. :)
The tour is supposed to begin at 9 am and end at 5 pm but as usual someone is always late - we waited 40 minutes for the last two people to show up. This is wrong on Fat Tire's part and they should put an end to this - You'll see later why this is a problem. We checked out our bikes (a bit old style and rickety), hopped on them and biked to the nearest RER (regional) train station. It was wild trying to get our bikes through the station and then picking them up and hopping on the train before it takes off!
We got off at the Versailles train station and proceeded to bike to the Versailles market to buy food for our lunch. It's interesting biking through traffic with 20 people!
The Versaille market is amazing! I could have stayed all day and bought one of everything! There were indoor and outdoor stalls containing fresh seafood, meat, all sorts of vegetables, olive oil, thousands of cheeses, bread. Around the market there are small streets with bakeries and wine shops. We bought a bottle of wine and went to a recommended bakery for two chicken sandwiches, quiches and brownies. Everyone met up at the appointed time (surprisingly) and we continued on to the Versailles Gardens.
It's a beautiful city and the leaves were changing to orange, gold and yellow and falling on us as we biked along. We rode into the Versailles gardens and stopped at Marie Antoinette's Hamlet. We then continued to Le Petit Trianon where Louis XIV kept Madame Pompidou (his mistress). We then biked to the Grand Trianon and got off our bikes and walked to it and the gardens. Loved the pink marble columns. Our guide was great and a wealth of information about French history and why things happened and explaining how Versailles was built and what was going on with France during that time period.
We biked over to the Grand Canal to have our picnic lunch. It was nice to get off those bikes for an hour!
Finally biked to Versailles Palace, left our bikes, got our entrance tickets. We had about 1.5 hours to go through the Palace.
Wow! What opulence - If you ever visit this Palace you'll know why the French Revolution happened! Don't know what else to say, except look at the photos- they describe it all!
We got some postcards and headed out to meet up with our group at the appointed time - well only 9 of 18 people were there. We waited 10 minutes and at this point had missed the train the guide wanted to take. Our guide finally had to go back to the Palace and search for the rest of group. While he was gone, two more wandered up with their arms full of stuff from the shop - not seeming to care that they were late. At this point we had missed another train. Our guide finally returns some 30 minutes later - supposedly some of them got lost. We start off to the station and a couple of people who had been cutting up during the day were messing around again and wrecked the bikes. One of them was too damaged to ride, so the guide had to pick it up and carry it all the way to the station. We just barely make the third train.
Forty minutes later we arrive and bike back to Fat Tire headquarters - it was almost dark at this point. We were tired, exhausted and frustrated as we should have been back by 5 pm. But because of the shenanigans of a few people, the lack of respect for others in the group (ie: not showing up on time) it was almost 8 pm,We walked to the nearest Metro stop, and back to the apartment.
We grabbed a sandwich and cheesecake at Paul's as it was closing and had that and some champagne for dinner.
DW was feeling bad, so he goes to bed early and I stay listening to French jazz for a while!
Conclusion:
We enjoyed the tour, our guide was wonderful, however two things Fat Tire should do:
1. Don't wait on late comers for more than 10 minutes. Put that on the website and stick to it or at least tell people to show up 15-20 minutes before you really want to leave. When you set a standard for waiting, it continues throughout the day with people showing up late and not caring because they know you won't leave them behind.
2. Up date and take better care of the bikes- they were not in that good of condition - chains breaking, flat tires
