Day 90: Le Tour de France, Belgian beer and GREAT friends

We are not used to early mornings. Today we peeled ourselves out of bed at 6am to get to Liège early and miss the crowds for the start of the Tour de France. It was the first leg of the Tour where the cyclists do time trials in preparation for the following days race.

The vibe was incredible as we walked around for a couple of hours deciding where we wanted to stand and watch these elite athletes battle it out for first place. We could only watch 30mins of the time trials as we were meeting friends from Paris in Brussels for some beers.

Before the time trials started, we were treated to a parade of the sponsors as they drove their floats and branded vehicles tossing out gifts such as caps, rubber bracelets, food and water to the crowds. We managed to get away with a lot of free kit, which we probably will never ever use but it was fun catching them anyway.

Eventually the cyclists came out to warm up. Flippen heck these okes are speed machines. I reckon they must have been doing 70kms per hour at some points. Incredible to watch! Some okes had really skinny legs and still managed to wind it up.




Cadel Evans and team mates.

Robbie warming up.

It was great to stand on the sidelines and shout for Robbie Hunter and Darryl Impey as fellow Saffas. We were very proud to see them competing and I am sure they appreciated the support.

Cadel Evans obviously had incredible support and was good to see him in action.

Neither of us are massive cycling fans but you can’t help appreciating the level at which these guys perform. This level of racing is so technical in terms of bike mechanics and material as well as strategy – you get hooked so easily by all the interesting information.

As I was looking at the Tour map, which had the route and dates, I looked at the finish, which is at the Champs Elysses in Paris on 22^nd July. Crazy coincidence, but we will be in Paris during that time and will DEFINITELY see the winner cross the line.  After Spain we will find out where the Tour will be and follow them for a couple of days and enjoy the festivities and atmosphere surrounding the race. This was all completely unplanned and we can’t believe our luck, but we are going with it – and who wouldn’t. Just need to get hold of a cow bell and a vuvuzela with signs for Robbie and Darryl and some face paint.

We jumped on the train in Liege at 3pm and were in Brussels central by 4pm to look for our legendary Parisian/Finnish friends for a Belgian beer experience at the Delirium Tremens Bar. We were greeted with hugs and kisses like long lost friends and made to feel so welcome. Denis and Emma are amazing people and phenomenal how we have become such good friends in such a short space of time. Just a reminder that this is the couple that we met in Capadoccia in Turkey. They have invited us to stay with them in Paris to which we replied a resounding ‘yes we would love to’. That will be a great time with them and we look forward to seeing Paris with some locals.

Back to Brussels at the bar, we were introduced to Christian and Rachel. Another incredible couple that are friends with Denis and Emma and are very experienced travellers. They all plan on visiting SA soon and we have welcomed them with open arms. Christian is Dutch and Rachel is from the USA and they live in Amsterdam - Africa will be a brilliant experience for them. Together we all consumed the tasty Belgian beer – it really is beautiful beer with interesting names like La Chouffe and Kwak. Conversation soon became very festive and we had a jol! We handed out some gifts to our new friends - the gifts we had won at the Tour de France earlier.

Unfortunately we had to love and leave our amazing friends and head for the train station to catch the 8pm train to Antwerp and then back to our hotel for some much needed rest after a very long and exciting day.


We were so sad to leave our hotel which was nestled in amongst factories and wharehouses....NOT!

Onward to the land of precision watches, knives and chocolate...

We traveled on the TGV train from Brussels to Lyon where we changed over to another TGV train to Geneva. These TGV trains are ridiculously quick and super luxurious and on this trip so far we have done speeds close to 250km/h which is still 50km/h of there potential – exhilarating and impressive machines. These trains have always been great as they give us time to relax and recoup after busy days of sightseeing.


Our train arrived at 9:16pm in Geneva and a quick bus and tram trip with a short walk and we were at Nicole's house where we would make our home for the next 6 days. Looking forward to Monday to sleep, eat and sleep some more...maybe some dvd's....aaaaah no place like a home.


Going to be a wonderful time here with Nicole!