It's All Coming Together

I'm so excited I can barely contain myself.

Why?

WE BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS!  Yes, I know, the race is just under 6 months away but I'm sure it will be here before I know it.  But it gets better....Not only have we booked our flights, we've booked our accommodation in Luxembourg as well.  We fly out late on June 15th and arrive in Paris midday on the 16th.  We then have a 3 hour drive to Luxembourg.  Not sure how I feel about that but, we were going to have to drive there regardless of where we flew into.  Frankfurt was closer but the flights and departure dates were better / cheaper flying into Paris so that's what we did. 

We've rented an awesome apartment in Luxembourg City for the week.  We are roughly 17km from the start line of the race (of course G has this all figured out).  So it looks like we'll be driving and hopefully finding parking somewhere nearby since bike check in is the day before.  We're staying in Luxembourg until the 23rd and then we hit the road to go to Italy.   I CANNOT WAIT.  It's roughly a 9 hour drive to Italy from Luxembourg so we're splitting it up.  We're going to stop in the German town of Fussen.  G decided it would be an interesting place to stop because apparently it is home to the castle that was the inspiration behind Sleeping Beauty's castle.

Castle Neuschwanstein - source

  Who knew?

Anyway, this is our crazy hotel room.  Kinda makes my head spin.

Source

I do know one thing for sure.  We WILL be drinking beer and eating pretzels when we get there. And maybe even some schnitzel.  I'm definitely bringing my stretchy pants.

From here, we'll be heading to Bassano del Grappa for a week.   A friend of ours has made arrangements with her parents to rent us their apartment for a very nice price.  In the words of The Godfather, they made us an offer we couldn't refuse, ha ha.  Since I've never been to Italy and I've always wanted to go, we were all over this.   It will be a week of walking, eating, maybe bike riding and definitely wine drinking.  Oh and probably some grappa tasting as well since this is where it was first made.  Did I mention that I cannot wait?

On our way back, we're going to go through France.  This part of the trip hasn't been totally finalized yet but we're thinking we may stay in Grenoble or Bourg d'Oisans for a few days because we want to try to ride up Alp d'Huez.  You can do a timed ride up it.  They give you a timing chip that you take to the top and then they give you a certificate afterwards with your time on it.  Good thing it only times the climb because I think it would probably take me 3x as long to get down in than it would to climb it.  I am freaking PETRIFIED of descending mountains.  I will never forget the decent down the Blue Ridge Parkway in South Carolina.  I white knuckled it the entire time and I think my bike was covered in brake dust by the time I actually finished.  Not to mention my legs were shaking the entire way down.  Half the crew I was with had the time to stop for a sandwich, that's how slow I was.  But, I'm always up for a challenge so I guess that will be it.

After this, we'll head to Paris and spend one night and part of a day there before we come back home.   I think this will be an incredible way to celebrate 10 years of marriage and it will definitely be a memorable trip.

Have you got any big trips planned this year?