Life around Tour de France – Stage 4
Europe
This is a guest post by Mr.Q, a quizmaster by profession, a passionate traveler and a foodie
Montpellier – the city which gave us Parachute …
The 4th Stage was a team trial from city centre at Montpellier & finishing in the city of Montpellier itself. The start was at Opera Comedie the city centre which is the identity of the town. The route was of 39kms and went through a few towns around the city before heading back to the Yves-du-Manoir stadium.
The walking tour of the old city shows us some sights which are historic. This is the city where the Parachute was invented and the de la Labote tower looks like just another street corner, but this is tower from which the Lenormand jumped with what we today take for granted on every flight – the Parachute.
Louis-Sébastien Lenormand, born in Montpellier, was a French physicist & inventor who was a pioneer in parachuting. He is considered the first human to make a witnessed descent with a parachute and is also credited with coining the term parachute (from French parasol – “sun shield”, chute – “fall”). On December 26, 1783 he jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a 14 foot parachute with a rigid wooden frame. This tower is today the pride of the city & no walking tour bypasses this.
On the walk through the lanes, our guide for the day Lucy even showed us a building with half a cannonball sticking out of the first floor, the same was shot by the Germans in World War I!!
The walk slowly became a gastronomic experience as were taken to one of the numerous street side cafes & restaurants – Le Petit Mickey, a restaurant with over 75 years of pedigree. Yours truly being the experimenter agreed every readily and the next 2 hours saw Filet de loup (fish soup), Rabbit pate, Tielle (squid pie) followed by main course of Gardiane de Taureau (bull & rice) & Chocolate Profiteroles for dessert all washed down with some very fine local white wine. Yumm!!
The oldest botanic garden in France – Jardin des Plantes along with Arc de Triomphe & Aqueduc de St.Clement are some of the other sights to catch in the city. While we were looking up the Museum of History, we accidentally came across a photo exhibition by Yann Arthus Bertrand and to our delight we spent the next 2 hours going through his work. It’s a mind blowing body of work – a series of photos from all over the globe, including Rajasthan & Tamil Nadu in India, shot from helicopter which shows the current state of ecology & the destruction that is taking place around the globe. Its very inspiring & awesome. You can catch his work on www.yannarthusbertrand.com & personally speaking I plan to see if we can get this series to travel to India too.
Later in the evening we joined up with a friend who was throwing an impromptu party on the Esplanade Charles de Gualle gardens and met lots of Montpelliers. A warm lot, they where thrilled with the cashew nuts that we were carrying & this being a city of students (over a quarter of the population), most of them have plans to travel to India & China in the coming 2 years. Quite surprisingly very few of them had seen the race & one even thought that the caravan of sponsors which precedes the cyclists by an hour was the Tour de France!! Me thinks his opinion was the result of imbibing a mix of 4 wines & 2 beers from different makers which was being passed around!!
The finish point of the race is always a major culmination point for the sponsors, fans, officials and of course the local public. The finish point for today saw a crowd of over 5,000 assemble & wait in the hot sun for the whole duration of 120 plus minutes.
For the record – the Race course was 39 kms and Team Astana with Lance Armstrong & Alberto Contador just blew the opposition away. They were by far the best team & rode a perfect race. This stage has brought Armstrong right on top, with him sharing the same time with Cancellera. At the end of the race the individual standing at the top remains the same – Fabian Cancellera of Saxo Bank Team retains the Yellow Jersey, courtesy the fact that he was wearing the jersey at the start of the race.
After the race Armstrong came out of his way to meet the press and gave a very free & frank interview, something which is a rarity. According to him, with no disrespect to some of the other riders who are contenders for the title, it will be very difficult to make up the time lost today & its almost curtains for Cadel Evans, Dennis Menchov & last year’s winner Carlos Sastre. But then its just the 4th stage, we have 17 more to go and anything can happen,….
The Race tomorrow is from the town of Le Cap-d-Agde to Perpignan a distance of 197km, and not much of climbs on the route, so yours truly thinks that Cancellara still has the chance to hold on to the Yellow jersey for one last time before his arm is twisted & King Lance takes over !!
Au revoir…