Day 12-Wednesday

We woke up to a cloudless sky with no haze so the mountains were as clear as we've ever seen them!

This shot was taken from one of the windows in our room!

Notice the man in the lower right of this photo.  He's doing some masonry patching from a cheery picker and when we came back to our room around 3:30 pm, he was done and the facade of this building had been painted!

Joni and I walked into town together to pick up today's edition of l'Èquipe and did some window shopping before returning to the hotel for breakfast.

Marie-Hélene's breakfast buffet is to die for.  Although there are lots of choices including fruits, yogurts, cheese, eggs, bacon, crepes, and pancakes, I have a hard time not loading up on the croissants and tartines.  My diet will start next week according to Joni.

After breakfast we took off on another Tour route scouting trip.  Fearful of getting stymied by closed roads ,we explored some alternative routes that we'll follow for stage 13 on Friday which will be an individual time trial.  We're very familiar with the Tour's route, but it's very hard to predict when the roads will close.   I think we'll be up very early for that stage since all the spectators will be crammed into a 10 km stretch as opposed to a normal stage which can be as long as 200 km or more.

Anyway our scouting trip took us through one spectacular site after another.  Incredible!

Just one of the incredible panoramas that you encounter on every road and on every curve in the Pyrenees.

Our scouting trip took us over the Col de Peyresourde and Peyragudes, both of which are frequent climbs in the Tour, and into the town of Luchon de Bagneres, which is a resort spa town, the Pyrenees answer to Lake Placid.  We window shopped the main street of Luchon before heading for our lunch reservation at Le Lova, a small restaurant where we have dined several times before.  We had an excellent meal, and then headed back to Arreau with slight detours to scout out some more possible viewing sights.

We arrived back in Arreau around 3:30 PM where we relaxed, and I managed a quick swim in the hotel's pool, and Joni stood lifeguard from our third floor room's window.

Dinner at 8 pm was on the terrace which is always a treat that I think in all of our ten visits to the hotel, we've only dined outside a half dozen times. Our meal was very good and we were ready for by by 10:30 PM with another great day in the Pyrenees under our belt.

Poire Belle Hélène au Chocolat Chaud

My first swim in Arreau; it's only warm enough about 50% of our visits.