Day 15 - St-Cirq Lapopie to Figeac/Toulouse

October 3^rd, 2002

a beautiful day for a bike ride

Our day started with an early morning stroll around St-Cirq-Lapopie. Taking advantage of the soft early morning light, we took several photographs. It was another fine day on the bikes; it doesn’t get any better than this. We cycled along the meandering Lot River with stone homes built into overhanging cliffs and beautiful colors of orange, yellow, red and green painting the landscape. It was spectacular!!  We stopped countless times to marvel at the wonderful scenery around us. It’s funny how I can barely remember what I did last week, but I can remember the French countryside with painstaking detail. It was bittersweet, the past two days were some of the most amazing bike days we’ve had in France, but unfortunately it was also our last bike day of this trip.

We had originally planned to stay in Figeac that night but we decided we’d rather go to Toulouse straight away. Luckily there was a train later that evening and we were able to book a hotel (though it was a bit difficult to find a room with such short notice). While sitting in the train station, reality hit me like a ton of bricks. The trip was pretty much over. The train ride to Toulouse was uneventful. When we got into town, Spiros internal GPS system kicked in and he got us to the hotel in lightning speed, without glimpsing at a map. It’s uncanny. After dinner we decided to watch some T.V. To our amusement, we made a shocking discovery; the French have their own version of Temptation Island. Ick...