We awoke this morning to the sound of heavy rain out our open window. Contentedly, we rolled over and dozed off for another two hours. We're taking an actual rest day, the first of the tour. We did have a day off the bikes 15 long days ago, but we took a pair of strenuous mountain walks then so it wasn't really a rest day either. Today we're doing it right, lounging around the hotel until the rains hopefully back off a bit. Our big workouts for the day will be up to the upper town for lunch, dinner, and a relaxed exploration.
The timing for this is great. First, there's the weather - today looks pretty awful until early afternoon, improving from heavy rain to light rain and showers by evening. What better day to sit one out? Second, there's Briancon, a significant fortified historical town - it's listed on the UNESCO world heritage list for its Vauban fortifications, and at elevation 5,350' is noteworthy also for being the highest elevation town in Europe with a population over 2000 persons. Third, we're both a bit pooped after 15 straight hilly to very mountainous days on the bike. Fourth, we'd better rest up because we're coming to arguably the hardest stretch of the tour: over the next three days we'll cross Galibier, Croix de Fer, and Madeliene - all HC rated climbs in the Tour. After that it gets easier, but only slightly - altogether we're looking at seven straight days of 5-6000' days until we finally drop down to Lake Geneva again.
We loafed around the hotel watching the rain come down all morning, except that Rachael made an outing to the market to pick up breakfast provisions for tomorrow morning - we're planning to be up and on the road by daybreak, hoping to make it over Galiber before tomorrow's afternoon rains set in. About one o'clock the rains finally eased off we headed up to the upper town for lunch. After looking around town a bit, we settled on a small cafe advertising appealing plates of the day.
Port d'Embrun, the lower entrance to the walled upper town.
The gargouille running down Rue Mercerie. A gargouille (a new word for us) is a small drainage channel running down the middle of the street. Briancon is one of only two streets in France having these.
While we were eating, the weather continued improving. It began turning sunny just as we called for the bill, and within it was quite beautiful. We spent the next few hours seeing the town in a much better light, and fell in love with it. By the time we were done and headed back to our room, we agreed that we found it the most appealing stopover of the trip. Really a wonderful place, and an ideal way to rejuvenate ourselves for the tough days ahead.
