The very nice hotel wanted 14 Eur a person for breakfast, so we went to the boulangerie across the street for our usual 2 croissants, a pain au chocolat (me), and a chausson aux pommes (Liz) breakfast. Hands down the best pastry I had in France so far. I think the croissants were 80% butter, though.
Today’s route was planned entirely by geovelo.fr that offers point-to-point cycle routes and tries to minimize busy and maximize quiet streets and cycle paths. And the route was great!
We cycled south-west out of Chantilly past more of the many private horse stables/training facilities and then through a very rich looking neighborhood in a woody area. Soon after, we cycled past the Abbaye de Royaumont where we joined the London to Paris bike path. We decided to follow it ignoring the original route until we got suspicious and realized that it would lead us to Paris in a very roundabout way. Not wanting to do a super long day on the bike, we u-turned back to the planned route.
We spent some time cycling among rapeseed and wheat fields, while spotting and hearing airplanes taking off from busy Charles-de-Gaulle.
And then, around 20km to go to our hotel, the city started, greeting us with its notorious banlieue. With the city, traffic, tram tracks, and tricky changing lanes started. But Liz navigated us very well and safely through the maze, even though my bicycle messenger instincts from back in the days would often trigger, wanting to cycle more aggressively than Liz’s careful approach. But better safe than sorry!
We were prepared to trudge the remaining 15-ish kilometers through the city traffic, but then, boom, the geovelo route brought us to the amazing bike path along the Canal de Saint-Denis, which made cycling to the heart of Paris a breeze.
Riding along the canal, we got passed by an older gentleman on a bike, which, a little later, would come back around and telling us in passing that the bike path is closed a little up further and we’d have to detour. So we stalked him for a few kilometers and Liz even ran some amber lights to follow him (when in Rome!) after checking multiple times for oncoming traffic, of course. Thank you, kind Sir, for the impromptu guiding!
We ended up making such good time that we arrived shortly before three in the 19th and decided to pass the time until we could check into the hotel with a lunch sitting at the canal.
We are planning two full rest days in Paris and then head to Fontainebleau on Wednesday. Due to some curious (I assume last-minute) hotel-room pricing algorithm, we only booked until Tuesday in the current hotel, though. Tuesday night would have cost us 140% of the price (254 EUR) we paid for Sunday and Monday combined. So we hope that tomorrow, we can exploit last-minute pricing again to find a reasonably priced place for Tuesday night, too.
In any case, we are already enjoying the atmosphere, walking around among hipsters, and the great food here in Paris. Also, well done Switzerland (but it DID look like a foul)!
Total distance/elevation to date: 2157km/12’878m
Rest days: 5
Day 28 Route and Stats
The 1948 Tour 
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