"Little" Travis goes to Paris

My friend Travis Van den Broeke is only 19 and is already WAY better traveled than I. Here is a copy of the email he sent me and some of his sweet pics. This kid ROCKS! LTM

I'm going to do a little trip report here, like Landon does.

My trip to Paris was sweet. I traveled for 2 days (including the time change) and had to sleep in the SLC airport and had a 7 hour layover in Detroit. But finally, I made it to Paris, my uncle Jacques and tante Nicole came to pick me up, it had been so long they didn't even recognize me, my mom had told them to to look for a kid with a big green backpack, that's the only way they found me. They have a freakin sweet place just outside Paris in St. Germain en Lay, its only a 20 min RER (subway) ride to downtown. They ended up giving me the driving tour and showed me what I should look at for the next couple days. I proceeded to do all the classic tourist stuff the couple days, the Eiffel tower, the louvre, sacre' cour, the grand and petit palais, etc.

I was supposed to immediately leave for Lyon and from there the french alps, but scheduling conflicts and weather only allowed me a couple days riding in Lyon, with my buddy Bill who I met in Whistler. He let me use his sweet specialized enduro though, and we rode some good trails. I rode the TGV (really fast train) from Paris to Lyon, its over 500k and took less than 2 hours! I have found out that the transportation system in the USA sucks majorly. After my to short excursion to Lyon, I went back to Paris, I went with my uncle, mom and brother (they came too but after I did, because my trip had to be shorter) to Brugges, to visit grandma and various other relatives. I spent a couple days there checking out the city and catching up with people who hadn't seen me since I was a little kid, luckily there was no cheek pinching, but in Europe they do the 3 kiss thing, left cheek, right cheek, back to left cheek. You don't really kiss though, you just touch cheeks and make the kissy sound. That's where I lift my mom and brother, I had to go back to Paris to catch my plane the next day.

My trip was WWWWWWAAAAAAYYYYYYY too short. I am already planning for next year. I am going to go for 5 weeks and ride at least 4 of them. Another buddy of mine, who some of you might know, Andy the ticket scalper, spent 4 weeks riding around the alps with bill, then got hurt doing a megavalanche race. So he flew back early, his trip was going to be 6 weeks. So now I'm just dreaming and saving money so I can go back and ride next year. Later, Travis