This computer will not accept my camera for some reason, so no pictures. Je suis desolee.

I am in Bourges. Later today I will be heading south to Provence via train. I have been having a great time, although the last few days have been rainy and cold. My picnic lunches have ben excellent; goat cheese from the region, wine from the region, and fresh bread from the gazzilion bakeries. All that, supplemented by ocasional additions, like duck patte, marinated mushrooms from a deli, and of course, fresh pastries. I should get to the train station, bu tnext time I can get on acomputer I'll get some pictures up! Thanks for reading!

Okay, so now that I am on a computer that doesn't cost 2€ every half hour for me to use, I have time to upload more and actually write a bit. The cityscape in the previous post was Venice, It's a picture from a couple weeks ago. On to these pictures. the top one is just a beautiful tree lined two lane highway that I biked down today. The trees are much bigger than they look; think taller than the really big elms in Minneapolis. The second picture is my beater bicycle one a bridge over the Loire, in front of some Little town whose name I can't recall. The Loire is a beautiful river, and the surrounding land is fantastic in it's diversity. There are pastures with cows and sheep, fields of vegetables, vineyards of course, and then there are the caves. The caves are from when they quarried the limestone for all the castles in the region. Peasants then lived in them, and most of them now are used for maturing wine or growing mushrooms. they might also be used for cheese making, but I'm not sure. One top of all this, there is also plenty of woods. The whole Loire Valley is a great patchwork of fields and towns and hamlets and woods and marshlands.

The Third and fourth pictures are from Mont St. Michel, in Normandy. I was in Normandy from the 12th to the 18th, biking from Caen to the D-Day beaches, to Mont St Michel. It's a wonderful area, just rather rainy. That last picture is from Point Du Hoc in Normandy, a famous site in the D-Day history. The picture is of a German gun emplacement bunker.

I am in Saumur, on the Loire River! My hundred euro replacement bike has been holding up great, although it looks and often sounds like it should have stopped working miles ago. I cannot put pictures onto the blog from this computer, but they are coming soon. It is much harder to get acces to the interent here than in rural minnesota. I have ben living of great cheese, excellent bread, and abundant pastries(the staple of my touring diet). Even though I have been on the Loire River for a fez days, I am about to enter the "LoireValley" which is the area famous for castles. The freelance camping is easy as pie here, now that I've gotten a feel for it. Anybody know anything About custums at the airport? What is allowed abd what is not? What happens if I get caught twith a piece of prohibited cheese or a bottle of wine? Do they even check? I should get back on the road, but within the next few days I'll get some pictures up. Thanks for reading.

well, I don't have long to post, because I am paying for every minute I spend on the internet, and the interent place I am in is closing soon.

My bike was stolen. Off a train, just outside Florence. It wasn't my touring bike, luckily, but it was still a bik eI hac put a lot of work into.

I am lookin gfor ideas. I am thinking that i will just buy a cheep clunker in a used bike shop in paris or another city. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Part of travelling is problems that arise. This is only a small obstacle. Thanks for reading.