My stats are in after 20 days in France:
761 miles
57 hours cycling
101,536 feet of elevation climbed
62 miles
29,869 yards
One race
7 pizzas consumed
A bazillion
4 rubs and scratches
Too many to count
Lots of hellosAnd most of all, a tremendous amount of gratitude for my body and mind for what it allowed me to do over the past three weeks.
thank you body (and thank you Karel for your constant support and being open to my crazy plans and ideas).
When I think back on our time in France, the main highlight was the cycling.
The mountains. The long climbs. The little villages. The incredible views. The roads that seemed to go up forever. Some days we would leave our Airbnb on our bikes at 9am and not return until after 7pm. I loved those rides.
Most of all, I loved the opportunity to live differently for a few weeks.
One of the reasons I love international travel is that it teaches me about the world in ways that simply seeing pictures on the internet about another country never could. We often choose to stay in Airbnbs rather than hotels because we enjoy experiencing what everyday life looks like in someone’s home. We grocery shop, cook most of our own meals, learn how to use local appliances, walk around the neighborhood and try to settle into the rhythm of the community rather than simply passing through as tourists.
And sometimes, that means adapting.
Like figuring out how to sleep without air conditioning during very warm days. Our second Airbnb happened to have an AC unit in the main room, which felt like an unexpected luxury. We did not have AC in Embrun or in our final Airbnb. We are always uncomfortable with how common smoking is in Europe compared with what we're accustomed to in the US. Sometimes the internet was not great. Not everything about another culture will be something you prefer, and that's part of the experience, too.
You learn to adapt without expecting everything to be exactly the way you are used to.
One of my favorite examples of this was our time in Le Bourg-d'Oisans. We parked our car at our Airbnb when we arrived and didn't drive it for nine days.
We walked to the grocery store. We walked to get fresh bread in the morning. We walked to the bike shop. We walked to the pool. And when it was time to ride, we simply rolled our bikes out of the Airbnb and started riding.
Although we are lucky to have lots of safe cycling routes from our doorstep in Greenville, SC there was something incredibly refreshing about how we got to live for over a week.
Life became less stressful, simpler and more active without having to make an effort to be that way.
We weren't getting in the car to drive five minutes to pick something up. We weren't planning our day around the errands we need to run. We weren't thinking about traffic. We walked because walking was simply how we got places.
And then there is the cycling culture.
If you've never cycled in France, Italy or Switzerland, it's difficult to fully describe what it feels like to be a cyclist there.
There are bike lanes everywhere. There are signs alerting drivers to cyclists on the road. You see children riding bikes. Older adults riding bikes. E-bikes, road bikes, mountain bikes and triathlon bikes. There are cycling monuments, signs and plaques everywhere.
Cycling isn't just something a small group of athletes does on the weekend. It's part of the culture.
Even the roads communicate with cyclists. There are signs telling you what route you're on, what climb you're riding, how many kilometers remain and how much elevation you have left to gain. And of course, when you reach the summit you are greeted with a sign of the climb that you just conquered.
As someone who spends a lot of time on a bike, I noticed something very important.
I felt like I belonged on the road. I never felt threatened by a vehicle.
I never felt like I was inconveniencing someone simply because I was riding a bike.
I didn't feel like someone was going to yell at me for being in the road.
That feeling of belonging matters.
It made me wonder what our communities would look like if more roads were designed for bikes and if cycling wasn’t just viewed as a recreational activity and a sport but also as a legitimate form of transportation.
And, of course, there was the food.
People talk about the food in Europe all the time and I get it. Even simple foods seemed to taste different.
The fruits and vegetables taste incredibly fresh. The prices were reasonable. Bread and baguettes were inexpensive, made fresh and available every day. And in village after village, we'd find natural water fountains where we could fill our bottles.
Of course, these are my observations and perceptions from the places we visited during our trip. They don't represent every city or village in France, every part of Europe or every other part of the world.
We've traveled to places where it wasn't safe to drink the water and bottled water was the only option. We’ve been to places where there was no hot water for showering. We've been places where you couldn't flush anything down the toilet. We’ve been to places where the internet was very slow. We've traveled to places where cycling felt incredibly unsafe. We've been to places where food variety was limited and expensive.
That's part of why I value international travel so much.
You learn. You adapt. You appreciate what you have. You learn how to go without.
And perhaps most importantly, you learn that your way of doing something isn't necessarily the only way, or even the best way.
And maybe one of the greatest benefits of travel isn't simply seeing more of the world but coming home and seeing your own world a little differently.
Throughout our trip, we rode a lot!
If you’d like to read more about our routes, you can check out my recaps below…..
Embrunman triathlon race recap
Col d' Izoard
Mont Ventoux
Alpe d' Huez
2026 L’Étape du Tour route
Alpe d'Huez Triathlon Bike Course
Glandon, Lacets, Croix de Fer + ADH