Fiat Accompli

Woke up in Genoa yesterday morning and walked to the local Europcar (yes, I have the jersey and shorts!) to pick up our adorable Fiat Panda. There was a bit of apprehension as the official rules suggested I would need an international driver’s license (something easily procured from that genuinely evil organization, AAA). But the friendly clerk just laughed and said it wasn’t necessary at all and we were good to go.

Our route had us heading on the Italian Autostrade back to France, not too far from Bourg d’Oisan but on the other side of a pass. Indeed, the plan was to scout out the location we were planning to use the next day to watch the tour whiz by us.

The Fiat, a stick shift, was a blast to drive in the mountains although I’m not sure Liz was quite as enthusiastic. We crossed from Italy to France at the Col du Montgenevre, which incidentally is where we saw the tour the next day. We then descended down to Briancon and took the road to the Col du Galibier, which is one of the highest climbs in the Alps at over 2500m. As we ascended we passed what had to be thousands of campers parked waiting for the double-shot of the tour they would get on this 100 year anniversary of the first climb of the pass in the tour. They were there over two days in advance to see two consecutive stages on diffferent sides of the climb, and there were no spots to be had for the last 10km each direction. It’s a misleading ascent because it looks like you’re at the top but you still have several km to go over extremely narrow roads.

Little did we know, but that morning several inches of fresh snow had fallen. At one point I remarked to Liz that the rain had changed over to snow and she looked at me with white knuckles and said “I know!!” Finally we reached the top amidst a veritable snowstorm and snapped a few pictures (we were wearing shorts), then headed down the other side.

The descent took at least an hour, probably more, and deposited us at a small town on the French Autostrada A43 where we found a small hotel that was right on the border between acceptable and unacceptable. Won’t go into too many details about that, but it was 35€, there was a TV and we watched footage of people on the Galibier, waiting for the tour in a snowstorm. Yeah, we were there.