Italy - Day 1 : The bus to Avignon

At 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon, we would be picked up by a bicycle bus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I made sure I was there early and Bram arrived soon after. It had been 40 degrees the past week, unusually warm for the Netherlands and even hotter than it currently was in the south of France. Not that we were used to high temperatures, we had both been working indoors the entire week. 

 

There were a few other people who would also be picked up. We needed to turn the handlebars of our bikes 90 degrees to fit all of them in the trailer. Bram got grumpy because the driver again wasn't careful with his bike, just like last year. 

On the way out, not much happened, except that the drivers were annoying. Around 2:30 at night, they demonstrated how soft they would speak to wake everyone up in the morning, which woke everyone up. Later we were all woken up at 5 o'clock while the first stop wasn't until 6:30. In the distance, we could see the Mont Ventoux, which we have climbed several times in the past. The outside temperature was shown on the bus, at 6 o'clock, it was a chilly 29 degrees.