The Tour de France mercifully took a break from its maddening, nomadic existence this week.
As I’ve said before, the Tour is like covering the Super Bowl in a different town every day for three weeks, where no one speaks your language and 250,000 fans leave an event via the same mountain road. And every day you pack up and move.
If it’s Tuesday, this must be Grenoble. But by some sublime intervention, the Tour de France stars aligned correctly so that we are in the same town for three straight nights. I’m in Pau, an 18th-century winter vacation spot favored by wealthy Americans and Europeans and a gateway to the Pyrenees. But this city of 80,000 is more than that. High-tech industry has helped Pau (pronounced Poe) skirt economic problems plaguing most of France, and it has maintained its classy, cultured exterior.
Monday night, I did the French thing. At a spectacular restaurant called Brasserie Le Berry, I had a dozen escargots followed by a massive beef filet covered in fresh Roquefort sauce. Afterward, I walked through the charming streets and drank wine until 2 a.m. at an outdoor café on Pau’s cobblestone walking mall at the foot of the towering 16th-century Chateau de Pau. The stars, finally, were beautiful.
Au revoir,
John Henderson
