Paris Day 2 Wednesday: Arrival in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

When we arrived at the Novotel hotel on Wednesday afternoon Ashley started to melt down. She was exhausted and hungry and I snuggled her and Caitlin closely as we waited for James to check-in. When we arrived in our room, Ashley just lay on the bed and howled, “I want food” and “I don’t like being in France”  As we had arrived mid-afternoon there was very little available for us to eat at the hotel. However, Abdel, one of the wait staff at the Novotel Café, opened the kitchen for us and had the chef make pasta for the girls and a delicious pesto Lasagna for myself and James. After a few bites the girls crashed. Abdel covered the food plates and we brought the girls and the food back to our room. At 5pm the girls and I fell asleep, while James set off to the room that was prepped for bike assembly and storage.

The girls woke us shortly after midnight and tried hard to rest until we eventually turned on the lights at 4am and snacked on the cold pasta (one had cheese sauce and the other a tomato sauce). They were amazingly tasty to our famished palates at that hour. At 5am we set up Dora on the laptop for the girls to watch and realized our mistake when they started to shout out, “Backpack” and “Map” at Dora’s bidding. We managed to maintain some order and only hoped that, as our room was surrounded by other American cyclists on the same body clock as ours, we had not disturbed too many people from their sleep. Chomping at the bit to escape the room and feed our jet lagged hunger we showered and made our way downstairs for the buffet breakfast, which thankfully started at 6am. Day 3 of our trip was about to begin.