Tales of Trails on a Semester Abroad

As a student splitting my time between Marin County and Santa Barbara, California, I like to think that I'm pretty lucky for the "normal" day-to-day life I lead. California is an incredible place, yet I also love to travel and explore beyond the borders, culture, and trails that are familiar to me. This past spring semester, my girlfriend and I had the incredible opportunity to study abroad in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France, and while I had high hopes for my experience abroad, the semester exceeded expectations.

Back in January, we packed our lives up into a pile of bike boxes, suitcases, and tattered duffels, sacrificing valuable winter clothing in favor of helmets and bike shoes in order to fit under airline weight limits. Bleary-eyed from the long day of travel, we had no idea what to expect as we arrived at the Marseille-Provence airport and used our last bits of energy to heave our heavy plastic bike cases onto a bus that would take us to Aix. The city became our home for the next four months, and not only did it impart upon us an appreciation and love for the French language, rosé, and Cézanne, but it served up access to an incredible and seemingly endless network of trails. There was something magical about wandering through Aix's narrow and crisscrossed streets, but our bikes gave us an extra freedom and means of exploration. Spinning along quiet country roads, suffering up exposed climbs with a retired French policeman while we swapped stories of riding and life across oceans, grabbing a snack in the shade of an olive tree at the base of the peak of Cézanne's beloved Mt. Sainte Victoire, and bouncing down loose, rocky, yet exquisite ribbons of red singletrack under the golden late-afternoon sun, I fell in love with Provence.









After finishing finals and packing our bags full of clothes and a semester's worth of memories and mementos, we had a few weeks to travel before our flight back to the United States. This was our opportunity to visit and ride some incredible places that we'd only ever dreamed about, and with just some slightly creative use of train luggage storage compartments, we were only a couple of hours away from some world-class riding destinations.

After pulling into Finale Ligure, Italy late the night before, we awoke to blue skies above the Mediterranean and the mountainous Ligurian coastline. As our vacation began, we settled into a rhythm of riding, savouring delectable gelato, riding again, attacking plates heaped with pasta and pizza, sleeping, and repeating. It truly was la dolce vita with a mountain biking twist. Finale was amazing thanks to how mountain bike-crazy the town is, all the history we rode past, the delicious food, ending every ride at the beach, and most importantly the trails that provided amazing vistas and rip-roaring fun around every turn.







After a week on and above the shores of the Mediterranean we moved on to another absolutely idyllic landscape: the snowy peaks, alpine meadows, and cozy chalets of Grindelwald, Switzerland. More so than any other place I've been, words cannot do this place justice. Even if it speaks a thousand words, a photograph struggles to adequately describe the unreal grandeur and beauty of these mountains. With hike-a-bikes through snowdrifts, 5,000 foot descents, and magnificent vistas in every direction, every day seemed to be out of a mountain bikers dream. As the final chapter of our European experience, Switzerland delivered an epic adventure and proved to be the icing on the cake of a semester full of exploration, culture, amazing trails, and memories that will last a lifetime.











Thanks for reading! @satchscratch

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