SWITZERLAND WRAPUP

Well, our month in Switzerland has flown by and it is time to move on to Brittany, France. We have enjoyed the Swiss countryside and find the roads to be in excellent condition and everything is very clean. We never see papers or trash on the shoulders or in the town.  (see more of Don's photos)

As we have found in farm communities in other countries, the Swiss farms are cross-crossed by nice cement tractor roads. These roads are about 10-12 feet wide and are not open to automobiles, so they make wonderful bike paths. We can ride for many miles on these tractor roads and run across an 0ccasional cyclist and a rare tractor, and sometimes some locals taking a stroll, but never an auto roaring along. I love cycling on these roads. We do see lots of cyclists, both touring and out for a day ride. Lots more women cyclists than we see in other countries.

When we returned from the Alps Don spent the first day working on his photos and putting up more reports on the blog. He was so happy to have nice, fast internet and a good spot to work again. We also had to devote quite a bit of time to solving our annual problem with our website. Every year, despite our attempts to for stall this, our site goes down when it is time to renew the listing. That happened again while we were in the Alps and we had to contact Hostonce several times, but finally got the site back up again.

Over the past few days we did some more country bike rides, visiting places we have been earlier in the trip, and covering some new turf as well.

Today we went to Pontarlier to get our rental car. I took the opportunity to go to the Geant Supermarche to buy a few things and confirm my belief that food is super-expensive in Switzerland. The Swiss keep telling me it is very expensive in France, but I think the things I buy are much cheaper in France, even with the exchange rate at $1.40 to 1 Euro.

When we got back to the house we packed up, had an early dinner, gassed up the car, cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms and tidied up the rest of the house. We washed the car yesterday, and the darn neighborhood cat walked all over the roof with its muddy paws. So now we are all set to go. Our nice neighbor, Veronique, came over and bailed me out on my typical problems of getting my laundry out of the washer, and she promised to wash the linens for us tomorrw because we are leaving at 5am to get to Paris in time to meet the LeBreton Family.

Great cycling in Switzerland. Well worth a visit.