Boat cruise !

We had a sweet Chinese fondue on a boat with my friends the other day ! It was so good and beautiful.

420km bike tour across Switzerland !

Hello to you guys, who still read my blog ;)

Last week-end was the time for me to start cycling again. It might be a little late but if you consider that I only stopped skiing mid-may, it's pretty good. I was really busy with skiing and school. I was wondering where I should go for my first ride when I got a message from Adam; one guy from Waterloo I met in Grenoble last summer. He asked me what I was doing during the long week-end. That's what I answered him: 

I have a suggestion for you:

- If you arrive on Friday night

- We can leave my place on Saturday morning and bike across Switzerland all the 

way to St-Gallen ...

 He said yes. So we started organizing the trip. We found some couch surfing in Thun for Saturday night and Zurich for Sunday night. We left Lausanne by train on Saturday morning to go to Aigle, our starting point. Starting from Aigle we had to go up a Col right away ! Its a tough start for the biking season. 1400m higher we arrived in Château d'Oex. From there everything went pretty smoothly until Thun. Thun is situated at the south of Lake Thun in the middle of the country. Its unbelievable how nice this place is. Water is so blue you can see the bottom of the lake. Its also surrounded by mountains and castles. We had a nice host in Thun. She offered us some home made strawberry jam and even better, a free place to sleep. That night we ate a good meal at the restaurant after a beer on the beach ! It was awesome. 

We left at 8 the morning after because we were expecting a long ride to Zurich. According to Google map we were supposed to roll for about 145km. It ended up being 162km but the route was really beautiful ! We bike along lake Thun until Interlaken were we saw lake Brienz. After going along this lake we climbed a fairly steep col to get 600m higher. There was a bunch of people with cars from the 70's that day because there was a collectors reunion. These are really nice but we had to breathe their exhaust all the way up. Some cars were so old we could actually past them on our bike ! Hahaha first time that happened to me. Also, Switzerland is probably one of the only place in the world were you can bike on a really steep slopes inside tunnels. After 110km we stopped in the beautiful city of Luzern to eat. I had a cheeseburger and a chicken Sub lol. We ate so much during the week-end. A countless number of bananas, cookies and Powerbars. Anyways after our lunch we left Luzern for another 50km to Zurich. I almost threw up my meal but it was worth it ;) We arrived in Zurich at the end of the afternoon and met our couchsurfer over there. It was a french guy from Paris so he could easily translate all the freaking German to us. We went out for a hot Sausage and a beer on the waterfront. It was awesome. 

The third day ride was from Zurich to St-Gallen near Austria and Lichtenstein. It was a fairly flat ride but we got lost a couple of times. Street names are impossible to remember in German and they're really badly posted. anyways it ended up being about 110km. We arrived right in time to eat a huge pizza and to hop on the first train to Lausanne. I slept like a baby on that 5 hour train ride to Lausanne. That week-end was one of the best bike trips I did in Europe yet ! Here's a few pictures:

  

GO RYDER GO ! MAN IN PINK !

Hey,

I took a 2 day trip to Italy this w-e... People were asking me why I would even go there for that short time. Actually, the Giro d'Italia (famous bike race around Italy) was not so far away from Switzerland. There was a stage ending in Cervinia (2050m), a city on the Italian side of the Matterhorn. I left on Saturday morning and arrived in Cervinia around noon. The weather was not so nice but believe it or not, the ski resort was open ! I didn't have my skis :( 

I had booked an hotel room with a view on the finish line, what an awesome place to be. After waiting more then 3 hours on the side of the finish line to make sure I had the best spot, the racers arrived. It was so cool to see an Italian winning the stage in Italy. Also, the Canadian biker Ryder Hesdjedal mnaged to grab the leader's bib again; the famous Maglia Rosa ! Unfortunately he lost it the day after. I feel really lucky because its really rare that Canadians have some awesome results on the international races. The press conference was pretty cool even if it was super crowded. I didn't get to meet Ryder as he was super busy with all the journalists around him.

After a great sausage and egg pizza, I went to my room and enjoyed a little TV before going to bed. I left Cervinia in the Morning and stopped for a few hours in Aosta before going back to Switzerland. We had to wait 2 hours in line at the Swiss customs because the Gd saint Bernard tunnel was full. Long but awesome day!

/Gab