Europe 2004 on Jamie Thingelstad

Vacation Recap

Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

It’s a week later and we finally finished putting up everything from our trip. It takes a while to sort through over 2,200 pictures!

We were thinking of having some family over to go through some of our selected shots but decided against that in favor of putting up our photos with worthwhile captions of what you are looking at. You can make us feel good for spending the time to write all those captions by clicking through the pictures individually. They are divided into pictures from the Tour de France, shots in Paris and last from the hiking trip (Tammy wrote the captions for the hiking trip as her form of a ‘blog’ of that part of our trip).

I also got the data downloaded from my GPS and put up maps of each day of our hikes. I put them inline in the blog posts so you can see where we were hiking on the map.

The photo albums for our Europe 2004 trip referenced here are no longer online, and sadly the database that hosted them is lost so I cannot restore the curated captions that Tammy added to various photos. ☹️

0600 Zurich - 1800 Uptown Art Fair

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

I just finished putting the journal entries that I kept while we were on the hiking portion of our trip up here in the blog. I linked in a number of photos from the trip as well. Took a little bit more work than I thought it would to get it all on there, but wanted to get it done soon. Tammy and I are still suffering from jet lag so making it past 9:00 pm is a little hard.

We spent most of Saturday on buses and trains working our way from Soglio to Zurich. We took a round-about way to make a trip back to Zuoz, one of the towns we had visited on our hike, to get this cool goat sculpture that Tammy had really liked. We made our way fairly easily.

When we arrived in Zurich we were greeted with absolute chaos. Unknown to us Saturday was Zurich’s Street Parade. This is from what I can see on the Internet the largest techno gathering in all of Europe. The train station had a stage setup with pounding techno. The streets were filled with people in various forms of crazy dress. Large man in fishnets and white leather shorts? Group of interesting folks? More fishnets? It was a little bit much coming from the trail to this. More pictures of Street Parade are on their site…

We wandered around after dinner a little to take some of the Street Parade in, but then retreated to our hotel to get some rest and relaxation.

We got up on Sunday and had “the longest day in the world”. We flew from Zurich to Amsterdam. Then from Amsterdam to Minneapolis. My mother came and picked us up at the airport and instead of going home we went straight to the Uptown Art Fair. We go every year, and didn’t want this year to be an exception. We finally got home and crashed very quickly.

This trip was simply awesome. The hiking section was particularly great. I’d love to go back to Switzerland soon.

I’ll probably take a little time off from the site here. I’ll be back in a bit though… see you soon!

Casaccia to Soglio

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time 3h 54m
Distance: 9.2 miles
Ascent: 1,656’
Max Elevation: 4,822’

We had the dessert course of our hiking trip today. Today’s hike was an easier hike with some great views and a wonderful trek through history. We started our trip by grabbing a bus from Sils Maria to the small village of Casaccia. This bus descended down the Molaja Pass which is perhaps the most winding, twisty road I’ve ever seen. The bus has a special horn that it blows from time to time as it goes down to let traffic know it’s there, as the bus requires the entire road to make it around the hairpin switchbacks.

We got off in Casaccia and started our hike to Soglio. The hike was fairly easy. We slowly ascended a little then descended a bit too. All in all I think we descended more than we ascended today. Yesterday was a tiring day and Tammy and I were both feeling some tenderness in our knees so Tammy and I didn’t feel like burning up the trail. It was a nice final day of hiking.

Soglio is very close to the border of Italy and it seems Italian is as common here, if not more, than German. I noticed that the trail signs switched from German to Italian. Another difference that denoted the Italian influence was the near universal use of rock roofs on the houses.

As we were hiking along the trail and passed through a small village we saw this table on the side of the road with preserves for sale on it. We we’re confused at first. It looked like this stuff was for sale but there wasn’t anyone there and there were no prices on things. Annica translated the sign for us and it simply said the preserves were for sale and leave whatever you felt they were worth. How cool is that? We grabbed two jars and left some francs in the money jar. It’s nice to see such trust in your fellow people.

The trail was very nice and we passed several water flows. We even passed one relatively good sized waterfall that I took a moment to climb up a little bit on and get some better pictures.

Another really cool thing about today’s hike was a section of the trail that is an ancient Roman road. It was constructed forever ago by the Romans to help them get around their land. It was really amazing to walk on these stones that were laid literally thousands of years ago. How many people have tread on them.

We got our first glimpse of Soglio and it was so picturesque. Soglio isn’t in the valley and the first glimpse from the trail didn’t give the details of the ancient city inside. I’ve never seen a town with such narrow alleyways and corridors between buildings. It feels like you are walking in another century as you walk through the village.

Tomorrow we start our journey back home. We head to Zurich and then the following day fly back home to Minneapolis. It’s been a great time. Memorable in so many ways. The hiking trip was just great. Six days of hiking and 63 miles later I can’t believe that I wish it wasn’t ending.

This is a map that shows our six days of hiking all together. You can see the gaps in the first half of the trip that were taken by train. The last half of the trip is all on foot.

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike to Soglio from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Piz Lunghin Summit

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 5h 4m
Distance: 9.5 miles
Ascent: 3,589’
Max Elevation: 9,124’

Shirley left us this morning. Shirley is one of the happy members of our hiking group and she’s a pretty incredible lady. She has no problem talking but luckily she’s got a wealth of stories that are interesting to back it up with. Shirley has done something like 20 Ryder Walker hiking trips and just keeps on coming back. She sets a pace on the trail that is hard to keep up with. I can only wish that I’m as healthy and fun when I’m retired and kicking back (if you can call what she does kicking back!)

Anyway, onto our hike. Today was awesome! Simply great. Best day of hiking I’ve ever had.

We started the day at 8:30am and stopped at a bakery in Sils Maria to get some lunch for the trail. No huts on todays hike. I didn’t even see any water springs now that I think of it. We hiked out of town and up into the trees. We took a route that was relatively gradual for a few kilometers to get some altitude. It was a very nice way to get up. Not too tiring and gave us time to get our legs warmed up for the day and let breakfast get down. We only had 7 people in our group (including Annica and Julie, our guides). There was another hike that wouldn’t go as high as we were that had a few people in it and several people decided to take today off and go to St. Moritz for the day. We are only a few minutes by bus from the famous resort town and people wanted to check it out. I think the note in the itinerary that today would be the hardest day of the trip also helped tip the scales for some.

We ascended fine out of the tree line running into a few groups of cows out eating grass. The cows in the Engadine region seem so happy. They just hang out on the mountain sides munching on grass in small groups. We hiked straight through several groups of them today.

The clouds were very low today and as soon as we got a couple thousand meters up we were looking down on them. They were also moving at a good clip. Looked like some bad weather was heading our way, but nothing too severe. There was no sign of thunder or lightning, just some precipitation. We stayed on the trail and got pretty darn cold. Everyone put on every layer they had, and even with that the wind was whipping us all into a pretty frigid state. Visibility was at times less than 50 feet. In my opinion, it was awesome! I know some may think that sounds awful, but I was loving it.

We headed along the trail to our destination which was a lake up the mountain. We spent about 30 minutes on some fairly exposed trail, but it wasn’t too bad since the visibility was so terrible we didn’t really see how big the drops were. That’s looking on the bright side eh?

We finally reached the lake and everyone was very cold. We found some windbreak and planned to have a very quick bite of food and head down. It seemed that the option of summiting the peak was out of the question. Then all of a sudden the sun peaked out just a little bit. We extended our lunch stay to warm up some, still thinking that the peak was out of the question. However, the weather just got better and better.

Annica decided that if we wanted to give the peak a try we could, but if the weather got bad we would have to turn back. Three of the others decided not to try it and just went down with Julie. Annica, Tammy and I headed up to the Piz.

It was a great ascent. We got to play in the snow as we went up to the Piz. I was a little concerned at times mostly as I considered how we would get down this route. The route that we took was a scramble on boulders with many big steps up. There were several times where I was grabbing anything that felt scure and pulling myself up the rise. Tammy on the other hand did simply amazing. She bounded up the side of the peak like a mountain goat! We made it to the top and there was a small gathering there with 3 Belgians that had just made it to the top as well from the other side.

It was just great to stand on the peak and look around at all the mountains. What a sense of accomplishment and a fun time. We took a different route down that turned out to be pretty great for the descent. Part of the descent was this really mushy gravel, dirt mixture that was sort of like bug muddy sand. It was great for the descent since we could just slide in a controlled way down. We also ran into good snow banks still on the mountain and we were able to “ski” down them on our hiking boots. The descent was a blast. Lots of laughs from all.

After completing the summit we did the long and steep descent down to Maloja where we caught a bus back to Sils Maria.

What a day! Such fun, such a great time.

We have a fancy dinner tonight. The Hotel Edelweiss is having a “konzert diner”. There will be a small orchestra playing music in between the courses. Pretty neat! Tomorrow looks like it is a pretty mild hike with some really great scenery and things to check out on our way to our final city of Soglio. Soglio is supposed to be great. Can’t wait.

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Sils Maria - Maloja Loop from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Pontresina to Sils Maria

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 58m
Distance: 11.9 miles
Ascent: 2,506’
Max Elevation: 7,437’

There is something really fun about waking up in one village and walking out of your hotel with your pack on and walking right into your next hotel in another village having used nothing other than your own two feet to get there. The tiredness in your muscles, the dull ache in your feet and the layer of sweat mark a good days work.

The hike today was a very pleasant hike. I didn’t think it was as hard as some of our other hikes but our guides keep saying that we are just getting used to the effort and the body adapts quickly. I know the body adapts quickly, my legs feel strong and it just seems normal that one would wake up, have a big meal and then walk ten miles in the mountains.

We hiked up to the restaurant by Lake Hahnensee. We hiked up through the forest and above the tree line for the lunch stop. This wasn’t a trail hut, but instead a real honest-to-goodness restaurant. Again I was amazed by the number of locals that had hiked up for lunch. If you put a restaurant in the states on top of a 700 foot steep ascent do you think you would need a reservation for lunch? You do here!

It seemed like we ascended more than we descended but I think it was just that the descent was much more gradual than the ascent. I was grateful for that as my right knee has been feeling a bit sore and the decreased pounding on it from the gradual descent was appreciated. The hike was very different from the others since a lot of it was in the trees. We had great views however of St. Moritz as we hiked it’s perimeter at a couple thousand meters. The last 2 miles or so was a trail hike around the city lake to get to Sils Maria.

Tammy got a picture of an Edelweiss flower today. The edelweiss flower grows in the mountains and used to be the way that a man would prove his worthiness to his to-be wife by going up into the mountains and bringing an edelweiss flower back. Perhaps as a sign of the propensity to marry in Switzerland it is now illegal to pick an edelweiss flower and you can be fined if caught.

Tomorrow is the hardest day of hiking on the trip. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike Pontresina to Sils Maria from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Zuoz to Pontresina

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 19m
Distance: 8.5 miles
Ascent: 2,526’
Max Elevation: 9,061’

Last night at dinner our guides presented two different hike options for today. One would be a relatively flat hike for those looking for any easier day. The other would be a day similar to the day we just had with good distance and good up and down. Tammy and I opted for the harder day, along with a guy named Matt who is the son of a family that is on the trip with us. The hike and day were great.

In cycling they often talk about riders who get stronger over multi-day events and those that are worn down. I feel like I am getting stronger on these hikes. My legs feel better today after the hike than they did yesterday. My knees are holding out strong as well. I am eagerly looking forward to my massage that I’ve scheduled for tonight though. A good rubdown on my calves and thighs will feel exceptionally good.

Our hike today started with a short train ride to a very small village that houses a funicular. Never heard of one of those? Me either. Essentially it is a rail system used to get up the side of a mountain. A couple of things are relatively unique about it. First, the rail car itself is built at about a 25% or more angle. Think of a rhombus. The other unique thing is that there are two cars that counterweight each other. There is only one rail however, and right in the middle of the track it splits in two and the rail cars quickly jump on different tracks to pass each other and then resume it’s way up the hill. I enjoyed the ride. Much better for me than any gondola ride.

After taking the fernicular up to the mountain we started our hike for the day. The day started right off ascending a descent grade that we didn’t punctuate in any way, we simply went over the top and then started descending down into the valley. Tammy had some blister problems on the way up that required some attention. Midway down the valley we took a moment to appreciate a small lake that is fed by the annual melt and then continued down our way into the bottom of the gorge.

Once we reached the bottom we started the big ascent of the day. We had the great luck of being able to stare at the real work of our hike the entire time we were hiking. The trail took a steep switchback laden path right up to the top of the rise where we had lunch at the hut there.

This hut was rockin! There were more people here than we’ve seen at any other hut, yet it was probably the most rustic hut that we have visited. In fact, we got to see the hut getting it’s supplies via helicopter as we were hiking along the ridge. Some huts are so inaccessible that they are only supplied by helicopter, and the helicopter will then fly out their garbage as well. Pretty neat. Anyway, there were a lot of people there including a huge crowd of what I believe were Italians hiking for the day. They were picnicking, drinking and singing songs on the side of the hut. It was so cool!

The other great thing at the hut was the special of the day, fruchtkugen! What’s that? Well, when I was a kid – I think in 3rd or 4th grade – we lived in a very small town in North Dakota called Napoleon. Napoleon was essentially 100% German. The local cafe served knefle soup every day. The school had sauerkraut every day. I’m talking German. One of the things I really liked was “kugen” and I’ve never had it since we lived there. Kugen is this baked custer desert with fruit in it. Not very sweet, but very good. And here it was in the hut on the top of this mountain. You bet I ordered a piece to go with my barley soup!

After our lunch we started a very long descent down to the village of Pontresina. It was a long decent, lasting about 2 hours. I got a bit exhausted on the decent after seemingly going down forever. See, going down is in many ways harder than going up. Your knees and legs absorb the shock of each step and it can really wear on you. Some parts of the descent were exposed meaning that there was nothing between you and a fair amount of a fall if you happened to slip and fall. It wasn’t as scary as it all sounded though.

Pontresina is a very nice town. I got myself a haircut which was a little interesting not knowing any German. Tammy got a huge “brezel” as well!

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hike to Segantini Hütte and Pontresina from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Zuoz to Chamanna Des-Cha Hut and back

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 4h 13m
Distance: 9.6 miles
Ascent: 2,956’
Max Elevation: 8,520’

When we were in France we spent at least €100 on water in one form or another. The water out of the tap tasted hideous and restaurants treated it like gold. Here in the Engadine region of Switzerland, Evian flows into your morning bath! All of these villages have these great public fountains flowing with cold, wonderful water that you can fill up your bottles to your hearts content with. These are all over the place and are a key enabler to the long distance hiking that is so common in this area.

We changed our hike from the schedule today and instead of hiking from Guarda to Zuoz, we took a train to Zuoz and then did a loop hike out of Zuoz. The hike was spectacular with the only complaint being a rather long “road hike” to get to where the real hiking starts. We left right from the front door of the Posthotel Engiadena and hiked out of town. The road pitched up immediately to at least a 20% grade as we were hiking out. We ascended around 300 meters and I was dripping wet with sweat before we even lost site of the village.

We spent the first 2 hours of the hike just going up, and up, and up. We ascended almost all of the 900 meters of elevation in the first half of the hike. It was hard, but very rewarding. Tammy and I accompanied by Daniel, one of the guides, were the first to make the hut. I pushed harder up the last steep ascent to get to the hut. The push was more of a “horse to water” thing than any kind of machismo.

Our destination was the Chamanna Des-Cha Hut where we had a great lunch. We brought some bread and cheese in our packs, along with a some Swiss chocolate. We also ordered Roschti Natural at the hut, a potato dish which is most similar to hash browns but different, and very good. We had a big lunch with the Grand Massif in the background and after an hour continued around the rim of the valley to the other side where we descended back down.

Descending those 900 meters was in some ways harder than the ascent. It really kills your legs, knees and feet in such a different way. My toes were aching on the descents and I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got my boots off and found that I did not have any blisters. Tammy chose to wear her Keen hiking sandals and it worked great for her, although her feet felt tired I think due to the lack of support.

My legs are feeling pretty tired today. Tomorrow we are going to be in a town that will have spa facilities and I think I’ll look for a massage to rub out some of the ache.

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hiking Guarda Out-n-Back to Chamonna Tuoi from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Scuol to Guarda

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

First of all, let me wish my sister Alona a Happy Birthday! I was on the other side of the world and was unable to get in touch. Hope this is some small consolation for that. 🙂

Today’s Stats:
Moving Time: 5h 25m
Distance: 12.99 miles
Ascent: 2,250’
Max Elevation: 7,365’

Today was the first day of our hiking trip! We just finished dinner with the group at the Hotel Meisser in Guarda. It was a buffet style dinner which suited me fine since I was starving after a long day on the trail. As I told Tammy, I was “deeply hungry”. The sensation is similar to when I finish a century ride. I’m not completely sure how to explain it.

The hiking today was sensational. We left from the front of the Hotel Guardaval and hiked to a gondola in Scuol. We took the gondola up 800 meters to start the hike. This hike is in the easiest category that Ryder Walker does, which doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park.

The scenery was simply amazing. Every bend in the trail made me think “wow”. Tammy summed it up best, and as only she can with a simple “I love it!” repeated several times. Apparently it kept reminding her of the movie Heidi. I haven’t seen this masterpiece so I cannot comment. It was hard not to stop every few steps to take yet another picture.

We had a great picnic lunch mid-day and spent the entire day on the trail. We left at 8:50 am and arrived at 4:45 pm.

We have also been lucky to be in Switzerland on one of their big national holidays. Today is Dependence Day in Switzerland (also called National Day). Not independence, but dependence. It is the celebration of when the major kingdoms of Switzerland came together and recognized their “dependence” on each other. One of the strong traditions of this holiday however is an amazingly independent tradition where people climb up in the mountains all over and light huge bonfires. On our hike today we saw some of these ready for the evening. After dinner tonight we looked at the ridge line and there were over 10 huge fires visible. How very cool. All of the cities shoot of fireworks as well. It’s a big celebration.

I ate a ton at dinner, need to rest the feet to complete the readiness for tomorrow. I made it through today with no blisters or anything. Tammy wasn’t so lucky, she’s got a quarter sized blister on her heel, no good. She’s talking about hiking in her Keen hiking sandals tomorrow, and I’m sure she will. I’ll be in my boots thank you. We are going to be tackling a shorter route tomorrow, only 7 miles, however with more climbing involved.

Tammy is in the middle of repacking suitcases right now. Remember that I mentioned we have too much luggage? We are solving that problem and shipping two of our bags via train to the Zurich airport where we can pick them up before boarding our flight home. Yeah!

Part of Europe 2004 collection. Also see Hiking Scuol to Guarda from Switzerland & Italy 2023 collection.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

I’m sitting in the most luxurious form of transportation that I’ve ever experienced. We are taking a high-speed train from Paris to Zurich. I think we are in first class, it was required to get a reserved seat on the train and it turns out to be a fairly smart idea since we had room for our ample luggage that would have been pretty tight in the other cars.

The train is amazing! It’s silky smooth. The chairs are like miniature lazy boys. There are power connectors for your computer. We situated ourselves in one of these double units so we could face “the right way”. I was getting motion sick after only a few minutes so we needed to switch around. They served breakfast, a traditional hot chocolate and croissant kind of thing. Sorry, no WiFi on the train, I checked. 🙂

If something like this existed to get us from Minneapolis to Chicago, a distance I believe shorter than our trip today, it would just be great. Chalk one more up for Europe!

It was a little confusing getting on the train, as Tammy said because it’s just so simple. You just get on after all. Didn’t really know what to do with the luggage or where to go. Airport terminals are definitely more internationally friendly than train stations but we finally figured it out. I got a bit grumpy trying to figure out what to do but have no fears, Tammy kept me in my place. 🙂

Zurich and on to the mountains...

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

After our amazing train ride we arrived in Zurich. Switzerland is such a different place than France. It’s much more multi-national. A lot of different languages; almost all signs were in four different languages. We spent some time at the train station getting Euros changed to Swiss Francs and checking our luggage at the rail station since we were taking a train the next morning, no need to lug it all over the place. It’s nice to be in a currency that is less than one on the dollar, however things are pretty expensive so far.

Zurich is a nice town. Seemed very orderly, similar to the train station itself. We got a pass for the city rail system to get to our hotel but I don’t know that we really needed it since nobody ever looked at it and there was no device to run it through. Guess it was the honor system at work.

The Hotel Rigihof in Zurich was fine. Tammy observed it was the dirtiest of all the hotels we had stayed at so far, but it seemed fine to me. On the plus side it had relatively fast WiFi so I was able to send all my digital photos taken so far to the server at our house for safe storage (took about 10 hours while we slept!).

Some other items of interest…

Train Update - I went on and on earlier about how great the Paris to Zurich train was. I now know that not all rail travel in Europe is so great. Our train today from Zurich to Scuol was perhaps 1/2 of a step up from a Greyhound bus! Plus, we made the mistake of getting in a smoking car and not realizing it and then having to move. Did I mention that we have too much luggage? We do. We plan on sending some back to Zurich on the train tomorrow if possible. We are new to packing for a three week trip and definitely have more than we should.

Language - Switzerland is all German. Leave your French at the border. Zurich was very good with English as well, but so far the mountains are pretty sparse on English. For some reason I’m finding this easier to deal with but Tammy is finding it much harder.

Technology - I’m having terrible luck tech-wise. I brought three compact flash cards for our cameras along. Of the cards only the 1 gig card (thankfully!) is still working. The 512 mb and 256 mb cards have both decided to stop working in different ways. The 256 mb just corrupts anything you put on it. And the 512 mb won’t format and just gives an E50 error when I put it in the camera. This sucks and we’ve left Zurich now so I doubt I’ll be able to get anymore cards. Hope the 1G holds out. I even had to get a new card reader since my PCMCIA reader seems to have gotten loopy as well and freezes the laptop whenever inserted! I think this is what killed the 256 mb card. Argh! Tammy’s theory is that it has something to do with the power differences, who knows.

As you may have figured out by now we are in Scuol, Switzerland. This is a fairly small mountain town near the border of Austria on the upper side of the Engadine Valley. We meet our hiking group in a little over an hour for dinner and orientation. We hike 13 miles tomorrow on a fairly flat route only ascending 1,000 feet of elevation. The mountains are all around us. I’m looking to my left out my window right now in this converted Engadine hotel and can see two peaks well above the tree line with a saddle in the middle. Great stuff.

Last Call from Paris!

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

In my last note I mentioned how confusing Paris was to get around. Amazingly enough I think I’m starting to get the hang of it however, of course just as we are only a ‘wake up’ away from leaving on to Switzerland. We spent much of the last two days zipping around on the Paris Metro and doing a little more exploring. Tammy did a little shopping today, although the city doesn’t really fit her shopping tastes from what she can tell.

City of Light

Last night we hopped on the metro after dinner to do some night photography. I brought my little portable tripod (thanks REI!) and did some fun ‘bulb’ exposure shots. For those that are not aware, that means taking pictures where you leave your shutter open for a very long time. These shots were taken with 20 to 30 second exposures. I dig this stuff probably because it’s really easy to create a shot that looks so cool. I’ve put three above that I liked particularly well. Paris get’s to be both the City of Light and the City of Love! Pretty lucky, both light and love!

Anniversary Art

Some of you may know that Tammy and I decided when we got married that our wedding presents were going to be art, and that after that we wouldn’t get each other anniversary presents but instead together get a piece of art. As you’ll know from reading our site this is only our 2nd anniversary, but the tradition continues. We went out today to find a piece that we really enjoyed and came out even better than expected. The beginning of the search was a bit disappointing as we got excited about €15,000 paintings that we obviously weren’t bringing home. We then returned to a gallery we had visited shortly right by the Louvre called Art Club. We found a a piece called Allez Saute! that we thought was great – and now it’s ours! It’s by a young Parisienne artist named Corniere. She had a number of pieces but this one we particularly liked and it fit our budget.

Kilometers

We’ve decided that we like kilometers. Let’s get these in the states as well. They are great for bike riding. The numbers are so much higher and they just go by so fast! Plus you can use the abbreviations k’s which is just so cool. While we are at it, let’s chuck the pounds and ounces and go for grams as well. Although, I don’t find ordering a 240g steak nearly as exciting as a half-pound steak.

My feet and legs are tired from walking around the city all day lately. That’s maybe not such a great way to begin a week-long hiking trip in the Alpes! We head out on the train to Zurich tomorrow morning. I don’t expect to be online much, if at all, so you probably won’t see anything else from us until we return. See you all soon, when we have to return to reality!

Paris Update

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday was our 2nd anniversary. It seems like it’s been so much longer than two years, in a good way that is. We spent the first half of the day exploring Paris by foot. We walked around in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 2nd and 1st sections or arrondissements of Paris. You see, Paris is laid out in 20 of these arrondissements, I’m not going to try to get into a history lesson of the reasons or layout of this, you can read about that out on your own.

I find Paris to be an incredibly hard city to navigate. Nothing is at a right angle. Years ago I saw this TV show where they were studying the patterns of spider webs. They did a study where they gave some spiders a very small dose of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs. Sure enough, the spider webs lost their concentric patterns and turned into these jumbled up messes. If you overlayed one of these jumbled spider webs on a map, that would be Paris. Everything is named, no numbers, which adds a little bit more adventure to the challenge. At least in Manhattan you can rely generally on the street grid, no such luck in Paris.

Our hotel is great. We are staying at the Hyatt Regency Paris-Madeleine. This is definitely the nicest place we’ve stayed thus far. We intended it to be a little oasis in the middle of our two structured trips. The amenities are wonderful, however there broadband is horrible. I can only get around 12 kbps of bandwidth, no good. Tammy has decided that this is now her favorite hotel ever, dethroaning the previous holder of that position which was the Hotel Monaco in Denver.

We walked our way from our hotel through a variety of shops and got to La Sainte-Chapelle. We checked out the courtyard of the cathedral but didn’t go inside, the lines were terrible. We then went over to Notre Dame and walked through the inside of the cathedral. Amazing stuff. The effort that must have went into constructing these things. Wow.

After a lot of walking we got a pass on the Paris “yellow & green” open top buses and circled our way around much of the city.

Paris isn’t that hard to get around without knowing French. Tammy’s extremely rusty and fragmentary knowledge of French from school has been very helpful. Also, so many words are similar in English that it’s fairly straightforward to make your way through a restaurant menu or read signs. It also helps that many in Paris speak either very good English or enough to get through purchasing something.

We had dinner at the Latina Cafe on the Champs Elysees. It was wonderful food and great ambiance. It’s owned by a Latina or Salsa radia station and clearly there was some serious dancing going on at this place from time to time.

Today was a full blown tourist day. We slept in and made our morning voyage to the patisserie for some breakfast. We then headed to the Louvre.

Yes, that’s a picture where you aren’t supposed to take one. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa (which seems to be a popular place to head to right away). Going to the Louvre was like taking a bubble bath in art. It’s huge. Gargantuan. So big that it would take weeks to take it all in. We only had three hours plus or minus. We strolled through the museum as if we were soaking in a huge bathtub overflowing with bubbles. We didn’t take the time to question why the bubbles existed or what would become of the bubbles, we just enjoyed that they were there. We swam in art. And just like a bubble bath, it sticks with you after you get out. The power of art is almost hard to take at such high volumes.

After our bath in art, we perused some local shops and had our ugly American lunch in Paris. We went to what I must imagine is the American oasis for travellers in Paris. We visited the Hard Rock Cafe Paris. This place doesn’t even bother to put out French menus. The waitress came up and spoke near perfect English. The food was as normal as we would get in Bloomington. The water even came with ice! Didn’t have to ask.

*Can you believe it's taken me until now to put up a picture of the Eiffel tower!*

After taking our temporary trip back to the states for some lunch we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We took a bunch of pictures and were bothered by some of the people that you run into at the super-duper tourist spots in Paris looking to scam you for something. The Eiffel Tower has only three floors: pretty high, really high and stupid high. We walked the stairs to pretty high. Both Tammy and I are scared of heights so really and stupid high were simply out of the question. I also have an extraordinary fear of heights when combined with open air stairs. Luckily the stairs were not the metal grates you can see through or there is no way I would have made it up. I was clinging the railing making my way up stair by stair. The tower is really neat, we are going to make a trip back tonight when we do some night photography in Paris.

That’s it for now, this has gotten long and we are going to get dinner. I’ll probably put up one more thing before we head for our hiking section in Switzerland and I expect there will be no Internet anywhere on that trip. Au revoir!

The Stepford Wives

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Oh boy, we did it again, went to yet another movie in Paris. This time the Stepford Wives. Fun movie, probably better to rent. This time the theatre had air conditioning, what a plus!

Spiderman Deux

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy and I went and saw Spiderman 2 this evening in Paris. I always think it sounds kind of wierd to go to a movie when you are on vacation, but it’s always a lot of fun. Anyway, movie was very good, better than the first. Luckily it was in english with french subtitles. The theater had no air conditioning and was rather a dump, and the tickets were only €9.50! Ouch! Paris is not a cheap city.

Fin de Course or Intermission, Act II

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The thing that I liked most about coming to see the Tour de France in person were the sights and sounds that you never get to see on TV. The energy of the people on the roadside. The caravan coming through. The thrill of the peloton. Running the Tour de France is an amazing job. The race is assembled like a rolling caravan throughout the country and as soon as it goes by the roads are restored to normal circulation. One of my favorite things in watching the tour was the special truck that drives right at the end of the race behind everything. It’s a non-descript vehicle and on the back with red letters on white are the words

Fin de Course

I don’t know exactly why I found that so special. I told Tammy it was like a classic movie where they actually put “The End” on the screen before rolling the credits. It just seemed well suited.

If I can extend the metaphor, we have finished the first course of our trip and are sending off the hectic days of the Tour de France in favor of relaxing days of strolling the streets of Paris and visiting museums.

Before we leave the cycling, a couple of notes:

If you plan a cycling trip to the Alpes, be careful. You do not want to go through the expense and hassle of coming here only to be stupid on a mountain descent, go down and hurt yourself. A decent number of people had accidents and in nearly all cases it was a lack of IQ and skill. Remember, you didn’t grow up descending alpine roads.
Packing your bike and lugging it around is a pain in the neck and very heavy. We’ll be glad to drop them off at UPS today.
The French are amazingly nice and considerate to cyclists. The only time I ever felt the pressure of traffic was a short jaunt on a freeway when we were lost on a ride. The drivers in the country and villages are amazing and even though there are no shoulders, you feel completely at ease.
Seeing the Tour de France in person is amazing, but I missed OLN. The daily TV coverage is so much more informative. If you love the tour and do not at least read French, be ready to have very little information. While there is ten times the coverage here, it’s entirely French. (They show the tour live on three channels all day!)
Bikestyle did a great job. The accommodations were fine, travel was well managed and Tammy and I both felt comfortable at all times.

That’s all for that. We’re going to transfer to our next hotel and I’ll probably post some more frequent notes before we head off to Switzerland. I’ll try to get some photos up as well. I’ve been copying all the photos we’ve taken so far to the server at home but it takes some time to transfer 2.5 gigabytes even on the high-speed in the hotel.

Tour de France 2004 Stage 20 - Montereau to Paris (Champs Elysees)

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today we saw what we came here to see, history being made. Lance crossed the finish line on the Champs Elysees this afternoon to become the first person in the history of cycling to win six tour victories. We really wanted to make the Tour de France trip this year on the chance that this may happen. I was skeptical, but was proven very wrong with Lance’s commanding victory this year.

We had to leave early from Beaune and get back on the bus for the trip to Paris. The stage was the most attended by far. People were eight deep along the barricades on the Champs. Tammy and I tried to find a good spot but were unable to get situated really well. We ended up walking a few kilometers and got off of the Champs to a point where we could at least see over the barricades.

There was a break in the group but the peloton caught them. The speed of the group was incredible.

I Need a Vacation From My Vacation

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

I’m writing this entry on the bus ride back to Paris. We got up again at 6:00 am so we could head into Paris for the final stage of the Tour de France. I’m looking forward to seeing Lance win a record setting sixth tour. This leg of our trip is about to end and that will be fine. We’ve been up at 6:00 am every day, riding, standing outside watching the tour and typically not getting back until 9:00 pm for a quick dinner and back to sleep. The next few days of more leisurely activity in Paris will be appreciated. I certainly will not miss this bus either.

Tour de France 2004 Stage 19 - Besancon to Besancon

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today was the best ride of the trip. Tammy and I figured that while we had suffered up some mountain climbs we hadn’t really gotten any distance in. We decided that since today’s ride would be “flatter” (this is a relative term) we would do the 115km option. We left on our bikes straight from Beaune and rode to Besancon for the time trial. We rode with a fast group in a huge bunch for the first 70 k’s and then fell off the back. The speed kept getting faster and it was very hard to stay on. We’d get shot off the back and then have to kill ourselves to get back on a wheel. Then we realized that we were on vacation and I could stare at a rear wheel in Minnesota. Time to smell the flowers!

We let the group ride off. It’s amazing how fast they ride off, in minutes we weren’t even able to see them. We pedaled along and had a simply great ride along the valleys in rural France. We went through so many small villages, stopped at a bakery for some pastries, went along rivers. It was simply wonderful.

We ended up clicking off 125 km which is I believe 78 miles or so in the Queens measurements. That is the longest ride Tammy has ever done topping her previous 67 mile record. She’s now saying that she might do a century with me. She’s doing great on the bike. Clearly the running and workout out she’s done has paid in spades.

The time trial was great. Lance pounded a resounding fist of authority on the tour besting Ullrich by just over a minute. I was able to see the podium presentation for the first time. It was also the first time I heard any booing. There are many people who believe that Lance dopes and there were a number of boo’s as he received the stage victory.

We headed back to the bus and rode back to Beaune. After a banquet dinner in the hotel we took a walk in Beaune. I just couldn’t live with the idea we would be at this great village and not even see it! I wish we would have had a day to spend there as it looked like an incredible town.

Tour de France 2004 Stage 18 - Annemasse to Lons-le-Saunier

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today we left Grenoble and departed for Beaune where we will spend the next 2 nights. We rode on the bus to the stage about an hour from Beaune and got our bikes to ride the last big climb of the stage. There was a category 4 climb at the end and we planned to ride from the stage finish to the 20km to go banner and back going over this climb both ways.

Unfortunately for us the climb was an absolute brute going opposite of the race. At least twice as steep than the other side so I would say we did a category 3 and a category 4 climb. 🙂

It was great countryside and we turned to head back. We cut the time a little short though and the jandams (the Frnech cops that line much of the route) kept on stopping us in the last 5k making us walk. It turned out to just be a section as we got on after a while and were able to get back into town.

The stage finish was extremely crowded. We waited in the finishing chute and saw the riders come through there. It was an interesting spot to be in since they weren’t going crazy fast which resulted in some nice photos.

A Glass of Ice Water

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

What happened to refrigeration when Europe got their hands on it? There is nothing that is really cold here! I’ve been on a search for “la glacie” (ice) and anytime I get my hands on some I drink a half-dozen glasses of cold water. Even the soda out of vending machines isn’t really cold, but just cool.

I’m trying not to be an ugly American on this one. I’ve found France to be great. But c’mon, bring on the ice!

Tammy is obsessed with water.

Tour de France 2004 Stage 17 - Bourg d'Oisans to Le Grand-Bornand

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today was the dreaded day of the tour climbing two Hors (beyond) category climbs. Tammy took a sick day today and stayed in the hotel to accelerate her recovery (I’m glad to say I think it helped a lot). I took the shuttle to the stage. The plan was to ride about 40k to the base of the Madelaine and then climb up a ways to watch the tour. We ran short on time so we just ended up going to the base of the mountain and climbing.

The Madelain is a beast. It’s a 19.8 km climb with an average gradient of 7.8%. Technically it doesn’t pitch up the way Alpe d’Huez does but it’s nearly twice the length. A fit recreational rider will take 2 hours to climb the Madelaine. Two hours. That’s two hours of going up, constantly. The roads in Alpes are never flat. They just go up at a constant rate. There is no recovery flats, just up. You look up the road panting and sweating and it’s just more up. Forever.

I didn’t finish the climb. I ran low on water after an hour of climbing. In that hour I made it about 7 km up the climb and 600 vertical meters. The entire climb is around 2000 meters so I did about 1/3rd of the climb. That was enough. I am after all, on vacation.

It was another great day for the tour and I got to watch “le train bleu” on the front. Floyd Landis did a piece of work for Lance today that will redefine him as a domestique. It was amazing to watch.

We watched the stage on the tour bus as we drove home. There was a huge roar in the bus when Lance sprinted in the last 100 meters to take the stage from Kloeden. He seems to be incredibly on form this year.

Tour de France 2004 Stage 16 - Bourg d'Oisans to L'Alpe d'Huez

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Today was the most hyped stage of the 2004 Tour de France. When the tour route was announced last fall they had placed all the mountains and the individual time trials at the last half of the race. This would leave the race very open until the end. As it turns out, Lance was able to get good time in the Pyranees so it wasn’t as open as hoped.

We skipped riding today because of the insanity of the crowds and Tammy was coming down for real with the cold I came here with. We took a shuttle bus up to Bourg d’Oisans which is at the base of the L’Alpe d’Huez and watched the stage at the start.

I wont go into all the details of the stage since you can go to a Tour de France site to read about that but Lance won the stage with command and I was able to experience my defining moment of the Tour de France.

Tammy was feeling quite bad so before the stage ended she took the shuttle back to town. I stayed and took pictures as the riders started the time trial. The crowds were enormous even on the base of the climb. As Lance went past and the procession of what must have been 30 cars behind him went by, a number of us ran across the street to this little bar to watch the stage. This is where I had my “tour moment”.

I was under the awning of this little bar. There were probably 40 or so people crowded under and there was a 13" TV on a stool on one end. The rabbit ears were stuck up to pull in the race coverage. Under this little awning at the base of the mountain were French, German, Italian, Americans and more countries. Everyone spoke different languages but all we’re passionate about the tour. We stood there in a group glued to this tiny TV watching the race progress up the Alpe.

I think part of the reason why Americans don’t get bike racing is we need an us versus them. Yankees versus the Dodgers. Ali versus Foreman. If you remove the “versus” we don’t get it. We are a very bivalent country (republican or democrat, pro this or anti that, yes or no, black and white). As this international group watched the race everyone was cheering for everyone. Ullrich came through the first checkpoint with the best time and the group roared. Lance came through and bested the time and there was another roar. It was a celebration of the achievement, of what is possible. Not a celebration of the defeat of another.

I’ll remember standing in that bar watching that crappy 13" TV every time I watch the tour.

I didn’t get an opportunity to climb the L’Alpe, but that’s okay. I will come back some other time to do that. This was just as good.

In Grenoble!

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Tammy and I are in a smoky Internet cafe in Grenoble…

Sounds like the beginning to a good novel. :-) However, this keyboard is french! And it is shockingly similqr yet different. Forget qwerty, it’s azerty!

Anyway just letting people know we have arrived. The keyboard and smoke are too much! We ride tomorrow…

Au revoir!

Tour de France 2004 Stage 15 - Valreas to Villard-de-Lans

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

This is the first day that we actually get to see the Tour de France on the road. We went out for the short ride option today since I was recovering from my cold and Tammy was of course starting to get the early symptoms of it. There should be a way that you can trade vacation days for sick days! 🙂 We took the bus from Grenoble and cut out a moderately steep and very long climb out of the town to make our ride a little easier. We rode the bus up the switchbacks of the mountainside and got off near the top of the climb and spun along with a bunch of about 20 riders. We headed out a few kilometers and got onto a loop that Lonely Planet describes as the most scenic cycling route in France and one of the best in Europe.

We did a steep and fast descent into a canyon on a road that was literally cut out of the side of a sheer face. The speeds on the descent were a taste of what we would get coming up hitting around 60 kph (sorry, all my computers are set to kilometers for this trip so you will need to do the conversion on your own). While that isn’t terribly fast for a descent let me describe the conditions. The road was very windy. It was maybe 10 feet wide but somehow was a 2-lane road with active oncoming traffic and you couldn’t see around the sweeps because as I mentioned it was cut into the side of a rock face. Oh, the other side over the barrier? Few hundred feet to a nice R.I.P. Yeah, I took it easy. Little did I know this was easy compared to what was coming up. Tammy took it even easier. She learned through this trip that there is something she hates more than climbing - descending.

We then climbed out of the canyon and I found out this was another preview of things to come. This was just some road climbing out of the canyon. Please note, this is not climbing a mountain as I thought it was while doing it. When getting to the top I asked the ride leader and he kindly informed me that “no, the mountain is coming up”. And did it ever…

We stopped in a small village in the foothills of the Alpes and filled our water bottles. Many of these old villages have a public fountain or spring in the middle of town which makes it great for cyclists. You just fill your bottle up with great, cold spring mountain water. Wonderful. And thankful since none of them have any stores. The houses and buildings were amazing.

After trying to figure out where we were, we descended a few kilometers and for the first time, turned onto the course of the Tour de France. Let me take a moment to pause here.

I now fully realize what an intimate sport cycling is. Imagine going to the Indy 500 and being able to drive your car around the track a few times before the race, just for fun. Or going to a baseball game and hitting a few balls at the plate while the crowd streams in. That is what you can do at the Tour de France. Riding your bike on the alpine climbs of the Tour hours before the race itself comes through with the huge crowds on the side of the climb was just incredible.

We got to the bottom of the descent and turned left to climb the 1,374m Col de Chalimont. The climb was 11 km with an average gradient of 5.8%. The first few k’s (kilometers) were steeper than the top. After about 3 km I had given up on “keeping a gear in reserve”. You see, cyclists will usually not shift into the easiest gear on their bike when climbing mostly to have a mental reserve if it gets really hard. Forget that! I was panting my way up the side of this mountain going about 8 kph with my heart racing a 100 yard dash! Tammy who was lucky enough to have a triple chain ring (she has a whole set of gears for climbing which I do not have) was spinning along working hard in her “granny gear”.

I did have to stop after about 8 km and 40 minutes of climbing. The entire climb took around an hour. Tammy didn’t stop and actually made it to the top before I did. The crowd on the side of the road cheers on anyone climbing. Allez! Allez! It really does make you go longer and harder than you could otherwise. Of course watching the tour riders ride up this mere category 2 climb afterwards is a little humbling. 🙂

We then did a 10 km descent into the village where we stopped to watch the tour. We settled in a round-about that the tour would cross twice. They would come off a steep descent rocketing along and do a 180 degree turn into the town. Do about 3 k’s and then come back through the other way to do a quick 3k climb to an uphill finish.

Before the tour the caravan came through. The caravan is essentially a parade that drives about an hour in front of the race in part to clear the road but mostly to give more opportunities to the sponsors. The Tour de France is free, 100% funded by sponsors. The fans love the caravan and it provides a good diversion after you’ve been waiting there for 2 hours in the baking sun.

The tour experience on this first day was really amazing. It’s not like any other sporting event I have ever experienced. First, the race goes by you so fast that you see it for minutes, yet thousands crowd the road as it goes by. The electricity in the air and the love that the people have for this event drowns out the commercialism of the sponsors. I was perched in a spot waiting to see the riders come down the descent and around me were men and women, young and old and everyone was eyeing a tiny piece of blacktop at the top of the descent. At the first site of a rider the group erupted in a roar as they came down. It was amazing to experience. The lead group came through as the crowd cheered. Personally I could hardly get a picture off. I was just fumbling around at the first site of the tour, Lance in the lead group down the descent, the speed and power of the race. It was amazing.

A few minutes later the yellow jersey group came down with Thomas Voeckler still in yellow. Voeckler at this point had held the yellow jersey longer than any French rider in the last two decades. He’s under 25 and looks like a kid. And, the French love him. Another roar erupted as they went by. It’s hard to describe the energy and experience of such a brief event. I’m simply not a good enough writer to do it justice. But it was amazing.

We ended our day with a very long and fast descent back to Grenoble. Tammy described that descent as the hardest thing she’s ever done on a bike. Your hands and arms ache on these descents because you must brake smart and hard at the right times. You cannot brake all the time or you will blow a tire. So you must let your speed get up to 50-60 kph and then as you get to the switchback brake hard and come out. It rained a little on the descent making it even worse. We had dinner around 9pm in Grenoble and called it a day.

Ready to go...

Sat, 17 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

I was pleased to wake up this morning feeling better than yesterday. A good nights sleep thanks to Nyquil and variety of other incantations seemed to have helped me out. Hopefully Tammy wont get any whiff of this quick cold.

The car is completely loaded and we’re just waiting to head to the airport. Tonight we sleep on the plane and wake up tomorrow in Paris! Tammy is starting to get really worried about the flight. She hates flying. It seems like we have half of our house with us for this trip. Putting both cycling and hiking in a vacation means you end up needing to bring a lot of stuff with you.

The Tour de France has been awesome the last two days with Lance showing that he does indeed have what it takes. I’m terribly excited about seeing it all in person!

The next time you hear anything from us will be from France!