Nigel's Visit - July 2009 / Lauterbrunnen

Nigel came to visit last Saturday morning. I picked him up from the airport and we went directly into downtown Cologne. We looked at the Dom / cathedral, and then climbed the stairs to the top.

This is one of the bells in the Cologne Dom bell tower.

Sunday after church we drove down to Switzerland, but made a short stop in Freiburg (above).

This is the view of the Staubbach waterfall in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.

We got up Monday morning and took the train up to Wengen, and then the gondola up to Maennlichen.





This is the view from the top of Maennlichen, looking back down into the Lauterbrunnen valley.



We walked along the top of the ridge toward Kleine Scheidegg, with this view of Eiger, Moench, and Jungfrau the whole way.

The north face of Eiger.

We walked down from Kleine Scheidegg into Wengen. Along the way we ran into a herd of cows with strange-looking horns.

Nigel's Visit - July 2009 / Gruyere and Montreux, Switzerland

We next drove over the Jaun Pass to Gruyere (the town that makes my favourite type of cheese), with a town and castle on a hill.

And then we drove down to Montreux, on Lake Geneva, where we stayed for the night.

We found a restaurant from our guidebook. It was a tiny hole in the wall place. The food ended up being OK, but the whole situation was a bit awkward because they didn't take credit cards, and we were running low on Swiss francs. So we had to take a picture of the place to remember it.

We then went into downtown Montreux, and walked along the lakefront. An older woman came along the path to this ladder, and started going down, saying something about the fact that she had lost one of her walking sticks in the water. Nigel went after her.

He ended up having to wade up to his knees to rescue her walking stick. Good thing he was wearing his lifeguard shirt -- people thought he was official.

Nigel's Trip - July 2009 / Chillon Castle

We went to the Chillon castle on Lake Geneva.

Nigel's Trip - July 2009 / Tour de France Stage 16

We went to the start of stage 16 of the Tour de France in Martigny, Switzerland.

We got there about 90 minutes before the stage started, just as the pre-race caravan was going by.

We then walked around and saw the team cars & buses.

The press were interviewing various people, including this guy, Bob Stapleton, the owner/manager of the Columbia/HTC cycling team.

We saw various riders going back and forth to the check-in area. Here's Thor Hushovd, the green-jersey winner.

The riders' bikes were all set up outside the buses. This was at the back of the Astana team bus -- the bikes of Yaroslav Popovych (#27) and Lance Armstrong (#22).

Before the race, all of the riders go up to the stage to sign in. Above is Andy Schleck, who ended up 2nd in this year's tour.

Lance Armstrong signing in.

And Alberto Contador, who won the Tour.

Because this stage started in Switzerland, they made a big deal out of the Swiss riders, including Fabian Cancellara, who is the national champion of Switzerland.

This is about 100 meters after the start of the race in downtown Martigny, Switzerland.

We then started our drive to Chamonix, France and decided to take the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy to see the race as it headed up the mountain pass Petit Saint Bernard, the road back over the mountain into France. We parked the car near Pre Saint Didier, where there was an intermediate sprint.

We were right on a hair-pin turn. Here is the first group of riders we saw.

And here is the next group, with all of the GC favorites.

And then the entourage of all of the team cars, police - both Italian and French, motorcyles with camermen, officials' cars, etc.

As we were driving into France earlier in the day, Nigel and I were practicing our French. Nigel had said "Je me pel Kenny" -- one of the French phrases he had learned from watching David Letterman. On the way walking back to the car, someone had written the name Kenny on the road, in support of the Lanterne Rouge at the time, Kenny Van Hummel.

We had a long way to walk back to the car. Little did I know how much walking I'd be doing the next day...

Nigel's Visit - July 2009 / Chamonix, France

The town of Chamonix, and the view of Mount Blanc (highest point in Europe, at about 15,000 feet), over on the far right side of the photo.

We got back into Chamonix, France in the early evening, checked in to the hotel. We walked around the town a bit, and found a place to eat dinner....raclette.

The next morning we took the La Flegere lift up the mountain, and then hiked to Lac Blanc. Mount Blanc is off to the right side, just covered over with clouds.

We finally made it to the lake -- Lac Blanc.

And a view from the back of the lake, looking across to the mountains on the other side of the valley.

Nigel's Trip - July 2009 / Tour de France Stage 17

We left Chamonix and drove over to watch Stage 17 of the Tour. We had picked out a spot to drive to, inbetween the last two mountain climbs of the day. Unfortunately, we got there too late, and the police had already blocked off the roads. So, we had to park the car, and walk up about 7 km to the town of Le Reposoir, which is inbetween the Col de Romme and the Col de la Colombiere.

The town of Le Reposoir was a parking lot. Up the Tour route went up and beyond this hill.

We walked up another 2.5 or 3 km above the town.

This is the 20 km to go banner. We stopped here and waited for the pre-race caravan to go by.

Nigel, across the road, watching the caravan go by. The different sponsors each had vehicles in the caravan, and threw out hats, candy, shirts, knick-knacks, etc.

After the caravan went by, we kept walking up the mountain. This is the banner showing that it was 5 km to go before the top of the final climb of the stage, the Col de la Colombiere.

I used my camera to mostly take video this day, but here's a photo Nigel took - I think this was the last group of the day coming up the hill. It was great to see the first several groups come up and to figure out how the race was going that day.

Then we had to walk the 9 or 10 km back down to the car. It was a long day of walking, but well worth it.