Start of the Holiday!

If you didn’t guess, we slept in a little this morning after taking the bus back late last night and not getting to bed until 1:30AMish. We had breakfast at the Swissotel one last time before frantically trying to put the bike back together before we were to catch a train to Lausanne. Negotiating three bike boxes on trains is a pain and a half! Steve and Nicole were to accompany us to Lausanne, Nicole was checking out more of Switzerland and the Hoff was headed home to visit his family and go in to “the office.” We were going to visit Tesfa, a PowerBar Berkeley alum now working in Orb, and his new ladyfriend, Fati. We also talked Fabienne into helping ship our bikes back to the US so we agreed to bring them to Vevey so she can ship them from her office. Thank you so much, Fabienne!

Fati incredibly found us on the train midway through our ride to Lausanne and we proceeded to catch another train to Vevey with David and my bike cases. Did I mention how cumbersome it is to deal with those bulky things? We eventually got them to the Nestle Nutrition building, and I really felt like our vacation started at that moment. We took the train and bus back to Tesfa and Fati’s place in Prilly (pronounced Pree) to wait for Tesfa to get home from work. I was able log on which was very helpful but my laptop is not working properly so I am unable to check work emails- maybe that’s a good thing.

Tesfa and Fati took us to the city center of Lausanne, showing us a church with awesome views and then treating us to dinner at a popular fondue place called Fondue Fromage in Cafe de L'Eveche. Nicole met up with us and after dinner we waked to a british pub for a drink. Cool place but small and smokey- the Euros love their cigarettes. We walked through the shopping district to drop Nicole off at the train station back to her Nestle Hotel and then we drove to an African theme bar. Very interesting! Tesfa mentioned that we were hearing 5-6 African language conversations at one time. It felt sketchy at first but Tesfa and Fati are somewhat regulars and the owner Lady came over to greet us. It was really cool. On the drive home we passed by the “red light district” and saw a few ladies of the night. I loved how Tesfa slowed down so we could get a good look at the women working legally. Very interesting. Super big thanks to Tesfa and Fati for hosting David, Jessica and I in their cool home. Tomorrow we are off to Venice. We’re definitely looking forward to that.