Tour de France: Day 36

Day 36: Lully

This was a beautiful day cycling through countryside that displayed many of the terraced vineyards. We passed through Lausanne which is where the international olympic committee is based. The countryside was more evidently different from France in many ways from the types of houses and architecture to the types of agriculture and cars. Cars seem slightly older and architecture more traditionally swiss with shutters a different colour from many of the french ones and planter boxes with different types of plants from the red geraniums seen in France. In Lusanne we stopped for a coffee stop and enjoyed some of our first swiss baking including cheese flutes and other treats. Many of us are amazed at how much we consume every day. We start with a full breakfast of cereal (in Switzerland we have been enjoying swiss muesli); sometimes meats, cheeses and in some cases croissants or toast. For lunch as part of the tour we have paid to have a filled baguette everyday.

This is convenient and most of the other tour participants have also taken this option. We also stop at a cafe for a coffee stop mid morning for bakery treats and a hot drink. Over the course of the day we snack on bananas or muesli bars, dried fruit or other treats we have saved from breakfast. For dinner we mostly have meat with pasta or rice or vegetables. We have been served fish, chicken, beef amongst other types of mean . Preceding the main course we are typically served a lovely green salad. One of our first inspections of the dinner table involves checking to see whether we have a pudding spoon! Somehow amongst all of the food we are served we also squeeze in pudding and in some cases an ice-cream! Many of the team have lost weight. Bruce and I think we have shifted weight around but we are not sure whether we have lost any! Not surprising considering how ravenous we are and how much we eat when we first wake up, over the course of the day and during our main meal at night. Most of our meals have been stunning. Sometimes the European breakfast of meats, pastries and cheese has not provided the necessary sustenance for a group of hungry cyclists so we have taken to supplementing our breakfast with our own muesli. Generally though, the food has been outstanding-just as well as it is something we talk about and do a lot of!