July 6th: Thonon-les-Bains to Hotel Movenpick Geneva Airport

 Xiaoqin and I got up early enough that breakfast wasn’t ready yet, so we took a walk in the morning back to the viewpoint we saw last night. After breakfast, we packed up, I unplugged the fully charged car and drove it back to the hotel’s loading zone, and we loaded up the car with all luggage before Boen and I got the tandem out along with Mark. The owner of the hotel came out and said: “Can I get a picture of you and your son on the bike? It’s such an inspiration. I didn’t even think it was possible.”

With that, we rode the bike down to the lake front and followed the signs around the lake, since from
Evian on, there was actually an official bike route! The relief from traffic didn’t last long, however, since within 5km we found ourselves back onto the main road again. Fortunately, we weren’t on the main road for more than a kilometer before we got to follow the signs towards Yvoire. The road around Lake Geneva wasn’t flat, but did undulate a bit. While occasionally we saw a bike path next to us, most of the time the traffic was light enough to just stay on the pavement. In Yvoire, we deviated from the designated route long enough to ride to the bottom of the village where we could touch the lake proper before turning around riding back up. Just at the entrance of the old town we ran into Bowen and Xiaoqin, who had just parked and walked over. We took some pictures and then rode on.

From Yvoire, we rode along at a distance from the lake. The towns were still cute, but none were as pretty as Yvoire, and lake views were no longer common, being blocked by either houses and other buildings or rows of trees. Finally, the road dipped all of a sudden and I immediately felt a change in the road surface. “We must be in Switzerland now!” I told Boen. And indeed, we had just ridden over the border in Herrance. The road in France up to that point wasn’t rough, but the minute you get into Switzerland you feel it because the road feels freshly paved, and suddenly everything looks neater. The bus stops look cleaner, the streets look freshly swept, and even the flowerpots outside houses look freshly tended.

Soon, the road descended all the way to the lake shore again, and we could spy off in the distance, the grand fountain at the outlet of the lake where the Rhone continued. We’d last seen it a month ago, and it felt like we had been gone a long time. From the bridge over the Rhone, we started the climb back towards the airport, following bike paths that were now well signed. We dodged street cars and arrived at the hotel at 11:00am.

I went to the reception and showed them our left luggage tickets and they helped me get out the bike boxes. I started packing the tandem, taking things apart, and Xiaoqin arrived after an hour when I was done with as much as I could without more tools that were in the car. I checked into the hotel, getting keys and so forth (they didn’t try to charge me an early checkin fee), and after taking most of the luggage out of the car, kept packing the bikes until they were all done.

It was about 1:00pm when Mark dropped by to pick up his luggage. I then drove the car to the airport rental return, which was very little hassle, and then walked back to the hotel. The hotel gave us free city passes, which meant all the tram rides were free! We walked to the tram station with Boen’s carry on luggage and proceeded to go to downtown. To my surprise, downtown Geneva had all sorts of Tour de France pennants and posters as well, even though as far as I knew it wasn’t on this year’s route! I would investigate later and then was told that those pennants were for the Tour de France Femmes, the less predictable women’s race.

We bought quick lunches at Coop and visited the Sprungli shop in downtown Geneva. To our surprise, the Sprungli shop wasn’t a café—it only sold chocolate and you were expected to eat it at home or outside. “We only have a café at the Zurich airport and downtown Zurich,” explained the cashier. We found a shaded place to eat and drink. While we bought some Sprungli chocolate, it was all for eating while we were in Switzerland. The kids wanted to visit the Lindt store, so we walked over to the Lindt store. We explored what they have but didn’t want to commit to buying until we were ready to leave downtown. It was so warm that there was a chance the chocolate would melt in the luggage!

Walking out of the Lindt chocolate place who did we run into but Mark! He was up for an early dinner, so we went to an Asian restaurant that advertised duck. It wasn’t great but had one redeeming feature that made up for the relatively poor food: it had AC! Mark had skipped lunch and was hungry.

After dinner, we went back to the Lindt store, bought chocolate, and then took it back to the hotel. We’d already reserved places on the 6:40am shuttle to the airport so we wouldn’t be in any danger of missing the flight. We were all packed and ready for our ordeal back to the USA with Aer Lingus.