Breakfast at the hotel was surprisingly good despite my low expectations. The food was plentiful and of reasonable quality. We did not see any other cyclists, probably because we got to breakfast late. By the time we checked out it was already 8:45, and we immediately descended down to the intersection where the route said to turn off the road to Aigle. This quickly led to another road with a construction sign, and then a “no entry” barrier which we proceeded to ignore on the basis that it was a weekend day and the construction crew was likely to be off. I have great faith in the European work ethic.
Indeed, at one point we had to walk around some construction, but we soon found other cyclists going our way as well as the other way, indicating that the construction was fairly short and that we’d get to descend more soon enough. Indeed, the descent to Ormont-Dessus soon took over and we had an easy descent. From the center of town, Mark would start his climb to Col du Pillon while we rode up the Col de la Croix pass. There was a cable car in town, but it wasn’t running yet this early in the morning.
Col de la Croix is a minor pass, mostly wooded and while there was traffic on a Sunday we were still early enough that it didn’t bother us at all. The road was a steady 7.4% grade, and being relatively fresh we were both somewhat surprised when we reached the summit. “That’s all?” asked Boen. “Yup!” We ate the last of our cycling food, took pass photos, and hiked a trail to see a view of Mont Blanc that was underwhelming.
A bus took off from the summit and went down the hill. We gave it a few minutes before we noticed that the traffic was getting denser, so decided to descend. It didn’t take long before we caught up with the bus. The danger of doing that on a tandem is that the bus forces you to ride the brakes instead of letting the tandem roll, but fortunately at that point we were in Villars-Sur-Ollon and the bus had to stop. We overtook the bus and then let the tandem rip. From Villars to Ollon is a series of switch backs and corners. The traffic was dense but since we were moving at least as fast as car traffic were weren’t disturbed.
In Ollon, the route took us towards Aigle, where we found a café that was open and ate lunch. After lunch, we rode across the Rhone and entered the bike path. The bike path would have groups of cyclists in pacelines, riding in the opposite direction from us, occasionally with motorcycle escorts! Even more interestingly, at one point on the bike path we saw that the bike path went past the UCI World Cycling center! The event turned out to be the Portes du Soleil Cyclosportive.
Once the bike path hit the coast of Lake Geneva, the bike path disappeared and we ended up on the main road. The road was still pretty, and there was a bike lane all the way until the French border at Saint-Gingolph, where we stopped for a photo only to find that Mark had caught up to us and was right behind us! We all took pictures together, and descended down to the beach to celebrate before climbing back up to the main road and then found the dedicated bike path leading out of the city.
The bike path took us away from the main road and went up and down granting us long distance views of the lake. Lake Geneva is big enough that you couldn’t see the other side when you’re standing on the coast, so it felt almost like being next to an Ocean. The bike path dumped us back onto the main road at Locum, where we had to share the road with relentless traffic. I could see why the tourism agencies didn’t want inexperienced riding this road, but if you’ve been cycling in California you deal with traffic like this all the time. Furthermore, we knew that this traffic had a limit. We had a left turn coming up in 3km.
When the bike computer beeped and signaled the turn, however, I saw that the road had a sign that said: “No left turn.” Well, I didn’t care. We signaled to traffic, waited for a break, and zipped across onto Route du Champ Poirier, which immediately started climbing. The day was warm and we were in the sun, but the traffic relief was immediate. There were no cars in either direction and we could use the width of the road to zig zag up the hill.
Rather than a coaset highway, this road took us through little towns that were just offset from the coast and on a ridgeline, before dropping us off at Evian-les-Bains, where of course we had to stop at the Source Cachat, the spring fed fountain that’s the bottled source of Evian water! “This tastes just like ordinary water,” said Boen, after he’d had a taste. The water was cool, it tasted good, but yeah, it’s amazing the power of marketing to get people to buy bottled water that’s just ordinary. Xiaoqin and Bowen parked nearby and showed up in time to see a guy carry a cart full of glass bottles and just fill every bottle up while folks lined up behind him.
When it came time to leave we rode down to the lake shore highway, and I noticed a big arch with a “Departee” sign on it! Without knowing it, we had ridden through what would be the start line of the Stage 16 time trial of the 2026 Tour de France! We then started noticing Tour de France pennants and sign posts all over the town. If we had known about this we might have downloaded the route and ridden the 26.1km time trial course from Evian to Thonon, but it was already warm and we had already done one pass (or in the case of Mark, two passes!) for the day, so we opted instead to ride the official bike path to Thonon-les-Bains, which took us past the Evian factory before heading back to the coast and then climbing to the center of town where we were staying at the Hotel Thonon Le Comte Rouge.
The hotel looked like a castle on booking.com, but in reality is was just a small hotel run by an Indian family. They happily parked us inside the lobby, gave us the room keys, and when we asked where to park they told us that the Place des Arts parking lot had overnight parking for 5 Euros a day, and had charging stations to boot. After confirming that the rooms had AC that could be turned on, I walked down to the parking lot and to my surprise, the lot manager confirmed that yes, it was only 5 Euros per night, and the charging stations could be occupied even when the car had finished charging, so there was no need to move the car in the middle of the night!
When Bowen and Xiaoqin arrived, we moved the luggage up to the apartments and I drove the car down (there were 6 charging spots, only one of which was taken), and parked the car and plugged it in. Other than the free charging in Bourg St Maurice, this was the cheapest charging for the entire trip, and we needed it too, because the rental contract stipulated that we were to return the car with at least 75% charge.
After we were all showered, we went out to dinner—once at Pizza Fresca, where we didn’t actually order Pizza, and once at Ni Hao Sushi, where Boen insisted on eating despite us telling him that with a name like that it was going to be run by Chinese, not Japanese. We didn’t need to do laundry that day, so we could buy ice cream and walk down to Funiculair Amont, which had beautiful views of Lake Geneva from high up. Thonon, being the finish line of the same time trial that was going to start in Evian, was as full of Tour de France decorations pennants and so on
To our surprise, the Funicular was free, so we walked down the path to the lake shore, which was a much happening place than downtown itself. It got a lake breeze which was cooler, and all the restaurants here were much busier than the ones near downtown. Of course, it also looked like it would take much longer to get service or even a single ice cream as well.
After exploring the coast line, we took the Funicular back up and walked back to the hotel. The next day was an easy ride back to our Geneva airport hotel—only 20 miles via the direct route, though Xiaoqin and I discussed meeting up in Yvoire to see one of the prettier towns on Lake Geneva. Mark didn’t have 3 bikes to pack and a rental car to return, so he was going to a ride up in the hills above Geneva before riding back to his hotel.
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