Trains and cheese and francs, lots of francs

---

My apologies to those of you who wake up in the morning, anticipating our daily blog. The past three days have found us unable to upload the blog from our computer. Evidently, some home internet servers don’t like the platform running on our American computer. So while we were able to write the blog, we were unable to post it. Therefore, today we are posting four days worth of our adventures.

We are, indeed, in the land of the Alps. As I sit in my tent this evening, a train runs by every few minutes, a testament to the Swiss reliance on trains for transportation and for tourism. Bill and I have ridden those trains in the past, and it is a fantastic way to travel within the country, and the cog trains that take passengers high up into the mountains provide an amazing panorama of the countryside. Perhaps we should have taken one of those trains today as we got lost a couple of times, as usual! One of our meanderings did, however, lead to a grocery store, which we desperately needed.

One item you will NOT find in a Swiss grocery store is Swiss cheese. No such thing here though they have, as you can imagine, dozens of other kinds of cheeses. Bread and cheese is kinda our staple food here.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, prices here in Switzerland are quite high. You better have a wallet full of francs before you even consider walking into a store. Example: At 2 this afternoon, we stopped at a McDonald’s cause we were starving. The cheapest meal was the fish sandwich with fries and a drink. Total for the two of us -- 22.10 SF. That’s almost $30 in American money. You can imagine what other restaurants charge! Food in grocery stores is also quite expensive, particularly meat, which is unbelievably high priced. Needless to say, we won’t be gorging ourselves for the next few weeks.

The good news -- we stayed dry and warm today. Though there were occasional spritzes, we were able to avoid any real rain. The sun even occasionally smiled on us as we rode along Lac Leman and then up the Rhone River, a fairly flat ride always within site of the towering Alps. Tomorrow we will ride just north of Martigny and onto Sierre. On Sunday, we hope to take the bus up to Grimentz, where our friends have a lovely chalet in an area where hiking trails abound. Maybe Lady and the Tramp can take a break from the road for a couple of days.

---