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Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
A surprisingly tough hike, at least the first part -- a flat trail around Lake Leman (Geneva) for 3.25 hours (the 1040m hike up to the Lac de Taney afterwards was, I felt, easy in comparison). The problem was the heat: it was around 30C, and by the time we got to Bouveret, the town where we planned to have lunch, we all really needed a break.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The rest days in Montreux were extremely welcome and would have been perfectly relaxing if I hadn't read until 4AM one night and then talked with Lidia until 1:30AM another. Sleeping inadvertently until 11AM (due to not noticing that impermeable blinds had been lowered and therefore thinking that it was still night-time) one morning gave the coup de grace to my sleep rhythms, so I actually was a little tired when we got up to restart the hike.
Said restart occurred a couple of hours later than planned due to a very un-Swiss display of stupidity, incompetence, and dishonesty by a local cobbler (details too much to recount given my current tired state). As a result we left at 10:45, just in time for the heat of the day.
And now I'm back on the hike. After an excellent lunch from which we were all in no hurry to rise, we started the climb around 3:30 or so, resulting in Lidia and I arriving at our lodging shortly before 8PM (Russ and Sally, as usual, having arrived earlier). One quick shower and another meal later, we were in bed (me with earplugs to shut out the snorers on either side).
Ultimately it wasn't as difficult to leave Montreux for the long stretch down to Monaco as I had feared, probably because I have become sufficiently obsessed that stopping early is no longer imaginable....
