Giro d'Espoo

I took part in my first ever bike race yesterday. I had bought myself a road bike from Canyon just a couple of weeks ago and found out about Giro d'Espoo on Saturday. So I registered on Sunday morning and arrived on the start straight 5 minutes before the race start. I had meant to join a moderate speed group, but mistakenly joined a fast one, dropped back and rode most of the race distance (111km) solo. I was pretty dead at the end there, but it was a real joy to take part.

Here's how the race went for me:

Round Lake Geneva, final day

We spent the last day walking around Geneva. I've been here once or twice before and remembered really liking the place. I was happy to see my memories of the place still merit. As a touristy thing we visited the Patek Philippe museum - unfortunately they don't allow pictures so you'll just have to take word on it being worth the visit. I was pleasantly surprised by the museum and the artifacts on display. The ingenuity and the craftsmanship of the early clockwork builders is quite astonishing.

All good things must come to an end, so we returned our spiffy Citroen rental car and flew back to Finland via Copenhagen. I'd give the area a high score on the trip-worthiness scale and with better luck with the weather on day 3 it would've been a pretty perfect little itinerary as well.

Round Lake Geneva, day 3

The very reason we were in Chamonix was to go up up up to see Mont Blanc with the Aiguille du Midi cable car. Well, due to high winds the lift was closed and there went the whole point of being in Chamonix. As a workaround we went through Mt. Blanc tunnel to Courmayeur, Italy to ride up the big mountain from the other side. You can see from the pictures why that wasn't such a great idea either on that day...

Oh well - so after two extremely good days the third one turned out to be a bit of a dud. We finished it by driving to Geneva, checking into our hotel and going out to eat some Thai dinner.

Round Lake Geneva, day 2

We woke up in Montreux, had a great breakfast with scenic views over the lake and headed to Château de Chillon, a medieval castle on a small island right next to shore. We walked around with just the small leaflet, not with the audio guide. The castle apparently also has a free Wifi network and a free guide app, but at least my iPad could not suck down the app in a short enough time - advisable to download before arrival, then.

The exhibits were mostly about life (and death) throughout the time. There was a special exhibit on witches, pretty gruesome stuff. Our son would've enjoyed the arms exhibits.

Our next stop was at the next town along the lakeshore, Villeneuve. Have to admit the main reason we were here was because of a pair of Canadian racing drivers of the same name. We found a nice cafe in the quiet main street and the post office. The postcards we mailed took only a few days to reach the destinations!

Next we were going to Chamonix and on the way we wanted to stop by Lake Emosson dam. From somewhere I had gotten the idea that this was used as a backdrop to the famous bungee jump scene in a James Bond movie GoldenEye. I might be completely off the base with this one, but anyhow up and up we went until the road was blocked. I must admit the dam wasn't anything compared to the 3+ hour hike to the dam and back to the car. Had we fully understood the extent of the walk ahead, we would've just turned around so I'm glad we didn't. The views and the mountain air were amazing. There was a hiking trail up from the roadblock parking lot which we took going up - there was quite a lot of snow on it so we walked back along the serpentine asphalt road - longer but faster. While at the dam there were no services available and even the access to the dam was closed, but there was so much snow this wasn't really a problem.

On the way to Chamonix the GPS navigator went completely crazy due to the mountains intermittently blocking the signal, but we found our hotel at the end, had fabulous dinner in the hotel restaurant and fell asleep in an instant thereafter.

Round Lake Geneva, Day 1

We arrived to Geneva the previous night and stayed overnight in a lovely bed and breakfast in Arzier, which is a village up on the hills overlooking the lake. Le Clemonie B&B is a short way out of Geneva, but on the same direction as the airport so the drive after receiving our rental C4 was short (thanks to phone satnav, which did its job here) and in the morning we woke up to a wonderful breakfast served in our room as well as fantastic sights towards the lake bathing in the morning sun.

We had booked the B&B beforehand, but didn't have any plan for day 1. We asked for recommendations from the B&B owner and she told us one popular thing is to take a boat from Nyon to Yvoire and see the garden and castle there. We ended up taking her advice and were not disappointed. Nyon is a lovely lakefront town with a medieval castle centered old architecture. It was a short drive down the hill from our overnight stay and it didn't take us long to find the place where ferry tickets are sold.

Yvoire is a small old town inside all old castle walls. There are loads of restaurants and cafes everywhere so clearly we weren't the first tourists to visit. There's a castle, but it didn't seem to be open for tourists. Another popular destination is the Garden of the five senses, a private, immaculately maintained collection plants and flowers. We took our time touring the wonderful garden under pretty bright skies, visited a couple of the cafes and made our way back to Nyon where our rental car was parked.

We headed east on the northern shore of the lake, with the intent to eat in Lausanne. The lakeside road between Nyon and Lausanne wasn't really very scenic so we made our way to the motorway further up the hillside. Somewhat un-intuitively the scenery is much better from the motorway. Being as we were on the motorway we drove straight to Montreux mainly as I remembered being there before and liking the place. This was pretty vague as halfway on the way to Lausanne I still though that was the place I had memories of. So onto Montreux we went. After some misses with hotel booking we ended up in Suisse Majestic hotel, with amazing views over the lake back towards Geneva. The hotel was great with probably the most scenic breakfast I can remember, having had breakfast in very scenic settings already before.

This seemed like a very varied and busy day, but it was nothing compared to the day that was to follow...