Emily takes a tumble

Rain was forecast for Wednesday but we thought it wouldn't start until late afternoon. We were surprised to see it raining rather hard during breakfast. Since this was to be a short day we took our time checking out and found to our relief that the rain had let up. The challenge today would be navigating our way out of Zurich and finding our way to the lakeshore for the ride to Lachen. Although Zurich is a very bicycle friendly city we were aprehensive since traffic goes fast, Trollies (and trolly tracks) are everywhere, and we don't know our way around. Everything was still wet and rather cool when we started out. We hadn't gone more than a block when we needed to turn left across two sets of tracks. Those rails are like ice when wet and Emily high-sided in the middle of the street! Luckily she suffered only a small abrasion (due, no doubt to her superior athletic ability) and we only needed to straighted one of her levers.

This photo was taken later in the day but was the first time we'd seen a sign warning us of "the enemy."

Soon we were along the lakeshore and despite it being overcast and foggy, the scenery was really beautiful. After the craziness of riding in the city, the relative peace and quiet of the lakeshore was most welcome. Our route led us through a dozen small towns.

We had a small lunch at a "Kiosk" near the ferry dock near Meilen.

We enjoyed the ride down to Rapperswil except that we were unable to find a bank to withdraw a few more Francs. It's Switzerland for crying out loud. I thought the whole place would be a bank!

Once in Rapperswil we wandered into the old section of town on our way to the Scloss. We found an ATM. And, hey, this old church. We wandered up to it, took a few pictures,

then continued on looking for the Schloss. We made it to the area of the causeway to Pfaffikon. When we looked at a map posted there we realized we already went to the Schloss by accident!

Since that was out of the way we stopped in McDonalds for a treat. Emily had a donut and cafe while I had a hamburger and iced tea. The hamburger was excellent and just like what we get at home.

The final leg of the day was across the causeway and down to Lachen. It went smoothly except for the usual tom-foolery at the roundabouts. I can't wait til we have more of these at home.

We found our hotel, checked in, stowed the bikes, and cleaned up. Boy were we ever dirty. A quick trip to the market across the street got us some laudry soap and we high-tailed it back to the room to clean a few days worth of cycling gear. Apparently self service laudramats are not common in SWitzerland. Oh, we took a moment for Emily to ride the wiener!

For dinner we didn't eat at a typical Swiss restaurant (Pizzeria) but went to an Asian place. No, I really mean it, I've never seen so many pizza places.

I had the masaman curry, Emily had fried noodles with tofu. Very, very good. We took a few more silly pictures and called it a night.