Day 14: Sunday, February 6

Plan A for the day was a bust, but Plan B turned out pretty well, so it was OK ...

In the morning, I cleaned up the apartment and made scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast ... yum.  My big plan was to rent a bicycle for the day (http://www.velopass.ch/fr/), a bicycle-rental service similar to the one in downtown Minneapolis and ride the “wine route” to the west of Morges.  I had it all set – the post at the bike rental said I should go to the cafe near the train station and get a day pass for 6 CHF + 90 CHF deposit on credit card.  I went there and said in my best (ahem, bad) French, “I would like a velopass for 1 day”, and I’m not sure what the guy said, but he talked very rapidly and didn’t sell me the pass even though I pulled out the proper amount of money.  I’m not sure what happened, and unfortunately I’m lost in French if anything goes wrong.  I can guess my way around written French and in a restaurant (there are only so many questions a waiter will ask), but after that, it goes downhill fast.  So, I went back to the apartment to sulk for a while and then went for a walk.

 
Actually, the Plan B walk turned out to be a lot better than I expected.  I went to the lakefront and walked west from the town. 

 I quickly ran into "The Trail of the Trout", a nature trail partially sponsored by Medtronic, and decided to take it.  It led me partially through river areas (public land?) and sometimes around people’s houses and fields.  It felt like I was hiking at home, except sometimes the path wasn’t too obvious.  At times, I would have liked having my hiking boots on instead of street shoes! 

 What's this?  Beehives!  I think I will take a picture and ... just ... keep ... going ...

 After about 2 hours, I came to a town called St-Prex.  Wouldn't you love to have this view?







My plan was to find the train station (and a bathroom), then wander around the town until the train arrived.  By this time, I was unmotivated to walk back – I was tired, and it would be dark by the time I arrived if I walked.  I found the train station without too much trouble, but the bathroom was another story.  There were no “WC” signs, and all the doors were locked when I went around the building.  All except for one, which when I entered, a woman looked at me funny so I said “bathroom”, and she said, “this is a private residence”.  Oops.  (I guess I should have known better, I had previously seen ads for renting space above the train station).  I saw people walking into the grocery store a block away, so I tried that next even though I knew the store was closed.  It turned out that there was a tea-room in the same building.  And a bathroom!  So, I bought this fantastic chocolate dessert and sat there for a while to warm up.  The train came once per hour, so I decided to walk around the town for about half an hour and then catch the next train back. 

St-Prex is a cute little town with a church that was originally built in 652 AD and a town wall erected in 1234.  This is the original north gate to the wall.  It was a good end to my afternoon trip. 

I came back to the apartment, talked to Ken for a while, made some chicken-zucchini Thai curry for dinner, and am attempting to get caught up on pictures and what I need to do next week since it’s my last week here.  The time has gone really fast, as I expected it would.