Hope you had wine to go with the cheese!

With my old camera, I saved the photos in camera as jpg files and copied them to my iPad with a USB/lightning connector. With my new camera, I save the photos as raw files (just data) and copy the files to my iPad with a card reader. I prefer to have the raw files because I can edit them at home later. It was only when 8 encountered slow wifi that I realized Apple Photo needs to upload and download before I can copy a photo onto Cycleblaze. Why exactly I don't know.

Agreed! Those do look like bay leaves, though.

At first I thought this was a flooded walkway!

Are you downloading from a camera? I bought a little gizmo that connects my USB from the camera to my iPad. Quick and easy downloads. You can find them at any Apple reseller...if that is what you are doing of course!

Orange was expensive but we are good for a month and we will add more time at the end. It also works in Switzerland which solves that problem for the last week or so of our trip. I tethered to Keith’s phone tonight to do the journal and it was lightening fast, unlike the hotel wifi. Telecom providers are confounding businesses anywhere I think.

I went with Free Mobile. There’s national coverage and it’s MUCH cheaper than Orange (which I used last time) and which only lasted for 2 or 3 weeks.

Free hasn’t the signal strength in some small villages to upload my big photo files but that’s to be expected. (I need to upload the raw files then download them again to upload jpg files to the journal since I don’t have processing software on my iPad.)

We don’t think we will be up your way this trip. We are having a fabulous time. Yesterday was beautiful. Today it is raining so hard we have abandoned our planned ride and are relaxing before we explore more of Annecy. We have another night here and then a short ride to Aix les Bains tomorrow. It is supposed to be a better day than today, but if not there is always the train 👍.

We think of you two often and wish we were in the same time zone...this one. We shall continue to track tortes for you, and perhaps even sample a few. It is POURING here today...so much for the planned ride around the lake. We are warm and comfortable and surprisingly unconcerned about it. We will do more exploring of Annecy and generally relax.

This is actually pastry porn, especially when blown up to 300%. (Not that I would do that!). I think everything in the photo that is not a tarte is a torte. See that chocolate one, next to the double cherries, on the left. Oh my!

p.s. Not that it's a competition, and not that anyone here back home is sitting forlornly watching their computer, but you scored today - getting your account published about 3 p.m. Coast time, and beating the Bartletts! But wait, even that is midnight for you. Bedtime!

It looks really beautiful. Have a nice bike trip. We love it to read your blog.
Do you visit Germany as well? We would be very happy you will visit me and Jürgen in Freudental.
Best wishes Marion and Jürgen

This bike route was quite something. About 20 km up, right at the beginning, unplanned hehe. Now that we are in this part of France we plan more climbing. Yesterday was unplanned! We have Annecy to explore first. Isn’t it a beautiful spot? We have read about your time here again. We are not sure we will be quite as ambitious. Today will be cappuccino sipping and old town wandering I think.

Round two, when we were going up and up again I kept repeating in my head ‘hills are your friends’, meaning they get those legs ready for more hills. A friend gave me that line and it helpful!

Sounds like you had great fun,hehe! We should have told you that there aren’t any flat routes in Switzerland, especially the bike routes. Glad you ran into the other cyclists to chase Keith down!

This is the kind of elevation profile I really dread. Dodie

Steve - I would have guessed it was a 1971 model. Thanks for the research!