Why to hate the 'Tour de France'?

Sunday in Switzerland is holy. You cannot work, it is not allowed, unless you have permission. Can't use the lawn mower, not good if you put your clothes to dry outside, not good if you sew, and so on.

Sunday here is a day to enjoy family, visit friends, make barbecue, go making tourism related things, like discover new cities. And that is what we tried to do!

We left on Sunday morning to check Montreux, fantastic little bourgeois city as I already mentioned before. Then we checked the Chateau de Chillon, that beautiful castle at the Lac Léman shore which still keep some of the 16th 17th century characteristics. Also we tried to visit the other castle in our route, the castle in the Gruyere city. And this is when all went wrong.

From Chillon there is not so far, maybe 30-40 km. On the way there one of the main roads was closed. We saw some policemen and thought maybe an accident. So we asked Ms. GPS to direct us through another way. Which was also closed and so was another and other and other....
We saw some decorated cars passing with giant advertisements in it and al the stuff. We even tried to use an option our Ms. GPS contains, a system that tells which roads are closed and some of this modernities. But here in this Swiss area that does not work, why? We don't know. In the German Switzerland it works great and it even says for how long we gonna fry there under the hot sun.

THen we realized that by the amount of French cars and some bikers (there were not so many Swiss around) we understood what that was. The 'Tour de France'. And all roads connecting to our target were closed, at least after we look for 1h we could not find any that wasn't.


And this was how we ended up our little trip. Abandoned the idea of climbing to the castle and lunch all those marvelous fondues and meringues. All roads interdicted and no explanation or somebody to give an information so far. And so did most of the tourists who were driving around like us looking like drunk cockroaches like us looking for a way to the castle. ANother option was to wait 3 hours for the thing to be opened, but after you already detest it, why to stay?

And this is how we all came to hate the bad organization and closed roads to our destination of the Tour de France, that by the way had just information written in German and French, but not in English on the Gruyere tourist info site.