Less than 24 hours until the big race. Driving around the country, we have seen signs everywhere. Just the other day, we were waiting to get the car on the train to come back from the Lötschental Valley and we saw this:

See that blue sign?  Can you tell what it says?  Look closer…..

Yep, a marathon sign!  All the way out in the valley.  Love it!

Today we drove to Lausanne (a little over an hour away) to pick up our bibs and attend the race expo.  On the way there, we stopped at a rest stop for a drink.  S couldn’t resist doing the Swiss Beaver face:

Lausanne is a beautiful place.  The Swiss are more organized than the US – they already had signs for parking and the race set up ahead of time.

The expo was situated on a fountain, it was cute.

It was all right by the lake.

We headed inside the expo where we picked up our bibs and marathon bags.  There were a lot of people there.  I was suprised to find out that there were 10,000 people signed up for race day.  However, only about 1,000 of them were for the full marathon – most were for the 1/2 marathon, 10k and 5k.

In our bags, we got the obligatory t-shirt, a pretty cool little 2010 calendar, a cereal bar, some shoe laces, and a few other extraneous things.  But the coolest thing that we got was a bottle of wine from the Lausanne vineyards that we would be running through during the marathon.  I thought that was an awesome idea!  I can’t wait to drink some after the race

We looked around in Lausanne a little bit more.  We saw some swans, which I couldn’t help taking pictures of because I think that they are just so beautiful.  This one especially – he was doing yoga.  Episode six -  The Swiss Swan performing a downward dog:

Then there was one beautiful one

Who was shortly joined by his love.  Swans mate for life

And then we saw the finish line of the marathon, which was already set up.  Can’t wait to pass through there tomorrow!!!

I also didn’t know that the Olympic Committee meets and resides in Lausanne.  So we saw the Olympic buildings, old and new:

And headed home to rest up and eat some pasta.  I got to drive home, a whole hour and a half.  My first driving in Switzerland!  I must say I handled the roundabouts and zippers exceptionally

G’night, ya’ll.  Wish me luck tomorrow!