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| Chateau de Chillon |
Today is the Swiss National Day, which means that I don't have work today, so I thought what better way to spend my time then filling in my dedicated readers on the goings-on in my life over the past week. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was looking forward to meeting up with my parents in Montreux, which I was able to do this past weekend. I was fortunate enough to take off last Friday from work (and the two following Fridays!) to meet up with Mom and Dad in Montreux. However, the trip got off to a rather eventful start. After boarding the train at the airport in Geneva, we arrived at the main train station in Geneva, Gare Cornavin, where we were promptly stopped for 15 minutes without any explanation before it was announced that the train we were currently on would not be continuing on due to an accident further up along the same rail line. What happened next was ripped straight out of a classic comedy sketch. The conductors on the platform would tell us to go to one platform to wait for the inter-regional train to Lausanne, which was being re-routed due to the accident on the line that we were originally scheduled to go on. However, when verifying the information with the Information desk in the station, I was told to go back to my original platform, which didn't seem to make much sense to me. Eventually we were redirected to a third platform and finally after about an hour of confusion, I was finally able to board the train for Lausanne, where I had to transfer trains again before finally arriving in Montreux about 2 hours later than expected.
However, upon arrival, the day turned around. I met up with Mom and Dad at the hotel and after dropping my things off, we made our way via bus to Chateau de Chillon, a 13th century chateau that was built right on the edge of Lac Leman. The chateau was pretty impressive and is much larger than it appears as you are walking up. I decided to get a little artsy with my photography as you'll see in some of the photos below and after spending a few hours at the chateau, we decided to take the lake walk back to Montreux, even though the temperature outside was hovering around 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). I'm glad we opted for the lake walk however since the lake and the surrounding area is incredibly scenic and there was a really bizarre technology sculpture exhibit set up along the path. Of course, once we arrived back along Montreux's shoreline I had to take my obligatory picture with the Freddie Mercury statue. For those that are unaware, Queen had a recording studio in Montreux and the city was essentially Freddie's "home away from home." Given the heat outside, we retreated back to our hotel to clean up for dinner, which we ate at the foot of the old town in Montreux.
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| Closing in on Chateau de Chillon |
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| Medieval bathroom graffiti, the author was on to something... |
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| Trying to be artsy |
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| A window look onto Lac Leman from the Chateau |
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| We Are The Champions! |
On Saturday, we enjoyed a nice breakfast on the hotel's terrace looking out on Lac Leman. After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and headed to the train station to take the Golden Pass train through the mountains up to Broc, where the Cailler factory is located. We took the very touristy tour of the history of Cailler, which came complete with chocolate scented rooms. Of course the best part of the tour was the tasting room at the end. From Broc we took the train to Gruyeres, where we had lunch and then explored the town and the Chateau, which had some phenomenal views of the Swiss countryside. After finishing our tour around Gruyeres, we took the train back to Montreux, picked up our bags, and hopped back on the train back to Geneva, where we had dinner and I said my goodbyes to Mom and Dad.
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| Wait, how'd he get in there? |
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| MMM...milk chocolate and hazelnut goodness! |
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| The chocolates, all of them! |
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| Chateau de Gruyeres |
As far as the week ahead, this week was a shortened week due to today being Swiss National Day and since I was able to get tomorrow off, I have a long weekend, my first of two to start off August. It's hard to believe but I only have 8 days at work left! Tomorrow our group is going on our second whirlwind trip, this time to Basel (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwYPCFfbhZM&hd=1) and Zurich. Look for a new post at the beginning of next week with my brief write up of those two cities.
That's about all from here.
What I'm listening to: The quite ironic tune "Alcohol" by the Kinks, Ray's pretty loaded on this track
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuLzmupBTMs&hd=1
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