                      Feel like a Foie Gras Goose! |
Lausanne, Switzerland
Slept like the absolute dead! Best night’s sleep in ages. Must have been very tired after all this hill walking. On our way and packed up leaving our bags at reception.
Had breakfast in the hotel, indoors this morning because it was still overcast outside. Not raining, but not sunny.
Our first stop was at the Olympic Museum. Lausanne is the HQ of the Olympic movement and they have built a wonderful interactive museum here that takes you through from the birth of the games in ancient Greece to the present day. Excellent audio visual presentations plus many films of the opening ceremonies over the years, costumes from those events and examples of every torch and every medal since the start of the modern games in the late 19C. There was also a gallery where you could try various activities to test your “Olympic readiness”. These included balance, eyesight, steady hands, and lots more. Much fun. Well worth a couple of hours although there is in fact 7 hours of audio visual material to view. Really enjoyed that.
We then walked back along the lakeshore and looked in a little hippie market that had set up there. The lakeshore itself is a hive of activity: people running, skating, scootering, biking, jogging, walking dogs. Out on the lake there are watersports of all types: yachting, paddleboarding, fishing, pedaloes, waterskiing. We sat for a while and watched the world go by before it was time for lunch at midday.
We were booked into the Hotel de Port, a Michelin place, right on the lakeside across from our hotel. the recommendation was lake perch which is a speciality here. So we had that! The two course menu was 39 CHF. Not cheap but nothing in Switzerland is cheap. The perch were delicious and very tiny. I don’t know what I expected. We got about 7 or 8 little fillets and they were very sweet and juicy. Served with a lemon butter sauce. Yummy. I didn’t want anything else at all as I am feeling like a stuffed goose. There are many benefits to this food critic business – for example this weekend must have cost a hell of a lot of money and I could certainly never afford to pay for what we’ve had. On the other hand, the pace is tight and the food is relentless LOL. It’s not a jolly really. Lovely time though we’ve had and please invite me again Lu after a decent interval.
By the time lunch had finished, the sun had returned and the whole town was bathed in warmth and blueness again. We had a last wander by the lake and then got the metro up the hill to the railway station. The metro is excellent by the way – the only one in Switzerland. It runs from the lakeshore to the top of the mountain with maybe 10 stops. If you stay in a hotel, you get a card for your length of stay that gives you unlimited free travel on it. A great bargain. Very convenient way to get around and avoids much much uphill tramping.
Then the train back to Geneva Airport. Again all very efficient. The public transport in Switzerland is just amazing.. We found this out when Daisy was at uni in Neuchatel and it was born out again on this trip. Clean, efficient, comfortable. Not expensive in an expensive country.
So have had a wonderful weekend in Lausanne and I thoroughly recommend it as a weekend destination. Only about 80 quid return with Easyjet and an hour and a half flight. 40 mins from Geneva airport by train and there you are. Lots to do for the whole family. There are plenty of hotels at different price points and god knows you don’t have to eat as much as we did LOL.