A little bit of these : Lausanne, Montreux, Maladiere and Ouchy

Just nice to know, Switzerland has 4 different languages: French, German, Italian and Rumantsch. This kinda explains to me why they didn't have time to study English :). We visited the "French" region of Switzerland and so I was always lost in translation. I was very glad that Mark speaks French - and it was quite impressive that he still speaks it pretty well after not being able to apply his French for ages.



Lausanne is more pleasant city, in my opinion. Although I found it difficult to walk with heavy luggage because it's hilly ( we went up and down the hill looking for our hotel), it was very attractive. We stayed in a very basic room at Hotel Ibis. It's reasonably priced compared to other hotels. The only thing I hated was wifi was only available in the lobby. We had to pay 25CHF for 24-hour Internet connectivity in our room.

Chateau de Chillon

They next day, we went to Montreaux, to visit Chateau de Chillon. This is the main highlight of our trip. The castle was very interesting and full of history. I was pretty happy with the photos I took of the castle and everything in it.


A miniature of Chateau de Chillon.


Chateau de Chillon.


Mark found a way to disable a knight.


A huge empty room in the castle.


The Armory Room.


Mark in tourist mode.

The castle was enormous and took us about 3 hours to see everything in it. Everything looked photogenic in my eyes that's why I had so much photos of the castle. I'll be sharing everything as soon as I upload it to the photoshack.

Walking back to Montreux
Walking 3km back to the train station was also fun. We took the lake side walk and found people swimming in the lake. We also found a cute snack bar where we hung out for a bit to get refreshment and fed the little birds. The whole lake stretch was so pleasing and serene. We also found a nice quiet romantic park during the golden hour, so we really took advantage of the photo takings.


The nice quiet park.


The cute but rowdy Mark.

Maladiere

We originally planned to get to the Olympic meuseum in Ouchy but got lost in search of it. We eventually end up in Maladiere, and found ourselves in under passes with lots of interesting and colorful graffiti.

Ouchy

I thought it was funny to have a town named Ouchy. Apparently, it is pronounced as "Ooshy" as opposed to "ouch!". It was a nice sunny afternoon when we visited Ouchy. There were nice parks in the area. There was also a port that offers tourists a ride around Geneva Lake, to the Chillon Castle, Evian, and to an area in France. We were thinking of spending the afternoon cruising for 2 hours but I was quite hesitant as I don't really like taking pictures from a boat.


Some quiet park near the port of Ouchy. This was my idea, but Mark stole the photo opportunity from me :P



Running out of things to do, we decided to take it easy and chill out by renting a pedal boat. We bought food, wine, olives and cheese to bring with us in that pedal boat. Pedaling to the lake, Mark suddenly thought of jumping in the lake to swim. And he actually did it even though the water felt freezing (brrrr...)


This photo looked like we were in a yacht, but this we were just at the back part of a bike boat.

Also, there were drinking fountains (literally) everywhere. Water's cold and Evian quality (since Mt. Evian is just across the lake)- yummy!



We wrapped up our Switzerland adventures by the park laying down on the grass under the bright sun. Mark had to rest for a bit, he was tipsy from the wine. It was expensive, but the two of us had fun. Someday we'll return more prepared with stuff :).

Now on to the next adventure...