The next day we enjoyed a quality hostel breakfast and then went to meet Richard and Bernard at the train station. After stopping at migro's for food, we walked up one of the hills to see some castley thing (I really can't be bothered to look up the name of these things...do your own research if you care). It was cool because there was a small chapel inside that was pretty old and had a lot of the original interior. There was a pipe organ that somebody was playing, pretty sweet. We also got a nice view from up there, we could even see our hostel.
The town of Sion
The castle that we visited
Lindsey, Tommy and Bernard (behind to the left is the castle that we didn't visit)
Richard in front of a nice view of Sion.
So after our sightseeing we started out on a short hike. Unfortunately, the hike wasn't very well marked and we only had a very undetailed map. We started and ended in the right towns, but I'm not sure that we followed the official "hike" route. Anyways, it was still a nice walk, we were walking among vineyards the whole time. The place where we stopped for lunch was a cool vineyard grapey shelter (I'm sure it has a real name, but who knows what it is). After the hike we took the train back to our hostel and chilled/got ready to go out for the evening.
Lunch in a vineyard
I call it "Sion through the grapes".
We hopped on the train to Lausanne (only an hour away) and wandered around the city a bit looking for a cool place to eat. Let me tell you, I think wandering around Lausanne was more work than the hike we did, because it's a really hilly city. Anyways, after a bit of looking we stumbled across this really cool crepe place that was reasonably priced. We sat a had some wine (from a region across the lake) and then got dinner. The menu was all in French, so we had a fun time trying to figure out what all the choices were (with some help from the waitress). It didn't help that they all had strange names that had nothing to do with what actually came on the crepe. I ended up getting some sort of goat cheese and spinach crepe (really yummy!), and everyone else found something that they enjoyed. For Tommy, this was crepes and ice cream. After dinner, we all decided that we should try the dessert crepes too, I shared a caramel/apple crepe with Richard. Tommy got another dessert crepe (man, Vance would not have been impressed with Tommy's poor dinner decisions, lol). Lindsey and Bernard shared some sort of Flambe crepe, which was cool because the waitress came and lit it on fire. After dinner, we decided that we didn't have time to go anywhere else (since we had to catch the last train back to Lausanne at 12:30) so we just walked around/tried to find the train station. We thought it would be easy, since we walked uphill all the way there and then should just have to continue downhill on the way back. But something strange had happened and we had to ask for directions. This was fun, because the girl didn't speak English so we had to use our combined French powers to interpret her directions. We eventually made it to the station (though, I confess, we had to check a couple maps on the way), and then got back to the hostel. Tommy saved us from a giant gross hostel spider, and then I drifted off to sleep to the uneasy thoughts of spiders crawling all over my face.
Sitting by a fountain in Lausanne.
The next day we woke up semi-early in order to do a 5-7 hour hike. We realized that we hadn't planned well, since we would have to carry our bags with all our stuff on the whole hike. We realized that we REALLY hadn't planned well when we didn't know what bus to get on to get to the beginning of the hike. After a series of trains and waiting (there are fewer trains and busses on sunday) we realized that we would not have enough time to complete the hike and catch transportation home without running the whole way. We admitted defeat, and just took the train to the end hike destination, lol. This was a tiny little town called St Gengolf which was right on the boarder between Switzerland and France. We walked across the boarder (which was marked by a bridge and a random sign) and had some crepes (mmmm, more crepes....) and then went swimming in Lake Geneva (which is also called Lac Leman in some places). It's a nice lake, really clear water. Lottts of fish (I didn't like them swimming by my feet).
Eating crepes in France.
Swiss-French boarder. Wow, a boarder less guarded than the Waldshut boarder!
Swimming in Lake Geneva
We found out that there was a ferry to different towns around the lake, so decided to take this instead of the train for some variation. It's still under the SBB, so my GA got me on for free (woot!). We traveled around the lake and got off in Montreux, and walked around there for a little bit, it's another pretty lake-side city.
All of us on the Ferry. Richard, Bernard, Tommy, Lindsey and me.
Chillion Castle
We returned to Lausanne to get on the train, and happened to run into George, Olivier and some other praktikants from Baden (strange coincidence!). They had been in Geneva for the weekend, so we traveled the rest of the way back home with them.
It was a really random trip, but ended up being lots of fun. It was nice to finally see some new areas in Switzerland, I really like the area around Lake Geneva. I would like to come back to Lausanne and stay in the city (there seems to be lots of cool night places to go to), and would also like to spend a day in Geneva sometime and see all the UN stuff.
Thanks to Bernard for some of his pics!
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