Today was a bit of a down day, and thankfully did not involve lots of train travel. We slept in until 8 am, and then had a leisurely breakfast. We left the hostel around 9:13 and only just caught our train at 9:22. The train dropped us at a pretty pathetic looking stop, and we were the only ones that got off there. We walked along the lake for a few minutes, and arrived at Chateau Chillon.
Bear was invisible today:
This castle had its first foundations build in the 11th century, and was gradually built up over the 12th and 13th centuries. It never experienced any battle, because both times there was any threaten of attack, the inhabitants escaped via a secret door out the back of the castle, facing the lake. The castle was built up to make it extremely difficult for anyone to attack it: it was built on a tiny island with water surrounding it, so to even get near it you would have to go up steep cliffs, and then there were a series of protective walls and various technologies (arrow slits, loop holes, etc) built into the castle. So, I’m unsure why they didn’t defend it when given the chance… A view of the outer castle wall.
We followed a self guided tour through the castle that showed off all the various rooms, and explained how they were used during various periods of time. We saw all sorts of banquet rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, latrines, washing rooms, armouries, prisons, etc.
Mary in a tiny passageway:
An overview look from the keep:
When we had finished going through the castle, it had been almost 2 hours and was nearly noon. We walked a little bit up the coast to get a picture from one angle, then began walking in the opposite direction towards Montreaux. The picture from the south shore:
We debated the worth of going to visit a castle in Aigle, which is surrounded by vineyards. We eventually decided to spend the afternoon walking along the coast of Lake Geneva back to Vevey instead. The train to Aigle would have been at least an hour round trip, and we’re getting a little tired of so much train travel. As well, it would have complicated our afternoon and perhaps made it difficult to get groceries before all the stores closed.
We stopped on a bench on the way along the coast and had our lunch: bread with nutella and some fresh cheese from yesterday. The walk was very pleasant until we got into Montreaux, and continued being pleasant until we passed Clarens. But then, we were forced to walk along a very busy road, with no shade, and the sun was hot. We came across a bus stop during our walk, and quickly decided to take the bus the rest of the way. It was easily 3 o’clock by this point, and we were pretty hot and tired. We hopped on the bus when it came 5 minutes later.
During our walk through Montreaux, we came across a number of interesting things, which slowed down our walking:
A tribute to Freddy Mercury, who lived in Montreaux during the last few years of his life, and recorded his last album here.
Some work was being done on filling in the shoreline with big rocks. The big piece of machinery was sitting on a barge and lifting massive rocks off the boat and placing them gingerly on the shoreline. The operator seemed to be doing a large scale puzzle, and took his time in finding the perfect fit for the shape of the rock.
We saw a number of palm trees during our walk, which made us feel as though we were somewhere exotic.
The view from our lunch spot. We're still confused how anyone gets out to the anchored boats without going for a swim.
A mother duck with her babies taking a nap.
We had been on the bus for a very short period of time when we could see a coop next to the road. Convinced that this was the Coop in Vevey, Jeff suggested that we hop off and do our grocery shopping. Unfortunately, we did not realize until we were off the bus that we had barely gone anywhere, and the store was one in another town. So we sat for another 5 minutes or so to catch the next bus going our way. There was a lot of construction along the road, and the bus driver was clearly frustrated with all the manovering he had to do to get around it all. I have only respect for someone that can drive a double length bus through the mess that we went through today.
Eventually, we arrived in Vevey, so we got off the bus and went to the Coop to do our groceries. We spent 20fr on groceries today, which was much more than we’ve ever spent! But, we got food for at least the next 3 days.
We walked back to the hostel, and relaxed for a little while. All that walking had tired us out! At around 5 o’clock ,we headed up to the reception area and started a load of laundry (in a TINY machine), and got dinner cooking .This evening we had penne with tomato sauce and grated carrot, and a salad made with romaine lettuce (first time we’ve seen it for sale!) and grated carrot. Jeff made a lovely salad dressing with olive oil, lemon, and a squeeze of mustard. We sat out on the terrace to eat, and enjoyed listening to music coming from another building. We’re not sure whether it was Karaoke at the local casino, a recital in the church nearby, or a talent show in the school across the way. Mostly, we heard piano versions of pop music that we recognized as Beatles, Abba, Supertramp, Celene Dion, Village People, etc. A few had audible vocals. Our dinner conversation mostly focused on trying to figure out what the next piece was.
After dinner, we cleaned up, put in another load of laundry, and hung the first one up to try in our room. We have fashioned quite the apparatus using two of our clothes lines connected together, and then attached to the window on one side of the room, and the radiator on the other. It seems to be doing a lovely job of holding our clothes, but getting to the closet on the other side of the line is a bit of a challenge.
Tomorrow we plan on going to Zermatt . We were not planning on going there originally, since it is pretty far out of the way (yay, more train….not), but we’ve heard such good things about it from everyone that we think we must go.
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