Day 27: Vevey – Aigle

Today was a pretty relaxing day, and we did very little. We got up at 8am and enjoyed our breakfast of yogurt and muesli. We realized that we purposely bought a large bag of muesli thinking that we would need it at our next hostel as well, but this was not true. So we’re probably going to have to end up leaving our leftover muesli at the hostel as free food. Also, we’re going to miss the Swiss yogurt when we go home. Mary has become somewhat addicted to the vanilla yogurt here (it has vanilla bean in it!!), and Jeff has been enjoying trying a new and strange flavour every day. Yesterday he had lemon, today he had plum, and tomorrow he’ll have strawberry-lime. They have many different flavours and mixes here.

We spent a large amount of time this morning debating what to do today; our last day in Vevey. The 4 things we wished to do at some point were

1. Explore Vevey – something we hadn’t had a chance to do yet
2. Visit Lausanne
3. Visit the Lavaux; the grape growing regions, and do some wine tasting
4. Go to Aigle castle where there is a Wine Museum 

Today was very rainy and cold, so we decided to first go to the museum and see how things were looking when we finished up there. We left the hostel at around 9.15 to catch our train that left at 9.34. We clearly haven’t gotten used to being so close to the train station, so we rather rushed to get there, and ended up having 10 minutes to spare. The view of Lake Geneva, later this afternoon. It was pretty stormy.

 

The train ride to Aigle took maybe 20 minutes. Mary spent the time reading her book, and Jeff looked out the window. When we arrived, we made a quick trip to the WC (very strange – no toilet seats or soap, and blue lights… supposedly to prevent people from doing drugs), and then began the walk towards the castle. The town is very tiny, and we were quickly surrounded by fields of grapes (well, at least we assume that was what was on the other side of the 8 foot tall stone walls… Actually, once we got up to the castle, we confirmed that they were fields of grapes).

When we reached the castle, it was only 10.20, and the sign indicated that they didn’t open until 11, so we sat on some chairs in an area protected from the rain at the restaurant next to the castle. It opened at 10, but was empty. A mass of tiny children walked by while we were waiting. There were 50 children, probably grade 1 or 2 aged, and only 3 teachers/supervisors. Both Jeff and I found this a little strange; we’re pretty sure the ratios are a little better in Ontario? Anyway, one of the teachers went inside the castle, and we were worried that the little children would be in the castle being noisy, but then they all turned around and left. Perhaps they thought it opened earlier? Waiting for the castle to open:

When it was about 10 to 11, we headed into the castle entrance way. The ticket area was open, so we went in and browsed the brochures. The lady at the desk told us almost immediately that the museum was ready to go, so we might as well go in early. We presented our Swiss Passes, and headed into the castle courtyard.

The journey through the castle was pretty interesting, but the rooms were much less lavishly decorated than many of the other castles we’d visited. Supposedly, the castle was actually a wine museum, but it was really a mix between castle and wine museum. Most rooms had information displaying what the room might have been used for while it was an active castle, and then had exhibits demonstrating various aspects of wine making, such as pressing the grapes (we saw 3 styles of old wine presses), planting new plants through grafting, tasting wine, how terracing has evolved and where the terraces in the area came from, the specifics of the local grapes, and how the differences in soil can change the grapes. It was pretty interesting to notice some of the differences between grapes being grown here in mountainous area, and grapes grown in Ontario where the ground is mostly flat. We learned about planting grapes in rows across the mountain rather than in rows going up the mountain, and even planting them so that they grow up a pole rather than along a wire. An old wine press:

When we had finished going through the castle, it was around 1 o’clock. It was still raining pretty hard, and we debated doing something else interesting for the rest of the day, and decided to spend the rest of the day exploring Vevey. After spending some time walking through the vineyards to get “the perfect” picture of the castle, we headed back to the train station.

In Vevey, we walked through the extremely small old town. There was not much to see other than a fountain, clock tower, and some moderately interesting stores. It didn’t take us much time to finish our walk, and we were back to the hostel by 3. Jeff took the opportunity of being back early to do some bookkeeping of our expenses, and Mary began packing her stuff up for our trip to Geneva tomorrow. Then, around 4 o’clock, we headed off to the local Coop to get a bottle of wine, loaf of bread, can of tomato sauce, and a small bottle of Disney juice for children. (Mary dropped her 100ml bottle of body wash this morning and the bottom basically broke off. The Disney juice was the smallest bottle we could find at the store, 250ml, so we drank the contents and put the body wash in.) A fountain in old town Vevey:

Our dinner was quite relaxed, as no one else was around to crowd the kitchen. We had pasta again, with tomato sauce that Jeff thickened with a little corn starch, so it was pretty shiny. We also had a salad with grated carrot and balsamic dressing from the Coop.

After dinner, we cleaned up, then cooked the rest of our pasta that we will hopefully turn into some sort of a cold salad to have for dinner tomorrow at our hostel without a kitchen. We then headed off to do some investigating into the terrible music that we could hear from the terrace.

It seems that every night we’ve been here, there has been terrible music that we can hear from our room. Most of what we can hear is just the drum beat, which is continuous and rarely changes. Sometimes we can hear a slight melody overtop, but again, it usually repeats over and over. Anyway, it always seems to be coming from the direction of the casino, but it’s much too loud to not be outside. So we walked over to the other side of the casino, and sure enough, discovered a large park area with a stage set up in the middle, and signs everywhere. Supposedly there’s some sort of improvisation festival, and it’s supposed to go until past midnight this evening. Guess we’ll be sleeping with earplugs again tonight. (Sounds like rapping tonight.. either that or someone yelling really loudly while someone pounds out some loud bass notes, but really, what's the difference)

On our way back from our walk, we took a detour and found a small convenience store that was still open and bought an ice cream cone with the Movenpick ice cream that seems to be so popular over here. It was pretty tasty :).

Tomorrow, we head to Geneva, our last stop on our tour through Switzerland. We have 5 nights in Geneva, and then we’ll be flying home from the Geneva airport. We both agree that we’ll very much miss the mountains, birds, sounds of cow bells, and old buildings, but that it will be nice to be back somewhere familiar, where we can not be in a hostel, and where everyone speaks English. Mary has not been enjoying the French part of Switzerland much language-wise, since she finds it much easier to understand German than French. Everyone speaking English will definitely be a welcome change.