We had a leisurely morning on October 6 looking around Interlaken. There were a number of shops that sold very elaborate cuckoo clocks and we debated whether we would like to get one one to bring home. In the end, we decided that they didn’t really fit into our house and that we were cuckoo enough without having a clock sound the time every hour.
We caught the Golden Pass railway train at 1.30 pm for our last leg of the journey to Montreux. Again, we had spectacular mountain scenery and quaint little villages along the way.
We reached Montreux, on the shore of Lake Geneva at about 4.30 pm and found that we had moved into the French speaking part of Switzerland and well away from the German speaking section that we had come from on the other side of the mountain. Our hotel was right across the road from the station.
Today ( October 7), we caught the bus along the lake to Chillon where the famous castle is situated that Lord Byron visited in the 19th century. Our hotel accommodation includes free travel on the local public transport system so we might as well us it! The castle is an intact Medieval home and the displays provide a very full description of life in the castle – everything from washing and bathing through to table manners. It was very interesting and the audio guide was well worth the money.
We caught the bus back to Montreux for a late lunch in a cafe on the lake promenade and then went for a stroll along the promenade by the lake. For many years, Montreux was home to Freddy Mercury – the lead singer in the group ‘Queen’ and he is remembered by a rather fine statue near the market place on the lake front.
By then it was time to go back to the hotel and collected our bags to set off for the station. There is a train every hour that goes direct to Geneva Airport. It took us about 1:15 minutes to get to Geneva and then another seven or eight minutes to the airport. We couldn’t help but overhear a young American student, with a loud voice, lamenting her unsure relationship with her boyfriend named Leo to a number of her friends that she was calling on her mobile phone. These calls wee interrupted by a call from ‘Mom’ who was given a very different version of the story. Perhaps the young lady and Leo will get everything together and continue their relationship one day.
The scenery on the way to the airport was very different from anything else that we had seen in Switzerland. This area has a mild climate and it is especially good fro growing grapes. Therefore, every hillside was covered in vineyards.
I started my stopwatch as we got on the train and stopped it as we arrived at the gate at Tullamarine airport. Our trip home via train to Geneva, then plane to London, Singapore and finally Melbourne took 29 hours, 45 minutes and 40 seconds.
