24 October - Montreux to Interlaken on the Golden Pass Line

Montreux
Our night in Montreux went well. After a long day Astrid had a decent sleep despite being in a new place. We were up fairly early to make the most of our sight seeing time in Montreux. Aside from dinner the previous night we hadn't seen much of it.  Our hotel included breakfast. Swiss style breakfast is Astrid's dream: croissants, tasty bread with butter and jam, cheese, cold meat and swiss yoghurt. All the things she loves!  She also had the staff doting on her and fetching her highchairs and milk.
Astrid at the hotel with mum and dad:

After breakfast we decided to walk around the town before catching the bus to Chillon Castle.  The buses and trains around the Riveria region are all free but Anto thought that instead of catching the bus up the really steep hills we should walk.  We figured we could work off some of our breakfast, so took off up the hills through the cute little houses and along cobblestone paths. The views were lovely on the way up. It was still quite foggy so you couldn't see much of the lake but it was quite picturesque.  We wound our way up and got a good leg workout, but also some nice photos.  There seemed to be a lot of terraced gardens and huge drains for all the mountain rain and storm water.
The streets and views of Montreux:

We headed back down to our hotel and caught the bus to Chillon castle.
The Château de Chillon (Chillon Castle) is located on the shore of Lake Geneva in the commune of Veytaux, at the eastern end of the lake, 3 km from Montreux, Switzerland. The castle consists of 100 independent buildings that were gradually connected to become the building as it stands now.
The oldest parts of the castle have not been definitively dated, but the first written record of the castle is in 1160 or 1005.[1] From the mid 12th century, the castle was home to the Counts of Savoy, and it was greatly expanded in the 13th century by Pietro II. 

We didn't have a lot of time so we did a bit of express tour wandering through. Astrid was napping in the carrier after sleeping most of the way through our morning walk and the bus trip down to the castle.  It was a little tricky negotiating some of the tight doorways and steep stone steps with an Astrid on your back but Anto managed well. The castle was really interesting. Lots of different rooms and it had been restored well.  It would have been an impressive place to live, right on the edge of the lake, except if you were one of the prisoners they kept in the dungeons.

We could have spent hours looking around but headed back to the hotel to collect our bags and grab a quick coffee before heading to the train station. We noticed that coffee is hideously expensive in Switzerland, to the point where beer and wine are both cheaper. Apparently if you are on a budget you need to just drink wine and eat chocolate!

The Golden Pass Line to Interlaken
We caught the bus to the train station, as although it was less than 1km, we had a lot of bags and it was free and easier than dragging the bags up the hill. We located our train and were pleased to find that the trains for the golden pass line were again clean, roomy and modern. We had big windows for viewing the scenery and plenty of room. The first leg was Montreux to Zweisimmen, through a number of small towns up through the mountains.  It was quite foggy so we were hoping to get to see something through the fog, given the whole point of the train ride was for the scenery. Other than a few sections the fog wasn't too heavy and the scenery was pretty impressive. Lots of extremely steep valleys, dotted with farms and chalets and covered in trees brilliant with autumn colours. You couldn't get bored of looking at the gorgeous scenery and we managed to get a few photos from the train, although they dont capture the beauty all that well.

We did have to laugh at the woman who deliberately slept the whole way through the trip, a bit silly since it was a scenic trip and she was in first class.  This leg was about 2 hours, although you could have gotten off earlier as some people were stopping at various towns along the way. On our pass we needed to go all the way through to Zweisimmen. Astrid was good for most of the trip but it dragged on a bit for her at the end and she was hungry and tired and refused to nap. The last 20 mins were a bit of a tanty fest but she calmed down once off the train and we walked around the cute town of Zweissimmen and found some (late) lunch.

Zwiesimmen
Zwiesimmen is a winter sports town and although the Ski season isn't far off it was pretty much deserted. We eventually found a cafe that was actually open for lunch. It was a little German place and did really good food. It is so weird that in Montreux they all spoke French and it was very French influenced. As we passed through more towns during the morning the names got more German and by the time we got to Zweisimmen they were all speaking only German and the food was German.

The train announcements in the morning were French then German, then 2 hours later were reversed! Our brains took a lot of retuning to start speaking German again. Given our German is way better than our French, it shouldn't have been as hard as it was for the first few hours.

Astrid enjoyed some schnitzel, chips and omelette for lunch and even conned some chocolate out of the waitress who was enjoying playing peek a boo with her.  She also entertained all the oldies who were in for their afternoon beers and coffees.  We had a walk around Zweisimmen and looked at all the nearby cows amongst the chalets. All the cows have bells and as you walk around all you can hear are cow bells clanging.

Back on the train for the second leg through to Interlaken, we came equipped with even more unhealthy snacks to keep the little miss occupied. She was pretty good on this leg and we started seeing more huge mountains appearing and it was obvious we were in ski country now, although now snow quite yet.  We made it into Interlaken just before 5pm and found our hotel which is very conveniently located across the road from the train station. No where near as nice as last nights hotel but it will do the job.

Interlaken
Interlaken is again in German influenced territory, so German is predominantly spoken and the food is very German. We found another brasserie for dinner and Astrid was again enterained by the waitresses who gave her puzzles and played games with her. She has eaten a lot of chips and bread today, but it's all food right?

She is currently happily sleeping in her cot after another long day. Tomorrow is a lot of train time up to Jungfrau Joch, were there will be snow.......

23 October - A foggy day in Geneva

After another bad nights sleep with a sick bubba, we were up very very pre-dawn in order to catch our train to Switzerland. We resembled pack animals, as we tried to get enough gear for 2 big people and a messy small person for 5 days, and said small person, to the metro station. At this point we vowed that for the next trip we would just wear the same clothes every day so we could take less stuff.

 We made it through 2 short metro trips to Gare de Lyon and found our TGV train to Geneva, we even managed to arrive in plenty of time for the 7am train. The train was big and roomy and we were in first class (courtesy of the Eurail pass) and with mostly empty cabin we got moved to a bay of 4 large seats so we could stretch out. Astrid was the only child in our section of the train and everyone knew about it. She still wasn't feeling well and was very tired from being sick and woken early. It ended up being a painful 3.5 hour trip. The train was lovely, roomy and comfortable but Astrid was having meltdowns and wouldn't sleep. The breakfast we got served distracted her for a bit. She ate her fill of croissants and figured out they are pretty good with butter and jam, but the rest of the trip she was inconsolable. Hanging on the train (Astrid style) before she got grumpy:

Aside from the tantruming toddler the journey was pleasant. The scenery was lovely. Once the sun finally came up (close to 9am) we got to see some French countryside with rolling green hills and lovely farm houses and some spectuacular cliff faces and roads built high into air running through the hills.

 We arrived in Geneva about 10.30am and lugged the considerable amount of luggage to be stored for the day at the train station. Once we had reduced the load down to a day pack and an Astrid in the carrier we set off the see the sights of Geneva. Unfortunately it was very foggy and very grey. It was also quite cool. Unlike Paris which seems mostly humid and not that cold, Geneva was at 14 degrees quite damp and cool and you did need a jacket.

 We headed down to Lake Geneva and did a bit of a walk around. It would have been spectacular if you could see very far. We did find the famous water jet and several fountains that were worth a look. The much hyped flower clock was currently being replanted, so there wasn't much to see there. We had to laugh at how pathetic it was though!

We noted that there are indeed A LOT of banks!! The buildings and feel of the city is very different to Paris. It is much more structured, more a mix of modern buildings and old together (but always the same height) which gives an interesting feel. It is also very quiet compared to the noise and bustle of Paris. People are also much more polite.

We have obviously been in Paris long enough now that the Swiss French sounds different enough from Paris French for us to notice. We are still terrible at French no matter the country though......

 We had a wander through the main shopping district and yes there are a lot of watch shops. If we had more time (haha) we could have gone watch shopping. Actually time wasn't the issue, so much as money. You could spend a fortune.

We sought out a cafe for lunch and ended up finding something decent. I got a goats cheese salad, Anto an omelette and salad and we ordered Astrid a croque monsieur. The waitress did think it was weird we ordered food for a baby and thought it was hilarious that she ate the whole thing. While Our lunch was nice, it was pretty much $50 AUD and that was the cheapest place we could find. You couldn't get a coffee for under about $6 AUD. We have found it possible to eat fairly cheaply in Paris, but Switzerland might literally break the bank.

 Post lunch we thought we would wander back to the lake and see if there was more to see. The fog had lifted a little and we managed to see a little more but we decided against doing a lake cruise as it just wasn't nice enough and we wouldn't see much. Instead we wandered through the shops some more. We decided to visit one of the many ice-creameries. Astrid liked the icecream until she saw croissants on offer and then had a tanty about not getting a croissant!


 We wandered the lake foreshore and boardwalk area and looked at the boats and very large swans. Astrid got good view of the swans as some had come out of the water to eat bread being fed to them by other tourists. Such graceful creatures look rather big and goofy on land. We also found a watch museum which was interesting, as well as about a bizillion waterside cafes that looked glorious but were hideously expensive.

 We found a supermarket/department store that was pretty impressive. The Swiss seem to do big supermarkets which is a nice change from the tiny corner stores in Paris. We did laugh at the enormous chocolate section in the supermarket. They have SO many brands of chocolate and even different flavours of Swiss brands you can get at home like Toblerone and Lindt. We did buy some to try and we are considering using an entire bag allowance on chocolate purchases. The chocolate is pretty well priced, so we might have to live on chocolate for the next few days.
The chocolate selection (and this photo doesn't get in all of it!):

 After a bit more wandering Astrid was getting pretty grumpy. She had a 30 min snooze in the carrier but no proper sleep all day so we elected to catch an earlier train to our next destination, Montreux. This was one of their regional commuter trains and it was still extremely, large, comfy, modern and clean. So far we are really impressed with the Swiss rail system. Astrid was again not a happy camper, her molars are cutting, she is sick and she was really tired. I think the whole carriage knew we were on board. We distracted her periodically with scenery and games but the hour-ish long trip felt longer.


 The scenery was very Swiss as we worked our way around the edge of Lake Geneva from Geneva to Montreux, through Lausanne and some smaller towns like Vevey. Lots of Chalet style houses, heaps of vineyards (mostly terraced on steep hills) and lots of little towns butting up to the lake edge. Lake Geneva is huge - 341m deep and 17km wide by 72km long.

 We got to Montreux and were impressed by how beautiful it is. Our hotel is also a winner. It is old and quaint (the lifts are scary, no walls and you can open the doors wherever you like) but the rooms are spacious and it feels quite Swiss. More on Montreux in the next blog but we had a little walk around and found some yummy Thai for dinner and got Astrid to sleep, ready for a big day of trains and town hopping tomorrow.