Last weekend Fabri and I took an early anniversary trip to Switzerland. We had a free weekend and we wanted to go somewhere new and decided on Lake Geneva. A friend of Fabri's suggested Lausanne because it's more beautiful than Geneva. Lausanne is also home to the Olympics Museum, so we found a good deal on a strange hotel and set off. Lausanne was only 3.5 - 4 hours by car and it's a very pretty drive up through Valle d'Aosta. There is a tunnel from Valle d'Aosta (Italy) to the Valley of the Grand St. Bernard (Switzerland), but we decided to take the pass over the mountain at 2,500 meters. Just FYI it's COLD at 2,500 meters, even in August.
We arrived in Lausanne at about 8:30 on Friday night. We checked in to the
Agora Hotel and then we headed down to the lake to find somewhere to eat. I want to take a minute to talk about the crazy decorating of the Agora Hotel. It's like 1960s modern futuristic. So if you want to pretend to be a Mad Man in a "state of the art" hotel, check it out.
Anyway, we went down to the lake and found a country music concert with a bunch of stands for food and cowboy hats. I wish we could have stayed there, but we had no Swiss francs and I doubt the kiosks accepted credit card. So, not knowing where an ATM was, we walked on looking for a restaurant. We eventually settled on a cafe. The food was all right (I liked mine more than Fabri liked his), but it was sooooo expensive and the wine was VERY expensive and NOT good. Oh well, that's the thing about traveling, it's not easy to know the good restaurants.
Lausanne is built on a steep hill rising up from the lake. Thankfully, there is a lovely metro system that runs up and down the hill. It would have been very difficult without it. After dinner on the lake, we took the metro up to "the Flon" which is a zone filled with clubs and bars. We checked out the King Size Pub that Fabri read about and had a few pints. One of the bar tenders was crazy and they were playing Linkin' Park every other song which was not so good, so we left and walked around a bit before heading back to the hotel.
On Saturday we woke up and took the metro up to the cathedral. The view of the lake from up there was quite beautiful, as was the cathedral. Next we saw a really well put together Darwin Exhibit in the natural history museum. Then we walked around a market and the pedestrian shopping area. I found it peculiar because there were no sales. Apparently the Swiss aren't happy unless it costs a lot. We bought some souvenirs including Swiss cheese and Swiss chocolate and headed to Les Brasseurs brew pub for lunch. We had "Swiss pizza" aka flammekueche. Say that 10 times fast!
For dinner Saturday night we decided on a French brasserie located in a 4 star hotel and recommended in the tourist guide of Lausanne. We had escargots, smoked salmon, beef tips & grilled lamb and it was all delicious. So as not to repeat the mistake of the night before, we went with an Italian wine we are VERY familiar with, Dolcetto.
Sunday morning we went to the Olympics Museum. The International Olympic Committee are headquartered in Lausanne. My favorite parts were the medals and torches from every modern Olympics. They also had Greek artifacts depicting the sports back then.
Then we picked up the car and headed back up the valley and up the mountains. We had fresh chanterelle mushrooms (me with pasta, Fabri with potatoes) for lunch in a restaurant at 2,000 meters and then we finished the climb and went to Ruffia to pick up the Olney puppy. Happy early anniversary to us!
(Just for reference, our anniversary is on August 16)
