Switzerland

We arrived in Lausanne late afternoon and walked to the nearby guesthouse - and were pleasantly surprised.

View from our hostel room window.

The next day we explored the city. We traversed a suggested walking path - which had appeared flatter on a piece of paper. After scaling the streets (in the 34 deg C day), we visited the Cathedral and Chateaux and enjoyed the atmosphere of various streets. After replenishing with Starbucks, we took the tram-bus to the foreshore of Lake Geneva to have our late picnic lunch. We sat and watched the Volleyball fanatics run around in the sun, and then visited the nearby Roman Ruins before heading back to the hostel. During the night we experienced our first sleepless hour (at 11 pm) of continuous car horn honking after whoever won the latest match of Euro 08 football.

Exploring the streets of Lausanne

Our last day involved a day trip to Montreaux - half an hour away from Lausanne by train. It was a glorious day and we walked along the banks of Lake Geneva to the Chateaux Chillon. We decided to have a look around inside and spent 3 hours wandering around - it was extremely interesting and very well restored. We dipped our tired feet in the lake on the way back to the train station. Also, we observed youth dipping more than their feet - i.e. taking a rolling jump into the lake on scooters. We left them to it...

The horn honking occurred again this night and from various yeling we assume Spain won the match. This of course left us with only 4 hours of sleep for our train the next morning. Thus we ended our europe section in true traditional backpacker style of lack of sleep and 10 minute border train changes.

l

R

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and Judy