Back in Switzerland: Geneva, Montreux, Chateau de Chillon, Zermatt

We arrived in Geneva very late at night, and luckily, just caught the last train leaving the airport and into the city. We arrived, hungry and wouldn’t you know it, there was a Chinese restaurant with karaoke right underneath our hotel, where we both enjoyed the most expensive (roughly 35 francs total), mediocre, Chinese meal ever.

The next morning, we allotted 2 hours to tour Geneva, which you wouldn’t think was enough time, but when your city’s claim to fame is a clock made out of plants:


and a fountain in the middle of a lake that they wasn’t turn on that day because it was too windy, the two hours outdoors on a cold day was plenty. And by the way, I just used the words windy, lake, and cold in the same sentence – not the greatest of combinations as you can imagine, right Waverly?



After strolling the streets and passing by dozens of high-end watch shops, we high tailed it back to our hotel, grabbed our luggage and were off to Montreux, a beautiful city on the shores of Lake Geneva.

The sun finally came out in the afternoon, and we perused the winter markets by the water:


walked for about a mile along Lake Geneva:


and eventually made our way to Chateau de Chillon:


which apparently is the most visited tourist spot in all of Switzerland – although I’m sure the garden clock in Geneva came a very close second.

We did a self guided tour of the inside of the castle, which was overall, very underwhelming. Sure, some of the views from the very top were nice:


but more than anything else, it was the setting of Chateau de Chillon that made it so enchanting:


The sun was setting, and it was time to head off. Instead of walking back to Montreux, we hopped on a bus, pretended to put money in the self service pay machine towards the back (those Swiss are so trusting) and crossed our fingers that no one would ask us for our fare ticket until our stop came up in 10 minutes.

We caught our train to Zermatt, which required a change along the way, but after 3 hours or so, we arrived. What’s neat about Zermatt is that there are no cars allowed. None whatsoever. It’s kind of a funny scene when all these tourists arrive at the train station with confusion and bewilderment on their faces with no cars, taxis or buses in sight.

Luckily, our hotel had arranged for their electric shuttle cart to come pick us up. Speaking of the hotel, this was the best hotel we’ve stayed at on our entire trip. We had a balcony with a partial view of the Matterhorn, which I was particularly excited about when the hostess pointed it out, even though it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t see a single thing. And after staying at a 100 year old hotel that was facing demolition in London, hostels during our France-Spain road trip, and a hotel in Zurich that I swear had prostitutes working in front of it, this place was our Four Seasons.

We ventured out into town in the freezing cold for some dinner and came upon a Fondue place, where afterwards I felt ill and swore off any form of melted cheese dipping for the rest of my life.



We ventured back out into the cold, and boy was it cold. You know it’s cold when the bar outside is made out of solid ice:


On our walk back to our hotel, I received a call on my cell phone and it was for a phone interview from Yahoo! (I had interviews lined up before the trip, but never got the emailed the schedule and luckily, Waverly told me to keep my phone on just in case. In fact, while in Paris, we were stopping at internet cafes so I could check my email and see when the times were and was stressing out because I hadn’t received anything.)

So because I can’t stand having another person in the room with me while I do phone interviews, I decided to talk for 40 minutes on our balcony, which really wasn’t the brightest thing to do considering it was well below freezing outside.

I think it was a combination of warm liquid cheese in my stomach and being outside in the cold, because I quickly became sick beyond belief. Coughing, sore throat, and fever set upon me, and needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night.