Day47 Lausanne to Montreux- Grapes

We woke again early this morning and had a good breakfast at the Lausanne hostel. We both had cereal with milk – something I rarely have at home but had been desiring for a while. The coffee was bottomless – bonus.

Morning Update Day47

Disappointingly the mountains across the lake were shrouded by cloud so we missed the magic hours for photography, but throughout the day the clouds lifted and we drew closer with every step to the steep peaks of the Alps.

But after walking for a few hours out of the sprawling Lausanne suburbs (the rich Riviera side of town this time), the landscape changed from suburban to vineyards. For the remainder of the day until the last couple of hours we were surrounded by Swiss vineyards.

What? You’ve never had a Swiss wine? Well that’s because they don’t export the stuff. As they say “it’s just too good to send away”.

Anyway the vines were loaded with fruit – the harvest must be coming soon. The vineyards grew ever steeper with the vines being terraced to capture every last ray of sunlight. Vineyards of ripe black Pinot Noir mixed with a golden yellow grape variety known as Chasselas spread for miles and miles.

Now today’s journey was around lake Leman so you’d expect it to be quite gentle and flat, right? Well I did. Actually I did know that the path went up and down just a bit into a village or two. But boy did I underestimate it. Today was both long and tough. The ups and the downs were so steep that my knees were aching before lunchtime.

We did stumble onto a wine tasting tent around noon. The gentleman there gave us a tasting of two of the wines for free. He gave it to us as a gift toward our journey which was very nice. We also asked where the nearest grocery was and he told us it was about 45 minutes away. I forgot to factor in that travel time was by car. Mark kept pointing out all the restaurants we passed. I was sure we were almost to the grocery store. Well, by 2:30 pm we finallly had our lunch supplies.

We ate sitting by the lake and enjoyed people watching. It was a beautiful day after all so there was a buzz of activity. Kids and families were out playing in the sun and water sports of all flavors thrived. The area is known as the Swiss Riviera after all. You can tell by the video though that we (I) was getting pretty tired.

We stumbled into our final destination of Montreux still without a place to sleep. In “desperation” we stopped by a hotel and begged for a cheap room. Well….we for a room. It was at the discount price of 170SF ($187/night). Sadly this was actually a decent price. To make up for it we had ramen for dinner ($35 from the supermarket). Folks…I kid you not, this place is crazy expensive.

We did get treated to some awesome sunset views.

Tomorrow we leave the “Swiss Riviera” and enter the gorge valley. The adventure continues.