This day takes on the mantle of contender for best day of the trip.
We started out pretty simply, walking along the lake in Montreux sampling tasty local Swiss ice cream, called Movenpick, and taking photos of the lake and parks along the walk.
The main event for the day was a train ride, essentially straight up a mountain, to one of the higher peaks in the immediate area. We had hoped for great weather while we were here, but have been battling being right in the middle of the cloud layer, which has made visibility a bit limited.
Today, that cloud layer paid off because the train ride to the top of Rochers-de-Naye was above the cloud layer. I honestly don’t know the best way to describe how cool it was except that I’ll steal a line from Cris and say it was “straight out of Middle Earth.” For you non-geeks, that’s a Lord of the Rings reference. I hope that I’m not overstating things when I say that almost every direction we pointed the camera was postcard worthy.
Because there’s really no easy way to sufficiently describe purely amazing scenery in words, I’ll make you wait for the pictures that will come when we get home. I will tell you a little about some of the cool, quirky things we saw while we were up there.
While we were up there a troop of Alphorn players were serenading the visitors to the peak with a mix of traditional Swiss and religious themed songs. It was really cool to listen to them play and hearing the sound of the horns reverberated off the mountain walls across the valley.
Another cool thing about the setup of the peak is that they had a “Marmot Paradise” set up near the train station. I have to note the irony of calling it a marmot paradise when the marmots have been shipped in from all over the world to be pinned in in the Alps, but whatever, they were cute. I also have to point out that I’ve had a long standing love of my rain and windproof jacket by a company called Marmot; so we took pictures of marmots while carrying my Marmot.
After we came back down from the mountain, which we think was amazing if you hadn’t figured that out yet, we visited one of Cris’ favorite spots in the entire world. It is a park just off the lake walk in Montreux where they have sculptures of musical instruments mixed in with some truly impressive flowers and a willow.
Oh yeah, Cris’ obsession with postcards continues. Damage done today, almost $20 dollars. I will note that postcards are very expensive (just like everything else) in Switzerland.
