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Published: June 23rd 2011
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Bonjour! I was in the french speaking part of Switzerland visiting my aupair friend Samantha. She actually lives in St. Maurice, a smaller village. I managed to get to the train station in her hometown by myself with the timetables she sent me and a friend from the airplane. The people in Switzerland are all very helpful, not just some - like everyone in some way. A lot of people in Switzerland aren't actually Swiss, many come to study there, work or marry...Anyways, another guy on the train let me use his phone to text Sam about what time to meet me at the station, again very nice. I don't know too many places where people are so helpful, hopefully Canada would be one of those places though because I am very proud of where I come from (which is shown off with the flags on my backpack, sweater and t-shirt). Anyways, it was a nice start to the holiday in Switzerland although I could see that travel was expensive. It cost me the equivalent to $45 CAD just to do the 1.45 hr journey.
Moving along, Sam and her sister Sherley came to pick me up at the
HOw is this for a view?
Switzerland is gorgeous, the pictures really do not do the scenery justice but here goes anyway. station. sam hasn't changed much at all, still seems like just the other day that we were aupairs together, trying to meet up somewhere as she was living in another town quite a ways from me. We had pizza that her other sister had made at school, it was quite tasty and it was nice to see that other people have good appetites! Enjoyed a chocolate cone icecream too, no dieting yet! With that being said, I am really really missing my vegetables, salads and such. Potatoes are only one vegetable and hardly account for that much nutrition in a diet. I really have to wonder how it is that Europeans apparently live longer than North Americans when they smoke, drink and eat like they do?
Hmm, with that wondering aside, settled into stayin gin Sam's room and we had a late night watching Step Up 3. In the morning we got up at a decent hour and I ate breakfast before we headed to Montreaux to see the Chateu de Chillon, the famous castle. We got lovely weather with a sunny day and had some excellent photo shoots! The castle paper guide was good and offered a
La Suisse - city of montreaux
I was hoping the wind would blow in the direction for the flag to show the whole red cross, yay - it worked out pretty good in this picture. bit of information about each room that we entered, the slits that were used for windows did not offer much light but I understood the reason for the small size with respect to danger, protecting the castle, etc. Nowadays it would be nuts for that sort of thing though. The whole castle was stone throughout, some of the stairs were pretty sketchy! The 1 way stairs were insane, you could wait 15+ mins just to get up or down or around. Yikes! Luckily there were no timeframes, we could spend as long as we liked....and we did.
We went for lunch after a walk from the Chateau (Castle) to the downtown area of Montreaux. I had my first falafel at 8;90 Francs, one of the cheaper options. I could see that my money was going to go fast between the train tickets and the entrance costs, food, etc. Luckily I got to stay at Sam's house for free! It was a nice break to sit down and eat and then we were back at the walking - this time on the sort of boardwalk of the lake. I got some beautiful pictures and views there. Interesting note: on the
A view from the top - St. Maurice
after 458 stairs and some more hill climbing, we arrived to see this view and much more! garden and sidewalk fences there were music notes! I thought it made it look really cool. Also, Switzerland is very clean,m you don't see garbage laying around and the gardens-parks are immaculate. It is a beautiful place to visit, just expensive. We did some shopping - of course, what would a day be without the shops? Sam and I have a tradition of buying matching tops so we did that again, I also got a great deal on some pants and a belt, even with the converstion to $CAD. Yay, I always love a bargain! After a full day of exploring, walking, shopping, hearing the sounds of the little city and seeing the sites, we caught the train back to St. Maurice where we also bought our train tickets for the next day, Wed. The train ticket for that day was $70 CAD. AHH!
After dinner which was traditional for the Swiss – boiled potatoes with cheese fondue with bread. The cheese fondue was really neat because they had sort of like a hotplate with a top and middle. The top was the big pot of boiled potatoes and the middle was where you put your platter
of cheese. When the cheese was bubbling all over, you could scrape it out. I liked eating it on top of the potatoes, otherwise I found the pots rather dry. The cheese was good, not very strong compared to the Spanish cheese I ate. Hmm, so after the dinner, I was bad and ate another chocolate cone icecream! They are just so delicious. Well, I worked it off because we climbed up one of the mountains in town to visit a Chapel. Sam had forgot how many stairs there were and it took us such a lot of energy (embarrassingly enough) so I chose to count the stairs on the way down. There were at least 458 (one way) according to my counting and then of course you have the side of the mountain hiking where there are no stairs to count, just swaying side to side on a mountain...it was a lovely view of St. Maurice and beyond. Sam is very easy to be around, relaxing and totally chilled out, we had some good laughs doing this walk together. I finally had internet so that was exciting to try and update prior parts of my vacation – i have
decided to give up on updating before Switz. Because there is just too much happening!
Will write about my second day tomorrow. Bed time now. HUgs - chloe
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