3 perfect days in Switzerland
3 perfect days in Switzerland
My tips on what to see, eat and drink while touring along Lake Geneva.
I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thank you for reading love, journalism. Putting on my old travel writing hat today to share some pictures and recommendations from our recent trip to Switzerland. We visited Italy too, the subject of a future separate post.
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I’m a lover of global travel and a believer that there’s nothing quite like experiencing new people, culture and scenery — embracing the unexpected and returning home with fresh appreciation for the familiar.
That’s been among my favorite working thesis for more than 25 years, and I’m happy to report it still has some juice after journeying across the Atlantic Ocean this month to Europe.
My wife and I spent a little more than a week navigating Switzerland, a speck of France, central Italy and concluding with an overnight layover in the UK that allowed for exploring around Windsor Castle. In the spirit of sharing some of my travelogue, I’ll focus here solely on Switzerland and perhaps inspire your own adventure with this tale of three perfect days spent around Lake Geneva, traveling via cars, trains and our own two feet in the shadow of snow-covered mountains.
There will be fondue.
The first new thing I learned on this trip: There’s nothing quite like arriving in a foreign country where a friendly face greets you at the airport. That somehow had never happened to me until Geneva, where longtime DC neighbors now live and welcomed us with a ride back to their home for breakfast and showers.
Jet lagged but dedicated to overcoming the urge to nap, we soon set out for a day of sightseeing via a commuter train that passed the headquarters for several United Nations agencies, the Red Cross and the World Trade Organization. Hopping off at a park just downhill from the oldest part of town, we heard the story of how, with the help of some scalding hot soup dumped onto the heads of enemy soldiers, Geneva gained its independence by successfully defending itself from the Duke of Savoy in 1602.
After huffing up more than 150 stairs to the towers atop Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Genève, we took in the city surrounded by ginormous peaks, and with Lake Geneva and its famous Jet d'Eau. I also saw one of the greatest bathroom views ever.
Did I mention fondue? Pretty much every restaurant in town had some. It was hard to pick. But our hosts insisted on a visit to the Bains des Pâquis, a popular lake swimming spot with a busy walk-up window restaurant featuring oysters, daily specials and pots full of the renown melted cheese accompanied by a basket of crunchy bread for dipping. Yum.
Early spring in Geneva felt special, and a couple of lunchtime bottles of white wine helped to lubricate those feelings. We kept the party going with a stroll along the lake into the Parc Mon Repos, repeatedly questioning our host on whether we were looking at the Alps (to the east) or the Jura mountains (to the west). That’s about the time we found an outdoor cafe for an Aperol Spritz chased with a cafe espresso.
The caffeine-alcohol mix did wonders for our jet lagged bodies. They also made the train ride especially fun back to the Geneva suburbs, where we capped off our first full day of vacation with take-out pizzas and another bottle of red wine.
Day two in Switzerland started with a hangover.
Our hosts took us on a short car trip across the border into France and the town of Ferney-Voltaire, the home in the middle of the 18th century to the writer and philosopher.
Our visit on an early Saturday afternoon coincided with market day. Thankfully, I listened to my nose and my gut, which said I should brave waiting in line for the rotisserie chicken accompanied by onions and potatoes packed into a paper bag after sitting beneath the dripping fat of the aforementioned skewered chickens.
The market had so many other delicacies, and sadly a human stomach is only so big. But the record can show our small group of four adults and two children consumed oysters, flat breads, pastries, fruit and many free samples before kicking around a football in the park and then heading back into Switzerland.
Capping off the Geneva portion of our stay, our hosts took us on a 20-minute drive north along the lake to Nyon. We snapped some more mountain pics and lingered at a packed cafe nursing a final round of Aperol Spritz. Then came goodbyes at the train station as my wife and I continued our journey.
Another one of the things I love most about travel is visiting important places I’d never heard of but that have been on the map for eons.
That’s the case with Montreux, where we arrived after about an hour-long ride from Nyon just as the sun was beginning to go down. We checked into the Grand Hotel Suisse directly across from the train station and with a balcony overlooking Lake Geneva. And then we followed Google’s dinner advice to take the short strenuous walk uphill into the older, historic part of town. A reservation-only cafe with stellar reviews turned us away but nearby was Restaurant du Pont, a tiny bistro that served up fresh local lake trout.
We woke up Sunday without a hangover and no real game plan.
Originally, Montreux had drawn us in because of something called the “chocolate train.” It is really a thing. But the logistics of a day-long excursion seemed a bit too challenging given we had just the single full day scheduled to be in town, plus rain and overcast skies meant likely obscured views of the mountain terrain.
That’s how we found our way to Queen.
The famous British rock band came to Montreux in 1978, attracted to the Mountain Studios housed inside of a small casino overlooking the lake. The place was already famous among their fellow countrymen musicians because of Switzerland’s more lenient tax laws and for inspiring the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”. Queen bought the recording studio, and it’s where they made much of their music all the way through lead signer Freddy Mercury’s death in 1991. The site is now a small free museum, and we spent more than an hour inside reading song lyrics scribbled on hotel stationary, admiring the band’s costumes on display in glass cases and fiddling with an experimental sound board in the same studio where they made their magic.
Bohemian Rhapsody conveniently stuck in my head, we strolled along a lakeside path toward the Chillon Castle. But first, lunch: Le Cabanon de Mam’s, a small hut of a cafe perched on the side of Lake Geneva, enticed up for a pitstop with its chalkboard sign advertising fresh soup.
Then to the castle, where we absorbed more than 1,000 years of history in a couple hours. That meant contemplating the imprisonment of the monk François Bonivard down in the building’s bowels during the early 16th century and agreeing the place would definitely be worth returning in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Back in Montreux for our final dinner in Switzerland, Google steered us right again, this time to Restaurant le Museum. Meat eaters like us rejoiced at the house specialities: a do-it-yourself filet medallion grilling experience and a side of scalloped potatoes that were the perfect marriage of sliced potato and fondue.