Relax, that's the end of the French lesson for this post (well, maybe). In case you need a translation for what's already been said, I am currently in the country of moutains, cows and chocolate... Switzerland!
I arrived yesterday night, very happy to be greeted by my mum at the airport who flew half way around the world just to visit me. We are staying at a family friend's house in Lausanne, which is minutes away from the beautiful city and lake of Geneva.
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| The adorable |
I am loving staying in a real Swiss house where there is a spiral staircase twisting up three floors, a bomb shelter, no lights in the bathroom, my bedroom in the attic and an incredible view of the French Alps from the balcony.
Yesterday, mum, my aunty Wendy and myself took the super high speed train into Geneva for a bit of a wander around the old arcades and to suss out the famous shopping of Switzerland. I quickly learnt that the part of Switzerland we are in is French speaking and had to brush up on le peu francaise je sais (the little French I know). Quite a few times I've had to step in and save mum and Wendy from
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| beautiful old train station |
I love, love, love listening to people talking in French. I think it is such a lovely language and when I can actually understand what they are saying my heart swells to bursting point and I am thankful for all those days Ms Leontiadis insisted that if I was going to talk about food, Gossip Girl and how much I hated school in class that I must do it in French. We walked past a group of school children and listening to their melodic voices chatter away, I couldn't help but think of Madeline !
Simply walking through the city of Geneva provides some beautiful sights itself. From the remains of the massive wall that used to surround the city in order to keep the plague ridden citizens away to the Church of St Paul, the street signs named after famous Swiss people to the fountains scattered around the streets. The every present mountain tops of the Swiss and French Alps (depending in which direction you look!) which can be seen in a distance provide a particular strange yet magnificant juxtaposition to have a bustling city so close to natural beauty.
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| myspace shot |
Today, with the help our of trusty ex-pat tour guide we made our way to two famous castle of Switzerland. The first- Le Chateau de Gruyère had a very quaint 'Old Town' surrouding it that left you feeling like you had stepped back in time.
Rooms in the castle had been made up in period settings, with original pieces still on display- including walls which had grafitti on them from the 1500's!
The views from absolutely everywhere around the castle gardens where breath taking. It was almost too beautiful at times to look at and more than once I got goose bumps just looking down into the rolling green valley next to the snow capped moutains.
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| totally reminds me of Prince Eric's castle in The Little Mermaid! |
After stopping at a boulangerie for croissants for lunch, we made out way two the second destination of the day - Chateau de Chillon. Located on the very edge of Lake Geneva, the incredible scenery surrounding castle made me want to actually leave the comfort of my modern, acconditioned shopping centres and high rise buildings and move here instead.
We ended the day by wandering through a lakeside market in trendy village of Montreux where we also saw the tribute to Freddie Mecury statue and got to listen to more Swiss people converse in the language of love.
On a side note- I promised I would put this in the blog because it pretty much was a major highlight of my day- the true to form Swiss truck driver who drove about ten kilometers in the emergency lane just so sneaky cars couldn't cut on up the inside, provided us with much entertainment with his Robin Hood ways whilst stuck in a highway traffic jam for an hour.
