Monday, Day 3 in Switzerland

I had a pretty specific agenda for the Swiss adventure. We were sidetracked by Martigny and the Combat des Reines, but on Monday we got back on track with a trip to Chillon Castle, as planned. We got up, had our morning croissants with espresso, and headed toward Montreux in our Nissan Micra.

Morning cafe and croissants in the Swiss sunshine--a real pleasure.

We ate at a touristy cafe directly across from the Castle, called Cafe de Chillon or something similar. The food was surprisingly good, but yes, expensive. Boyfriend, not usually the one to worry about money, didn't want to order one of the specialites de la maison. I said, come on, we're on vacation. Get the steak if you want. I don't remember what he got, actually, but I had duck breast with fig sauce, sauteed seasonal vegetables, and spatzle (I am inspired to make spatzle now). We also drank a Swiss soda called Rivella which is actually made from dairy whey, though you'd never guess so. 

Chillon Castle is really something else. You can imagine what the hubbub of the place must have been like. It's bigger on the inside than you think it will be. There were actually dungeons, and you can just imagine how miserable they were. There were a lot of descriptive signs and smaller exhibits, as in every museum. I mean, I never felt like I was anywhere other than in a museum. But it was pretty damn neat. There were about a dozen beautiful little courtyards. They were my favorite thing.

Chillon from outside.

A dungeon/storage space.

Beautiful views of the shores of Lake Geneva from inside the castle.

More beautiful views.

The Judgement Room.

One of the many courtyards.

We were still very tired on Monday. We went home and ate prepared refrigerated meals that we bought at a grocery store called Coop. I had delicious gnochi. Boyfriend had some kind of chicken and spatzle meal. They were delicious. All food, even the food that isn't supposed to be that good, the stuff you find in grocery store fridges and on gas station shelves, is delicious in Switzerland. I don't know how they're all so fit. Lots of outdoorsy stuff, I guess. So after our microwaved meals were eaten, we fells asleep while watching international television. And that was Monday.

Sunday, Day 2 in Switzerland

I was supposed to write this yesterday, but I went to Station 2 and had a couple beers and a veggie burger for dinner, and thus I lost all motivation to do anything. While I digested that enormous greasy meal, I did watch The King's Speech. It WAS a good movie! I wonder if the book it's based on is any good.

Anyway, the topic of this post is DAY 2 IN SWITZERLAND.

Based on something the owner of the resort told us, we decided to drive to a nearby city called Martigny to see the Combat des Reines. This is a festival involving cows that fight in an ancient Roman amphitheater to display their dominance. The winner gets a sort of parade and a very big bell to wear around her neck. It's not like Spanish bull fight or anything. It's what the cows would do naturally in their pastures. So this sounded like a fun time and we wanted to check it out.

Well we got to Martigny and found a public parking lot. There was a map in the lot, and so we stared at it for a while but didn't understand where anything was. After a few minutes, all these people had gathered in a big group in a parking lot. A little train that was not a train but more like tractor pulling some rolling cars for passengers, pulled into the parking lot, and the crowd of people loaded into the cars. I said, "let's get on the train!" Boyfriend was hesitant, but he followed me.

I figured the train was going to take us to the Combats des Reines, right? Well, we rolled through a beautiful medieval city center and up a mountain. It was a little scary because the turns were very tight and we were riding on little trailers behind a tractor. But it was fun. And when the train stopped, we were at a medieval fortress on top of a mountain. The train tractor driver told me that he'd be back to pick everyone up, so we got out to explore the castle.

When we got inside the castle, there was huge crowd of people and some of them were coming out from inside the castle with plates of food. We were hungry at this point, and I was down with eating some of the food, but we really did not understand what was happening in this place. There was a sign that said the plate of food was 25 francs (that's like $22). People were eating cheese, bread, pickles, grapes, roasted chestnuts, and they were drinking wine. Boyfriend wanted to leave, and I couldn't really argue for why to stay other than it seemed like fun to me, so we left and waited for the train to come back. This all sounds like a waste of time, and mostly is was, but riding on the little tractor train was kind of fun, we got to see the medieval city center, and the views from the top of the mountain were pretty impressive.

View from the top of the mountain in Martigny.

We rode the train back down the mountain and stared at the map again for a while and walked in the direction where the believed the Combats des Reines to be. We arrived at a big gate in front of a space with all these buildings and food stands, and it looked like a festival was happening inside. Again, we didn't understand what was going on. It cost some money to go in. I don't remember how much, 12 francs maybe. So we paid the money at the gate and we went in. Inside, we bought some roasted chestnuts (chestnuts are a big deal here apparently), and we ate them. They were good. Then we wandered around the buildings and tents and realized that this was not where we wanted to be. They were selling things, like flooring, kitchen appliances, telephone service, wine, and an endless number of products that we did not want. We left, grumpy that we had paid money to get in. We were also hungry and thirsty which made the grumpy factor even worse.

Well, we wandered around for quite a while before we found the amphitheater and the Combat des Reines. I asked several people where to go but their directions were not very good (I won't blame my weak French language skills). When we got to the amphitheater, it was crowded. We tried to go in and we were told we had to buy a ticket. It was 20 francs per person to watch the cows fight. Hungry and tired, we decided not to pay that much to see the Combats des Reines. This is a decision I regret now, because I really wanted to see what was going on in there... but we felt too exhausted to handle any more confusion. By this time, it was 4 pm, all the cafes had closed, and we decided to head toward home.

Before we left though, I did get to see some of the cows waiting to go into the amphitheater. They are some pretty impressive beasts. Remember, these are female!

Cows waiting for the Combat des Reines

She looks like a winner to me.

We made up for a stressful day in Martigny when we got back to Champoussin. We drank a lot and ate a lot of fondue and then fell asleep at 8:30. Fondue is like heaven in your mouth.

Next time: Chillon Castle.

Weekend Camping and C&O Heritage Center Visit

It's Monday. I am off work today, and I'm going to write two blog posts. My post-vacation blues were pretty severe last week. I decided I better make this work week a shorter one, so I took a vacation day today to catch up on things like laundry and running errands. And rest. And my blog. And I decided a short autumn camping trip was in order.

And the camping trip did indeed make my ordinary life look a little brighter. The fall colors are at their peak in the mountains. We stayed at the Morris Hill Campground near Lake Moomaw, about a 3 hour drive from Richmond. The campground was just about empty. There were two other families there. I can't believe there were so few people out enjoying the incredible weather over the weekend.

We didn't do anything too exciting on this trip. The idea was to relax. And it was very relaxing. We mostly sat around the campfire and talked to each other. And I drank a lot of beer. I made a really tasty campfire dinner (roasted cauliflower with shallots, grilled chicken thighs, and yellow saffron rice, all cooked to miraculous perfection). When I unfolded our air mattress, it was covered in mold, and so we slept on the hard, cold ground. But I even enjoyed that.

We stopped in Clifton Forge on the way there to visit the C&O Heritage Center. There was some sort of town-wide festival happening in Clifton Forge, which meant there were a lot of people at the museum, but a full staff of volunteers was there to tell us all about the trains and buildings and things. Boyfriend is the train nerd, but I really enjoyed this outing as well.

We got to go inside this old engine. It was pretty neat!

This is all the crazy stuff the engineer had to keep an eye on.

The dining car is lovely. Has a working kitchen and may be rented for events.

I loved the Chessie Cat china in the dining car.

Pretty comfortable, but very close together.

Freight car.

A little desk cubby place in the caboose, for the conductor I guess.

An older caboose.

A beautiful day to visit the C&O Heritage Center.

We were gonna get up early and go fishing at Lake Moomaw on Sunday morning, but we slept in instead (a little too long). On the way home, we stopped in Afton for a visit to the Blue Mountain Brewery. We tasted all the beers they had on tap ($8 for 9 shot glasses of craft beer) and had a very tasty snack. It was a fun visit, but due to the proximity to Charlottesville and UVA, there were a lot of white people with fancy shoes there, which I found distracting in an unwanted sort of way. Blue Mountain makes some great beer (I am especially fond of the seasonal Pumpkin and the Blue Reserve varieties, and they also make a great Virginia Pale Ale). I shall not tell you how much money was spent on the beer we left there with... they're seasonal brews! One of a kind! Artisanal! 

A growler of Blue Mountain's Blue Reserve, on my kitchen counter!

Well, it's after noon now and I better get out of my pajamas. I have to go to Petsmart for cat supplies. Butter Bean is something like 14 in cat years, and her teenage qualities are pretty extreme. I am hoping that buying a new scratching post will distract her from scratching up the couch. I'm such a cat slave.

I'm back! Saturday in Switzerland

I have returned from the Big Swiss Adventure! We got back on Saturday night. I had a lovely time. Nothing substantial went wrong. All events happened relatively smoothly. It was a wonderful vacation. I feel like I ate several pounds of cheese last week, because I did. I made a kale, bean, and turkey sausage soup last night with the hopes that I'd feel less gross after eating something so full of fiber. I think it worked but my schedule is still off and I fell asleep at 8:30 last night. I'm sure I'll be back to normal by the end of the week.

I didn't blog from Switzerland because I have a huge laptop and it was too much trouble to lug it along with me. So now I'll write down the details I most want to remember. And I have some pictures too, of course.

On the Saturday of our arrival, we were very tired and grumpy after a horrendously uncomfortable 7-hour plane ride from D.C. to Geneva. We left at 5 pm (our time) and arrived at 8 am (their time). So it felt like 3 am or so as we obtained our rental car and set off onto the Swiss roadways. This was initially quite scary. Boyfriend did all the driving and found the first day of adjusting to European highways a little stressful. But we were thrilled to be off the airplane, even in our exhaustion. We drove from the airport toward our resort in Valais, along beautiful Lake Geneva. It was a foggy morning, and the humidity felt good after being in the plane. The hillsides were covered in vineyards, and I got to enjoy the amazing views as Boyfriend adjusted to kilometers and traffic circles.

We stopped in Lausanne around lunchtime to eat and see the sights. Driving and parking felt very stressful in Lausanne, but we got a parking spot and we wandered through the city's center. It was market day. People were selling fruits and pastries in little stands. There were giant figs that impressed me very much. We had trouble getting francs from the ATM. My card wouldn't work at all (we still don't know why, because it worked two days later). Boyfriend was able to get 200 francs and so we went to have lunch at Manora Restaurant, which I had read about before our trip. It took us a good while before we found Manora because it is in a crazy huge department store called Manor. Manor was I think 7 stories tall and included a grocery store and departments for furniture, home goods, women's clothing, men's clothing, shoes, children's things... and on the top floor, there was Manora Restaurant, a self-service place crowded with Swiss people on market day. Boyfriend found it to be a bit overwhelming, but we found him a chicken salad sandwich that made him very happy. It was the best chicken salad sandwich I'd ever tasted. I had eggplant pizza and salad and fruit for dessert. We ate it on the restaurant's patio and watched little birds beg for food. A Swiss boy with a toy sword also made faces at us while we ate.

  

After lunch, we visited a church, which I thought was the Cathedral de Notre-Dame, but I later discovered that it was not. Well, it was a nice church anyway...

 

Then we were back on the road and driving toward our "resort" in Champoussin. We got lost once and accidentally went up a mountain, which was beautiful. We also stopped at a Coop grocery store to pick up some cheese, bread, eggs, and microwavable meals. I had refused to spend $75 on a GPS for a week, but luckily our little rental car came with navigation. It was a necessity. 

We finally arrived in Champoussin at 5:00-ish, and we were mighty happy to find ourselves near a bed. The apartment we stayed in was in a ski resort that we booked through RCI. I would not recommend it or stay there again, but we spent such a short amount of time in our apartment, it didn't much matter. And we did have a beautiful view from our little chalet apartment. 

On Saturday evening, we ate bread and cheese for dinner and explored our TV channels (mostly in French in German). Then we fell asleep at 7:30. Next time... SUNDAY! And a story about the city of Martigny.