Category: Non classé

We arrived in Thun on Monday in the early afternoon. Upon arrival at the train station, there was a certain “familiarity”: we were definitely back in the German part of Switzerland (Zermatt felt more on the “international” part of Switzerland 🙂 ).

After a bit of rest in our fancy hotel room (we got upgraded… to a room with a bathtub next to the bed), we went for dinner to La Barca, where we had very decent pizza, and the appreciated possibility to ask for a smaller pizza which was Just Right, size-wise.

On the way there (and back), we got acquainted with the local surfing activity. I will admit that “river surfing in Thun” was not on the bingo card of things I expected to see during this trip.

It was quite enjoyable to observe for a little while 🙂 we eventually got back to the hotel as it started to rain.

The next morning, Pierre had an initial plan to go running, but the rain wouldn’t recede before 9, so plans were changed and we continued with our day plan instead. We took the bus to the St. Beatus cave, for which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the cave is very well equipped and, while it doesn’t have huge structures, it has a torrent running through the beginning of the cave and some neat smaller structures.

On the other hand, there were a lot of people, and a lot of noisy teenagers that did make the visit less enjoyable than it could have been; the visit itself is roughly a kilometer long and goes back the same way as the way in (so there’s a lot of awkward crossings in narrow cave tunnels). Still, it was a pretty good cave, all in all. And it has a Grand Tour frame:

For our next stop, we took the bus back along the lake to reach the Beatenburg funicular, followed by the Niederhorn cable car. With that, we reached a local summit with a spectacular view over the Thun lake and the surrounding mountains, including the Jungfrau… and another Grand Tour frame.

We just strolled around the paths at the summit and had some ice cream before going back down to the valley.

Our last stop for the day was the bridge in Sigriswil, mostly because it looked like a cool bridge; it turns out that it was one of the places where the Korean series Crash Landing On You was filmed, and so it sees more tourism than the average bridge. Cool bridge, but expensive to cross (so we crossed it twice − even thrice for Pierre). Pierre decided to run down to Thun, and I took the bus back to the hotel. We went for dinner at Turban, an Indian restaurant where we had very good paneer curries.

After dinner, we strolled around the city, which is pretty (observe: the elevated sidewalk and the two levels of shops!) and had some ice cream along the river.

And the next day is… the last day of our trip, since I’m writing this blog post on the train back home!

But first, some last minute visits. We walked up to the church and then to the castle in Thun and, on a whim, took some tickets mostly to go enjoy the view from the towers; we were pleasantly surprised by the museum in the castle, which was pretty small but was very well presented. The highlight was still the view from the towers − “interesting” stairs but very nice view.

We then took the train to Interlaken. Our plan was to leave our luggage there and to go explore a bit; said plan was almost foiled by the fact that almost all lockers were full! But, we still managed to find two where our luggage could fit (rather than a large where both would have fit in the same box.)

Our first stop was to take the funicular to Harder Kulm − that funicular was *full*. But the view on both lakes as well as the Jungfrau at the top is worth it!

We then went down back to the town, where we walked a bit. As a base for exploration in the region, it’s probably better located than Thun, but Thun felt like a much nicer town. Interlaken does have a significant paragliding activity… and yet another Grand Tour frame. (I’m starting to believe the area may be touristy, not sure.)

Finally, we’re on our way back to Zürich. We’re taking the long way around, via Luzern − the views over the lakes and the mountains are a very nice background to writing this blog post. I’ll still have a lot of pictures to process, but that’ll be the theme of a later post 🙂

The third place where we’re dropping our luggage, after Lausanne and Sion, is Zermatt. We left Sion a bit later than we could have, because one of the train we could have taken was cancelled − but we still got the next one half an hour later. First stop, Visp, to change trains and train networks; the train from Visp to Zermatt was quite full (there were people standing in first class.)

I don’t know exactly how steep that train is, but it does have cograils!

The trip was beautiful and well worth the train ride itself, to be honest. We arrived in Zermatt early in the afternoon, dropped our luggage at the hotel, and walked to the funicular station to Sunnega.

We had looked at a hike that looked feasible for my small level of skill and my fucked-up knee − 5K, going down, with granted more downhill than I would have liked (~300m), from Blauherd to Sunnega, but it was advertised as “adapted for children from 4 year old”, so it looked okay. We took the cable car up to Blauherd and started the hike (after a bit of confusion about where it started exactly).

Don’t get me wrong: it was great. The Matterhorn was dominating the landscape all along, and that area is ridiculously pretty.

But that trail was definitely more challenging than we were both expecting. Pierre was surprised to see it marked as a regular yellow path; there were a few places that felt more exposed than they should be on such a path. And a couple of places were definitely more technical than I was comfortable with. But we saw goats.

Still, we arrived safely back in Sunnega after the hike, very tired but happy 🙂 We took the funicular back to Zermatt, got our hotel room (it wasn’t ready when we had first arrived earlier) and went for early dinner − some very generous (and tasty!) burgers at Republic Zermatt. We strolled a bit in town after dinner; I found Zermatt more charming than I would have thought (yes, there’s a lot of touristy stuff… but it felt like “not only”.) We went back to the hotel early, because tomorrow we wake up at 4:45: we’re going to see the sun rise over the Matterhorn, from a train!

After a pretty bad night (being in an unfamiliar room without a visible clock and needing to wake up very early relying on phone alarms is… not optimal for my sleep peace of mind, shall we say), we woke up and were out of the hotel at 5:20. The train was departing at 5:45, and we needed to be there 15 minutes before (and our hotel is, on purpose, very close to the train station), and we were sitting in the train at 5:27… and the train was full (we were indeed almost the last ones boarding).

The train left on time, they shut down the lights so that we could enjoy the early morning lights; the first sights of the Matterhorn were quite nice, especially as they confirmed that the weather was very clear, no cloud to be seen, and that we should have an amazing show.

We stopped at the station closest to the small lake in which the Matterhorn reflects (Riffelsee), we did a very short hike downhill to reach it, and we waited for the sun to rise. And rise it did.

I honestly cannot describe the amount of awe around this moment. We stayed out of the train for a bit less than an hour, taking pictures of the sunrise from different angles (… while never even seeing the sun!) and being just tremendously happy to be around such an amazing landscape. We were obviously very lucky with the weather, but with that caveat, Gornergrat sunrise train, 11/10, cannot recommend enough.

We then went back on the train to go to the highest point of the line, the Gornergrat itself, where we had a great breakfast and could continue an already superlative morning… all before 9AM. We took some time to stroll around the summit (which does hit 3000m − I don’t think I have been at that height that often…), took pictures of the glacier, and generally speaking enjoyed the surroundings (we both felt that it was quite harder to breathe there.)

We then took the train back down to the lake station, got some more pictures now that the sun was fully up, and started hiking downhill to the next train station, Riffelberg. It was a fairly short hike (~3km), and we both felt it was somewhat easier/less risky that yesterday’s, despite being graded higher (red/white vs yellow). It was very enjoyable and the sights were amazing – however, all of them are in my DSLR and I didn’t take any with the phone to share on this blog post!

From Riffelberg, I took the train down back to Zermatt, while Pierre ran all the way down. In the meantime, I realized that the above picture that I had posted on Mastodon had hit a tremendous number of people liking and boosting it, and some of them asking questions, so I guess I worked on my influencer skills a bit 😀

When Pierre arrived in Zermatt (honestly not that long after I did), we went back to the hotel room where I crashed for a nap − that had been a long day already. After that, we took it easy: we strolled in town, had a drink at a terrace, went to have a look at the church, that sort of thing. Next to the church, there’s a separate part of the cemetery for people who lost their lives in the mountains (most of them nearby mountains), which moved me. That stroll (and walking around town in general) confirmed my impression that I quite like Zermatt. I wonder how it looks at peak ski season, though; I expect the mood to be quite different. The city is car-free, which is very nice, but there are A LOT of small electric vehicles serving various purposes (many hotel shuttles and taxis, but not only), which was a bit complicated for me (I always felt in the way!)

We had dinner at Stockhorn, where we had great grilled meat, and shared some also great chocolate mousse − these folks clearly know their stuff.

Monday was our last morning in Zermatt, but we still ended up spending a large part of the day in the vicinity. We hesitated between going to the Zermatt canyon or taking a cable car to go up, and decided that we never regretted a cable car trip, so we did that. We first went to Furi, where we had a small hike around a suspended bridge.

We were once again puzzled by the hike classification, because it was marked as a T2 hike, which should have been spicier than all the ones we did in the previous days… and it was by far the largest, easiest surface path we saw so far. My best guess is that the bridge above is bumping the difficulty of the hike. We did go to a few spicier places during that hike, but that was mostly “exploring that loop that looks somewhat interesting” − and those side explorations were the most difficult part of the hike.

We then took the same cable car going all the way to the top (Trockener Steg) to get a closer look at the Matterhorn.

We did get a closer look, but it was also significantly cloudier than yesterday (we got VERY lucky with that sunrise, I think). We were, however, woefully under equipped for “3000m with dubious weather”, so we cut the “outside” part short, and instead had surprisingly decent pastries at the restaurant on top, and took the cable car down back to Zermatt.

And, after all this, it was time for us to take the train to the last destination of our trip, Thun.

After Lausanne in Part 1, we arrived in Sion late in the afternoon of Thursday − late enough that we only had time to unwind a bit before we went for dinner. We decided to go for crêpes, as the offer in Zürich ist sub-par, especially when it comes to galettes, and we ended in Régal’ette in the city center, which was a very good crêperie − we got what we were hoping for (and they also have an excellent cider.)

After dinner, since we had apparently not walked uphill enough in Lausanne, we strolled to the heights of the city. The sun had just set and the light was very nice. The highlight of the evening, though, was to see a fox, which was definitely not afraid of humans − I don’t think I ever saw a fox from closer! I consequently have a bunch of blurry fox pictures.

After this we went back to the hotel to sleep – tomorrow, we visit the Grande Dixence dam!

My hope was to be able to avoid cars altogether during this trip, but convenience won when it came to reaching the Grande Dixence dam. Yes, there are four buses in each direction during the day, but the hours don’t align very well with the visits, and we also valued a bit of freedom to explore a bit around without risking missing the last bus down. So we rented a carsharing Mobility car (conveniently in the parking of the hotel, but we only realized that when we came back) and drove to the dam for the 11:30 visit.

The weather was, euphemistically, not optimal. We were in the clouds for most of our visit, and it rained for a non-trivial part of it too. Still: the visit was very cool; we got to walk inside the numerous galleries of the dam, and while it wasn’t visually super impressive, the experience was well worth it. From the outside, the dam is gigantic; the lake above is probably a very nice place to hike around when there’s any visibility, but as it was, we walked on the dam top and that was pretty much it. Pierre still ran from the top of the dam back to the parking lot − since I’m far more reasonable, I took the cable car back 😛

On the way down, we made a stop at the Pyramides d’Euseigne, a super weird rock structure that I still can’t wrap my head around. And that is on the Grand Tour, so here, I have a new picture for my collection (it’s a very smol collection so far.)

Finally, before we went back to the hotel, we made a final stop at the Mont d’Orge lac, where we had a ~1km stroll around the lake and saw a bunch of water lilies.

For dinner, we went to Pinte Contheysanne, a Swiss restaurant where we had great dried meat and awesome cheese croûtes. After that meal we needed a bit of a walk, though, so we made a detour to see the Rhône river, which had a nice pedestrian bridge and a cool view over the castle and basilica at the top of the city.

Overall, I liked Sion very much; the city center is car-free and lively-in-a-good-way, and while it’s also not quite flat, it’s definitely more me-compatible than Lausanne 😉

The next morning, Pierre went for a run around the top of the city, and we took the train to our next destination, Zermatt.

This summer, we decided to go on an 8-night train trip around Switzerland, to visit places that we had wanted to go to for a while and never did anything about.

This is my traveling log − mostly something for me to remember, but I like reading other people’s traveling blogs/threads, so maybe someone will enjoy these as well! It’s organized in 4 parts, where each part corresponds to”where we dropped our suitcases” (we stayed in 4 hotels, 2 nights in each). After some hesitation, we decided to travel in style and to not worry about transportation tickets – we each got a month-long General Abonnement (in first class because see previous point about “in style”), which covers the very, very vast majority of the transportation in Switzerland. Probably somewhat more expensive than unit tickets, and probably slightly more expensive than planning things correctly and taking individual day cards with a discount, but peace of mind also has a huge amount in value in my book.

We first travelled to Lausanne, which we have passed many times over the years, but where we had never stopped. We left home around noon, got lunch at the Zürich Hauptbahnhof, and took a direct train to Lausanne. First train control, and our tickets do seem to be valid – yay, I didn’t mess up the dates! 😛

The arrival in Lausanne and the following small walk to the hotel gives as a very first impression of the city: it’s Not Flat. By then, it was roughly 15:00; we decided to go for a small walk around the Lavaux vineyards. These are the one place that will inevitably make me go “wooooooow” when traveling past them on a train, and walking around them definitely confirmed the wow factor.

We walked from Grandvaux to Cully, and again: Not Flat. Going down that hill was already challenging enough; I would not have liked climbing uphill, I think! (For sure my shitty right knee would have looked at me with disapproval. As it is…) After this walk, where we also saw a shitton of lizards and somehow resisted the temptation of stealing some grapes from the vine (they looked ripe!), we went back to the hotel and arrived there around 18:00.

Time to find a restaurant, to go there, to have an absolutely excellent meal sitting at a delightful terrace (Jacques Restaurant, highly recommended). The food was amazing (especially anything around fish); the only annoying thing was that our neighbors were smokers, which got on my nerves a few times (but then I also didn’t ask them to move downwind for their cigarette, soooo.)

On the way back, we took the metro to go see the lake. Lausanne is the only city with a metro, and that metro is also Not Flat − there’s a sticker in the train warning that one of the stops’ platforms is at a 12% slope. It’s kind of weird to feel the metro brake much harder than it actually does due to the acceleration added by gravity!

The lake was quiet; we walked to the end of the jetty and went back home. The last adventure for the day was that our bus broke down: it was a trolley, and it needed to get its perches down to handle a section with road works… and one of the perches stayed up. We walked the remaining 3 stops (… uphill), and didn’t get passed by another bus. Hopefully they resolved it swiftly, still.

On the next day, Pierre went for a run in the city, and then we took the train to go to Bex, where we had tickets to visit the salt mine! We took the train to Bex, the bus to the salt mine, and started the visit at noon.

For the visit, we take the small mine train, go visit some tunnels with some explanations, come back to the main site with the train, and have a bit of food – chips salted with some salt from the mine, sausage that is actually dried in the mine too (fun gimmick tbh). The whole visit was pretty cool, but we both felt it was lacking a bit on the technical aspects of it. In particular, we did spend roughly 30 minutes on the train, and we got 0 mention of it during the visit − at the very least, I would have liked to know when it was built, see a map of the tracks (there was definitely some intersection going on)… and discuss the building of the rolling material itself, which is quite custom!

We still had some energy after the visit, so we decided for an impromptu visit to the Château de Chillon, which was on our way back to Lausanne. We decided against the audioguide – while I love a good guided visit, audioguides tend to get my attention drifting quite swiftly. So we visited the castle with the paper guide given at the entrance and following a number of information panels.

The path through the castle is very well made and well indicated; the castle itself has some very cool rooms and some neat furniture. There’s an overall feeling of “… yeaaaaah that’s how they restaured this at the beginning of the 20th century and the historical accuracy may not have been the priority” which was also interesting. Overall, I liked the visit − and the building itself is an impressive sight for sure.

We hurried a bit for the end of the visit, because we  were pretty close to the timing of the boat that was going from the castle back to Lausanne, and that sounded like a great idea (especially since our month-long transport ticket also covers boats!) And it was indeed a very pleasant trip along the lake, looking at the Lavaux vineyards from below, having the train and the boat exchanging honks, and getting some apéro on the deck.

We went back to the hotel to drop stuff, and went for dinner to Les Trois Rois, a very nice brasserie-style restaurant next to the train station − good food, pleasant service, this was nice! And we went back to the hotel around 21:30, where I’m writing this post as we’re planning for tomorrow.

On the next day, we checked out from the hotel and dropped our luggage in a locker at the train station in Lausanne, so that we could have some freedom to walk a bit in the city. We visited the cathedral, which has an impressive organ (quite modern, it seems) and stained glass windows from the 1930s that I found myself spending more time than I usually do on stained glass. We also walked in the city, visited a board game shop (because that’s what we do), and decided on a whim to visit the Élysée photographic museum.

Said museum had three exhibitions, dedicated to Alfredo Jaar, Hannah Darabi and Ella Maillart. The first one hit me the hardest: 20 photojournalists had been asked for their most joyful and saddest pictures, and both of them were projected on the walls in large format. The exhibition “mood” changed every 20 minutes to go from one side (“paradiso”) to the other (“inferno”), and both “sides” of the exhibition moved me tremendously, in very different ways (I was in tears when I exited the “inferno” part). The other exhibitions were also interesting, but didn’t move me nearly as much.

After the museum, we got our luggage back from the lockers and, after a short train ride, arrived in Montreux where we left them in the local lockers 🙂

As a life-long Queen fan, I almost cannot believe that it took me 18 years living in Switzerland before I went to Montreux − where a number of albums were recorded, and where there’s a very cool Freddie Mercury statue next to the lake.

The casino in Montreux is also home to the studio where Queen recorded there (they did buy said studio, actually), and there’s a small Queen museum on the first floor of the casino. There’s a lot of items; I particularly liked seeing a lot of song lyrics/drafts. There’s also a room where you can see some recording equipment and play with a few sliders to mix various song parts of a song. It was all quite neat; and it made me happy to see a bunch of fans around (the statue has a lot of people taking pictures with various extra items, and the museum has a full corridor plastered with pieces of paper with fan messages. That felt quite wholesome.

In Montreux, apart from that, we mostly strolled along the lake − there’s a very nice promenade; but we didn’t stay much longer before taking the train to Sion, our next destination.