Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Lausanne

Travel Day: Lausanne to Interlaken

Aug 31

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | No Comments

All good things must come to an end, and so we left Lausanne and made our way to Interlaken.

On the way there we stopped at the Nestle/Cailler chocolate factory in Broc. I have to admit I had my doubts to start with because its a bit off the beaten path — off the autobahn at Bulle, then through Broc and quiet residential side streets, then back out of town and around a a low escarpment until at last you see the sterile facade of what appears to be a shipping department — I’m hoping that whatever it is they give tours so I’m not lost. It’s a little bit of a walk to the actual entrance from the visitor’s parking, past what looks like the charming original building to another modern facility, and it’s at this point I’m wondering just why we came here. But the receptionist is so jolly in explaining the route we are supposed to take and what we will meet along the way I don’t even mind the nominal entrance fee. She went into such detail I just had to ask if it is easy to get lost but she assured me that we would always know which way to go as long as we leave any room by a different door than we entered. Not just a tour, but a logic puzzle as well. I wanted to ask with every fiber in my being “So where do you keep the Oompah Loompahs?” but I couldn’t summon the requisite sang froid to pull it off, and I don’t want to spoil our blossoming relationship with a lead balloon witticism.

So instead its off to the European ideal of a chocolate factory tour, which has some neat stuff like how they make chocolate, what the ingredients are, in a phrase the nuts and bolts of the operation, a dash of history, and a whole bunch of pretentious prattle about the experience of chocolate and the glories of the Cailler brand. We didn’t actually get to see any making of chocolate – the only view of the factory floor gave the distinct impression this wing had been decomissioned when Nixon was president. But we did get to watch a film made no later than the Eisenhower administration about a girl who visited the Cailler factory in her jammies Christmas eve, possibly while sleepwalking. Since it was in French and about the only French I remember is je ne parle pas Francais — I told you I love logic puzzles — some of the details sailed over my head. In the movie everyone was so helpful and delighted to see her, even the night watchman who invited her in and and showed her around, she snagged a giant candy bar on Christmas morning — Cailler Frigor naturally.

And then it was on to the tasting room. The room was underwhelming to look at, but oh, what transports of joy and raptures of delight awaited within. The room was long and narrow, with the entire line of Cailler chocolate several times over on top of glass cases along the long axis of the room. I am not a chocoholic, and I normally prefer salt/grease snacks (i.e. potato and corn chips), but an all you can eat buffet of swiss chocolate is a sensual experience words can’t describe. There was an abundance of chocolate because it is set up for bus tours and they were between buses while we were there. All I can say is that there was no comparison between that chocolate and the run of the mill milk chocolate I usually eat. Apparently even the milk they use is special, from Gruyere (yes, where the cheese comes from).

THE TASTING ROOM AT CAILLER’S — OH HOW I MISS THIS ROOM

Then it was on to the store, with me kicking and screaming the whole way. The Fruit each picked out a big candy bar for themselves, and we bought some for gifts. I don’t know if it was because we were at a factory outlet or the restaurant prices had thrown us off, but the chocolate actually seemed cheap. As it turned out, we would leave the gift chocolate behind the in the refrigerator of our hotel in Interlaken upon departure. Good thing the Fruit didn’t even wait until we got to the hotel to scarf down their chocolate bars. We wound up buying a giant bar of Toblerone at the Brussels airport with the last of our Euros as a gift for the girls who watched Trooper while we were away.

Thus satiated and unaware of the loss of the chocolate that lay ahead, we drove back through Broc towards Bulle. We noticed a gorgeous castle on a hill top and after a quick consult with the guidebook (If you are going to spend thousands on a trip don’t false economize — get a guidebook) the funWife announced it was Gruyere, it was a town plus a castle and it was open to the public. After only one wrong turn we arrived at a parking lot at the foot of the hill. Since the guidebook also informed us that there were no cars allowed in town, we parked there. Then it was a huff and puff up the steep trail until we came to the outer wall of the town.

GRUYERE EXUDES CHARM THE WAY I EXUDE PERSPIRATION — IN BUCKETS

Gruyere is a town that defines picture postcard perfect. The view of the mountain, the cobblestones, the old buildings, the colorful flowers and banners, the hilltop setting — the whole assemblage was made for photos hundreds of years before the invention of photography. The quaint restaurants and shops beckoned, but our motto was excelsior!  So we didn’t linger in town, we made our way ever onward and upward towards the castle. I find old castles fascinating, but its clear it was good to be the baron, and not the horde of laborers and artisans who built the castle.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU CALL THIS, BUT IT LOOKS REALLY COOL


LOWER PARTS OF THE CASTLE FROM A HIGHER PART


A DRAMATIC VIEW OF CASTLE GRUYERE FROM THE FORMAL GARDEN

And then it was on to Berne. The funWife and I had been here before sixteen years ago on a cold day in October and had a wonderful time. We were there again on a warm day in August, and it was a lot more crowded. A lot. As in who are all these people, and what are they doing in my way? I admit I got off the Autobahn too soon (not that there are a lot of exits for any town) and that coupled with the abysmal driving might have made me ever so slightly cranky until we parked the car, but once we parked I was Mr. Sunshine. Perhaps my ancestral homeland was calling out to my blood (I believe it was saying “Don’t take sides!”) – -my Great-Grandfather Senti was from Berne. Apparently the swiss blood ran too dilute in the veins of the Fruit of the Murphy Loins, as rest of the family didn’t want to linger once there. It could be, I admit, that I just wanted to stay out of the car for longer, a lot longer, but I do like Berne and we really didn’t do anything beyond wander around for a while. We didn’t even go to one museum!

BEAUTIFUL BUSTLING BERNE

So it was back into the car and on to our hotel in Interlaken. We thought Berne was crowded, but Interlaken as absolutely thronged with tourists and far more crowded than Berne. Progress down the main drag, the Hohenweg, was very slow as long streams of pedestrians held up traffic at every crosswalk. I knew roughly where the hotel was since I remembered it from the time, sixteen years ago (notice a pattern here?), we stayed at the Royal St. Georges and there were no Fruit of the Murphy Loins, just a gleam in each of my eyes. If it weren’t for the geraniums overflowing the window boxes and obscuring the sign for the hotel I wouldn’t have passed it up. Still, it’s nice to a get a tour of the town before settling in, as I always say, at least I do when I pass the hotel up and have to go quite aways before finding a place to turn around. But eventually we made it and we were all glad to get out of the car this time.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Lausanne Day 4 (Or We Discover France)

Aug 20

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | 1 Comment

After three years of learning French in school, my daughter really wanted to go to France. Looking into it pre-trip, we considered driving to Lyon to see what was shaking in France, but decided instead to take the 35 minute boat ride across Lac Leman to Evian les Bains. Oddly enough, they spoke French there just like they did across the lake in Switzerland. I couldn’t tell the difference, to tell you the truth — the same architecture, language, lifestyle, even signage (road and pedestrian). The only difference was they used Euros instead of Swiss Francs. And being a little farther south, it did feel hotter. I only discovered after my return home of that it is the birthplace of Evian water and the site of the 2003 G8 summit.

DOWNTOWN EVIAN LES BAINS


GIANT POT WITH MUTANT PLANT PLUS A COUPLE OF CUTIES MAKES FOR A GREAT PHOTO

Surprisigly, Evian has a minature golf course, so we were able to continue the Murphy Family tradition of playing putt putt golf on vacation – the keeping track of the score, the feuding between the kids, the arguments over who is carrying enough of our stuff from hole to hole, and the ritual losing of a ball. It may not be a good tradition, but it is ours. This course provided a notable twist — a large group of what turned out to be British school kids started to play shortly after we started the course. The management broke them into small groups and had them start all over the course in what I believe is known as a shotgun start.  The boys ahead of us (one of whom was called Dobby) had a rule that if your ball left the green you had to start over. As their balls quite frequently left the course, we frequently had to wait while one boy kept playing the same hole over and over. Still, as my Grandfather once observed about peeing on the continental divide, not many people have played an American invention in France with British schoolboys. I’m hoping I never do again.

EVIAN FROM THE LAKE


MOUNTAINS TOWERING OVER EVIAN

We really enjoyed the boat ride across the lake, but it wasn’t without its faults. The biggest is that you can only leave when the boat leaves, and while once every two hours sounds pretty frequent, we did spend some time wilting in the heat hoping the boat would hurry up. And when we left, just as we got up to full speed, the engine slowed way down and we turned around and went back to the dock. I was leaning against the stern rail, and the distaff side of the family sitting a little ahead of me inquired as to what was happening. I informed them that the boat was broken and we were returning to port for repairs. As it turned out, we had left a little early, and the boat was returning to pick up several passengers we had left behind. The distaff side was unhappy with me when it was clear that my explanation was wrong, but at least they stopped complaining when I inquired how they thought I would know anything about the operation of the boat standing at the stern rail — telepathic communication with the captain perhaps?

WHO DOESN’T LIKE TO RIDE A BOAT?


THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF SCENERY IN SWITZERLAND

Our hotel in Lausanne charged big bucks for their breakfast – like $80 for the four of us – so we always found alternates. The first day we ate the pop tarts we had brought along. The next day we hiked halfway up the hillside to a restaurant and had croissants. While my wife had coffee, I ordered orange juice and got tangerine juice. The day after that we stopped in at a boulangerie, bought a variety of tasty food, and took it back and ate it on our balcony. The day after that we really went native: Kyle and I went to the Migros market and bought yogurt and croissants to eat. We weren’t fully native since the milk I thought was 2% turned out to be half and half cream. I also had to buy a pack of 100 plastic spoons to eat the yogurt with, which left us with 96 spoons for the rest of the trip. As the yogurt was kiwi and something (OBG) we’d never heard of before, there was some resistance to eating it. My wife was convinced when I told her it was on sale, but no amount of cajoling could convince my daughter to eat any beyond her first bite. Thankfully, the rest of the hotels had a nice breakfast included so I was not dispatched to buy food with labels I couldn’t read again. Another experience I’m glad I had but one will do me, thank you very much.

Tags: , , ,

Lausanne Day 3 (or It’s Good To Be The King)

Aug 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | No Comments

Every evening a storm moved through town, so we took a peddle boat ride on Lac Leman this morning (the night before the wind was blowing so hard the lake was covered in whitecaps). I had a wonderful time on the lake, only in part because I didn’t do any peddling. The frame of the seat was just a tiny bit too small for the frame of my body, so when I got in gravity got me through it, but I was only going to get out once, which meant no changing seats to the front where the peddles were. Luckily a strapping young lad was at the dock to pull me back through on the dismount, which I was able to stick. No matter how hard we tried (my contribution was mainly moral support) we couldn’t run down the gulls floating on the lake.

COME SAIL AWAY

COME SAIL AWAY


COME SAIL AWAY WITH ME

After our morning’s exertions, we made the Fruit of the Murphy Loins happy and actually drove the car somewhere, namely down the lake just past Montreux to Chillon Castle. They use a lot of rock in building a castle, and we saw the castle from its raw rock roots to the fine stone work in its highest tower. We also saw a couple of original bathrooms — a board with two holes which hung high over the lake. No EPA to worry about in the twelfth century A.D. I wanted to say “bombs away” but worried that people might misinterpret me, so I’m sharing it with you instead. I think it was because the Fruit were so overjoyed at going for a car ride and not having to walk that they would later say that this was their favorite day on vacation – or at least their favorite castle.

CHILLON CASTLE IN FULL


BRINGS NEW MEANING TO HAVE FUN STORMING THE CASTLE BOYS


THIS HAS TO BE THE NICEST LOCATION FOR GIFT SHOP ON THE PLANET


LOOK HONEY, A WALK IN FIREPLACE. I WOULDN’T BE COLD WITH ONE OF THESE BABYS


SLICES, DICES, AND MAKES JULIENNE CARROTS OUT OF THE BURGUNDIANS


WE CALL THIS THE BRADY BUNCH ROOM BECAUSE IT WAS SO GROOVY


THAT’S A LOT FURTHER THAN IT LOOKS


BOMBS AWAY!

And as always we finished up the evening with a trip down to Ouchy, although we did manage to pick a different place to eat. This time, no Chateau between us and the water.

Tags: , , ,

Lausanne Day 2 (Or Are We There Yet?)

Aug 15

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | No Comments

Today we toured old town Lausanne. And that meant we had to go uphill. And uphill some more. The Fruit of the Murphy Loins were beginning to understand what this trip was all about when they kept asking why we couldn’t drive there and we kept replying walking was easier, and then just “we’re walking”.  We would rest on the benches at the bus stops, but we didn’t consider resting on the seats on the bus.

When at long last we reached the Cathedral, we couldn’t go uphill any more, so we started back downhill. Kyle then informed us that going downhill was actually harder than going uphill. It was only later that we would appreciate the easiest thing to do was sit on a park bench and eat an ice cream cone. I could have done that all day if I didn’t have to leave the hotel and walk to an ice cream stand.

FRONT DOOR OF CATHEDRAL IN LAUSANNE, BOY HOPING FOR PEW TO SIT IN

I was very impressed with the old part of town, and I don’t mean that part built around the turn of the century as I would in the midwest. The Romans came here to rest, relax and leave behind ruins, so it’s only natural that Edward Gibbon wrote his classic “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” here as well. I especially liked the interior of the Saint Francois church, conveniently located in Place Saint Francois, which was light and airy on the inside despite the massive stone construction and the automatically opening massive bronze door. They also had this very charming eaterie called McDonalds that we ducked in for some liquid refreshment after our vertical ascent of the town.

GILT FREE INTERIOR OF SAINT FRANCOIS CHURCH

After a long day of going uphill and downhill and seeing buildings older than dirt, we straggled down little dog street (it sounds better in the original: rue de le petit chien), and eventually to our hotel where we collapsed in the AC. I didn’t care to walk with a map in front of me all the time, and so on occasion we might not have taken the most direct route, but we got to see more scenery that way. And that’s why we went there. If you want to take the most direct route, stick to American towns where the innovation of straight streets meeting at right angles was first discovered and actually put into use. Don’t go to Europe where the concept of a straight line was not discovered until 1967, far to late to implement in their cities.

We returned to Ouchy that night for dinner at the same pizzeria we ate at the night before, only this time Erin accompanied us. Also this time Kyle and I tried the salad bar and discovered, in his own words, they sure do like cabbage over here. We had fun just hanging out at the lake front after dinner along with lots and lots of other people. Oddly enough, we felt like the only tourists in town — we figured that Switzerland would be full of tourists in summer, but we were wrong, which just goes to show that there’s a first time for every thing.

KYLE WINNING AT CHESS

A crowd of older men and, during our stay, four American tourists hung out at a large outdoor chess board with large wooden pieces at the lakefront. After carefully watching the games and noting that the players were prone to making mistakes, Kyle actually played a couple of games and won them both. At times the onlookers would get quite animated, and during Kyle’s second game one gentleman looked like he would suffer a stroke if Kyle didn’t move his bishop instead of his rook to block his opponents pawn from the 8th rank. Kyle moved the bishop and won the game a couple of moves later. We both thought it didn’t matter which piece he moved, as long as he moved something there, but we didn’t want to create an international incident. Well, at least not that early in the trip we didn’t.

Tags: , ,

Lausanne Day 1 (or No Matter Where You Go, There You Are)

Aug 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | No Comments

When we checked into our hotel, the Nash Carlton, they put us in two adjoining rooms and opened the door in between. European hotels seem to compete more on the luxuriousness of their furnishings and not so much on their amenities (or at least what an American would think of as an amenity) — so we had a sumptuous room, but no coffee maker. Ice and soda machines, what are they?

OUR CAR IN FRONT OF OUR HOTEL

The bathrooms were quite modern — the funWife and I had an all glass shower enclosure small enough that the Fruit of the Murphy Loins believed me when I told them that when I showered I just squirted soap on the glass walls and rotated to get clean. It was nice to have 2 full bathrooms for the 4 of us – half the squabbling in half the time to get ready in the morning, even if we weren’t on any kind of schedule.

After unpacking and exploring the hotel, we set forth minus my daughter to find dinner. Since there are only two directions in Lausanne, uphill and downhill, we chose to try our luck downhill. Fortune favors the bold, and from some reason it decided to favor us as well since we quickly wound up in Ouchy at a pizza place on the lakefront. Well, almost on the lakefront, as the Chateau d’Ouchy was between us and the water.

THE CHATEAU D’OUCHY BLOCKING VIEW OF PIZZA JOINT

We ate pizza often on the trip, and each time it was customized to the local taste. They are not nearly as generous with their toppings in Europe as America (and cheese in the crust is right out), so a pepperoni pizza typically had six or seven pepperoni’s on it. And if you wanted pepperoni, you ordered salami, as ordering anything like pepperoni would result in green and red peppers, not pepperoni. In Venice we would order a Viennese pizza and get sliced hot dog on top for our troubles. And not even all of the hot dog.

In Lausanne they speak French, so we were forced to puzzle out the ingredients with a half dozen years of high school French between the four of us. As soon as we got comfortable with ingredients in French, we moved on to Interlaken, where they speak German and we were forced to puzzle out the ingredients all over again — and with zero years of high school German to help out. At least when we got to Venice the learning curve wasn’t as steep because Italian is a lot more like French than German is. Maybe that’s why we got cocky and wound up with hot dog on our pizza.

Tags: , ,

The Coop (or We’re Not in Kansas Anymore)

Aug 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | No Comments

As we drove around Lac Leman from Geneva to Lausanne, we marveled at the scenery: The deep blue lake dotted with sailboats surrounded by mountains. We didn’t take any pictures, but we did get hungry. The further we went, the hungrier we got. So I picked an exit pretty much at random, and discovered something called Coop Mall, which was furnished with more empty parking spaces than Geneva and Lausanne combined. For free. (OK, that’s the second free thing in Switzerland). With spaces big enough for American cars, which I appreciated even if I didn’t need it in my rental Peugeot.

Luckily, not only was there a grocery store, but there was also a mini-mall upstairs complete with a Coop restaurant. The rejoicing was muted, however, by the unfamiliar fare, so while the adults got some sort of quiche or quiche like substance, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins went for pastry. They weren’t going to ruin their first meal on foreign soil with something unfamiliar. We all had sugar drinks (the european description of soda) without ice, filled exactly to the 2 or 3 dl line, as the case may be. Then after a brief bout of shopping, we piled back into the car and headed on to Lausanne.

Tags: , ,

Geneva (or Being There)

Aug 12

Posted by Kevin Murphy in European Vacation | 1 Comment

The plan was to pick up the rental car, drive to the Museum of the History of Science, and then walk along the Geneva waterfront before heading on to our hotel in Lausanne. We figured on several hours of enjoyment and cultural enrichment. The best laid schemes of mice and men aft gang agley.

While the cars aren’t too dissimilar, driving in Europe is a bit different than driving in the US. Road signage is different — street names have pretty low priority in Europe so the signs are tiny blue things affixed to a side of a building in the vicinity of an intersection. Points of interest (like hotels), as well as autobahns, other towns, and the city center are prominently marked with large arrow signs indicating their direction. They also have a lot of roundabouts, which I found took a little getting used to. Where they do have stoplight controlled intersections, the lights are small and off to the near side of the intersection. I often had trouble telling them apart from the pedestrian lights, which were also small but on the far side of the intersection. The lane markings were confusing – white separates lanes going in opposite directions, yellow separates lanes going in the same direction. Thus my first drive was pretty exciting, not even mentioning the generally cramped feel — narrow lanes, bus lanes, bike lanes — and the pedestrians crossing virtually at will. It almost like they made driving so hard you’d want to take public transportation.

Through pluck, determination, and exquisite dead reckoning skills, we found roughly where we wanted to start our exploration of Geneva. Finding a parking space, however, was much harder, and about exhausted my pluck. I did finally find a spot a bit of a distance from the museum, but at least it was a straight shot there and I was perfectly positioned to get on the autobahn later. We got out of the car in shifts because I had to park right up against a hedge, and then we started the fun part of the vacation.

First we found the botanical garden. It seems to me that in Europe the first park in town they planted a flower no local had yet heard of they named a botanical garden. So after eyeing the crowded restaurant on the property with longing, it was off to less green pastures.

We quickly found the lake front, so we walked along it, admiring the view and perspiring heavily.

LAC LEMAN (LAKE GENEVA)

We did make it to the museum, which was several rooms in a big old mansion along the lakefront without air conditioning. Let me digress a bit and mention that it was unseasonably warm in Geneva — in the mid 90’s F — so it was hot, even for this midwesterner. All over Switzerland are fountains that provide free drinking water, the only thing free we found there. Sadly, we had no cup or bottle to catch and hold the water, so we had to make do with cupped hands. Let me just say they are a poor substitute for a plastic bottle for drinking large quantities of water. So we purchased a bottle of water at the museum after a lengthy discussion in French and English as to whether or not the water in the bottle was cold. It was.

ATTRACTIVE MODEL DEMONSTRATES WATER FOUNTAIN, SWISS STYLE

Thus refreshed, upon leaving we discovered a black storm cloud and thunder, though it wasn’t actually raining on us. Some say it was the jet lag, some say the heat, others claim it was the prospect of an immanent deluge, Jimmy Carter would have blamed a general malaise, but whatever the reason, we opted to break off our exploration of Geneva hours early and barely started and instead go to the hotel in Lausanne without further sightseeing. So we went back past the public beach and a couple of topless sunbathers to the car. Then it was on to the autobahn, clearly marked by a green picnic table sign, and out of Geneva and on towards Lausanne.

Tags: , ,