I just spent a day in Lausanne and a small town nearby, called Vevey.
My stop there actually started badly. The directions to my hotel, which they sent to me via email – was WRONG. As mentioned before, the Swiss transport system is very confusing, so it took some time for me to figure out that I was on the wrong bus. Add to that the fact that Lausanne is on the French-speaking side of Switzerland (and therefore, people here are not very fluent in English), so it was quite difficult to get the information I needed to get to where I was supposed to go.
To make the story short, my ordeal took about an hour and a half, which ended with me walking for about 15 minutes just to I could reach the hostel. A 15-minute walk would have been tolerable for me, if not for the 30-kilo luggage I was carrying with me.
I was so tired when I reached my hotel at about 5:00 pm in the afternoon that I decided to just call it a day and do my tour of the city the next morning. I had until 12:00 noon the next day to explore the place as my train for Geneva would leave at 12;45 pm.
Two good things about the hostel, though, is that they gave me a free city ticket, which I could use for 24 hours on all the public transport (train, tram, and bus) and all the zones within the city; plus they gave free breakfast.
Anyway, first thing I did when for my tour was to go to Vevey, which was 20 minutes away from Lausanne by train. My reason for going there – to see the Nestle international headquarters J .
It was a snowy morning, so the sights were a bit dimmed by the fog, but the views of Lake Geneva were still pretty. Got some great photos there.
The Nestle headquarters, though, was quite a disappointment. It looked interesting from the TV features I’ve seen, but up close, it looked average. Not really worth the 10 euro I spent to go to Vevey. Well, at least I satisfied my curiosity.
Lausanne was also not very interesting. Like Lucerne, it looked like a typical European city. I think the highlight if my stay there were the swans I saw swimming and playing around on Lake Ouchy.
Im now off to Geneva. Got about half a day there then I’ll be leaving at 7:40 am the next morning for Venice…
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