Post #22 compliments of Mr. Deals…
Wow, that was a long 3 weeks. Let me quickly recap…Mrs. Deals goes to Barcelona for 1 week followed by a trip to Madrid. The day Mrs. Deals returns from Madrid, Mr. Deals goes to Switzerland. Mr. Deals returns from Switzerland and Mrs. Deals is asleep, only to wake up and drive to Massachusetts in preparation of her best friends wedding. Mr. Deals heads to Massachusetts 2 days later, sees Mrs. Deals for 5 minutes. Wedding happens just last night and Mr. and Mrs. Deals spend the most awake time they’ve spent together in 3 weeks. Ok you get all that?
Good, now to talk about my trip to Switzerland. I arrived in Geneva and quickly saw a sign relevant to the conference I was going to. This made it simple as the representative just guided me to the train area to get a ticket and get on my way to Montreux. Montreux is a small village about an hour train ride from Geneva. Along the ride there you go past the vineyards of Vevey and Lausanne, and you can’t forget the worldwide headquarters for Nestle. It must be nice to work for a chocolate company on the edge of Lake Geneva. The scenery is phenomenal which it should be for the price you pay for that train ride, almost $40 one way!
You can pretty much take trains everywhere including right up to the base of the ski resorts. Its pretty convenient. Since I had about a days time to wander around I didn’t venture very far out of Montreux but I definitely have good reason to go back now. While in Montreux I had enough time to check out the Chateau de Chillon. It’s a really cool castle built on a rock formation right in Lake Geneva. I won’t bore you with the history of the Castle, but I will say it’s worth the 15 minute bus ride outside of town. A quick note on that bus ride, when I went to the hotel concierge, they gave me a Montreux tourist card, which entitles you to discounts on some of the tourist spots and free bus rides within a certain zone (not bad).
After touring the Castle, I really didn’t have a ton of time to do an excursion outside of town so I decided to really go deep into the village, which meant a nice long walk uphill through the village of Montreux. I’m really glad I took the time to do this as it was fun to walk into the little cafes and also see how the locals live. One of the coolest things was seeing the Swiss Chalet style homes with backyard harvests of grape vines. Unfortunately the weather was garbage and I didn’t get to experience the phenomenal views from up in the village. That said, there was one afternoon of the conference that I did get to take pictures of the vast mountain ranges and beautiful lake scenery. I’ll get those updated in here soon.
All in all this trip confirmed that Switzerland is a place I must go back to if anything just to eat more chocolate. I’d love to take some train rides to the mountains and do tours of the vineyards. One thing to note is get your hands on Swiss Francs if you ever head out there. The Euro doesn’t seem so popular and a lot of places only accept cash. Hopefully I’ll head to this conference again and plan some time before and after for more vacation.
Look for an updated post with some pictures once I get my life organized again. No travel for this guy at least for another couple weeks…
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to follow my banter with Mrs. Deals on Twitter at @mrdealswelike
Click here to view previous posts by Mr. Deals.
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I recently attended a conference in Davos, Switzerland. There they also provided cards for free bus transportation. I think this is an awesome perk for tourists that many people may not know about. It made it very easy to get around the town, to the next village, and to the ski resorts.
Thanks for another great post, and I’m very glad that you and Mrs. DealsWeLike are reunited.
@Phraktur – Davos sounds amazing, would love to get there some day!
I would like to mention something regarding restaurants in Switzerland:
When you are travelling to Switzerland and other European countries it is great to try all the local food. You find a complete directory of restaurants at MyTable.com and the MyTable smartphone app. There, you can search by name, location, kitchen style, price range, etc. Or you just search for a place nearby (the app detects your actual location and makes proposals). You can make your reservation directly online and you‘ll get the confirmation by email or sms. Also, you can see the restaurant’s menu, as well as ratings and recommendations of restaurants written by other users, so you will be safe form tourist traps.
MyTable services are available in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.