Day 11 - En Francais, s'il vous plait!

One last day in Switzerland. We'd seen mountains. Heard muffled yodels and cowbells. Eaten cheese and chocolate.

Genevieve had heard enough German to last her a lifetime. Two and a half hours to the south, they spoke Italian. Two and a half hours to the west, they spoke French.

Guess which direction we took?

It was a pleasure riding the remarkable Swiss train system one more time, taking full advantage of the four-day Swiss Pass we'd purchased prior to our trip. The pass paid for itself within the first day, I figure, and if you ever go to Switzerland, buy that instead of the Eurail pass. You get unlimited travel on all trains, boats and buses in the cities and throughout the country. You get half off the price of cogwheel trains and cable cars in the mountains, and you get free access to most every museum in the nation. What a deal!

Oh yeah, it even works in French.

Weather gave us a break and it didn't rain as we went through the north east of the country, turning south at Lake Neuchatel and heading down to Lausanne on Lake Geneva. Genevieve was thrilled that the announcements on the train shifted from German to French. I was surprised that I also understood them better in French than I had in German.

The town of Lausanne is on the bank of Lake Geneva, and is built on an extremely steep grade. The train station is midway up the hill, and the Metro is actually a funicular railroad that links the lakeside "beach" with the top of the town.

We decided to walk the old city before heading out onto Lake Geneva. So we went up over the cobblestones of another delightful medieval European town. Open air produce market. Expensive shops. Eateries. Well dressed business people and even a few tourists (though not that many). Much of the architecture was French, and even though the famous French spa town of Evian (home of the water) was right across the lake, we still knew we were in Switzerland.

Rick Steves' walking tour of old Lausanne was quite helpful and also pretty strenuous, and by the time we got to the old castle, we had reached the top of the city. View was tremendous, especially since the sun had come out for a change. The lake sparkled, the mountains loomed, etc.

While on top of the town, we looked for and found public WCs near the castle, located in what looked to be caves carved out of some ancient fortification. I had no idea what I was looking at! A shiny metal pan on the floor with a hole and footprints where I assumed you were supposed to put your feet. No paper. Genevieve thought she'd gone to the men's room and called into me. It was then that I realized that we might have been in Switzerland, but we were close enough to France to share some of their less savory customs. WOW! I held it!

Gorgeous marina, playgrounds, eateries and, of course, very expensive hotel resorts, including the original Beau Rivage, an old grand hotel in the 19th century tradition.

After a lakefront picnic, we walked past the Beau Rivage to the International Olympic Museum and park. Lausanne is the home base of the International Olympic Committee and the sculpture park, gardens and museum are all spectacular. On the way up, we stopped to admire the REAL Olympic flame and saw a number of beautiful sculptures, including two enormous sand sculptures -- one of Michael Phelps and the other, a giant statue of "heroes," including likenesses of Muhammad Ali, Katerina Witt and of course, Roger Federer.

The interior was very much like the Smithsonian Museum of American History in that it was full of awesome memorabilia. Jesse Owens' shoes. Jean Claude Killy's skis. Muhammad Ali's gloves. Al Oerter's discus. Katerina Witt's, er, dress. You could take your photo on the medal podium, which I did. Stick your head in Jim Thorpe's likeness, which I did. Pose as a naked Greek athlete, which I also did. My were those folks little!

After the museum, we hopped a train for Montreux, home of the world-renowned Jazz Festival. From there we got on a bus to Chateau de Chillon, one of the truly delightful medieval castles open to tourists in Europe and one immortalized by Lord Byron. This compact castle was in fabulous shape and gave a wonderful insight into life in the middle ages under the house of Savoy. It was also home to the Bernese for a couple of centuries. Lots of rocks, dank dungeons and tiny loopholes. Very much a fortress rather than a palace.

We cruised back to Lausanne and guess what happened? IT RAINED. That was the bad news. The good news was that Lake Geneva is so large that the sun was shining behind us, so we were treated to a spectacular rainbow on the trip back. Tres magnifique!

Hadn't originally planned to see the French Swiss countryside, but when we return to Europe we'll definitely want to come back to see Mont Blanc and Chamonix.

It was after midnight when we got back to Zurich. Packed our clothes. Checked on the Astros and prepared for a long flight back to Austin and return to reality. We'll wrap everything up in the next few days with some overall observations and heretofore unreleased photos, videos and the like, so stay tuned!

Enjoy the entire day's worth of photos!

NEXT STOP -- Austin, Texas! YEE HAW!