Chateau de Chillon

Today we drove just past Montreaux and visited the Chateau de Chillon, the most popular castle in Switzerland. It is situated on right on the shores of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), Montreaux to one side and the Alps to the other. The drive was very beautiful, with views of vineyards, the water and the Alps all along the way. I drove in Switzerland for the first time yesterday, and Mom drove today. Generally it is not that hard. The only confusing thing is that there are lights for each lane, usually because one will be a turning lane. So there will be a green light and a red light right next to each other and you have to pay attention to the proper light. We are still using a loaner car, but our vehicle is supposed to be here on Thursday.

The castle was freezing, but besides that was very enjoyable. It is over 1000 years old, and the dungeon served as the inspiration of Lord Byron's poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" which he incidentally wrote while staying at a hotel here in Lausanne near the Lake. The Castle is now a museum, although there is not much furniture or anything remaining inside. However, they have restored much of the paintings on the walls and the audio guide provided a lot of historical information about the place. I have posted pictures of the castle under a new link to the right.

Every Saturday there is an outdoor market, but we keep sleeping in. Yesterday we finally got up early enough to go, even though it was snowing - which doesn't stop anyone else from going, by the way. Actually, we enjoyed it very much, despite being covered in snow. There was a much better selection of produce, nuts, cheeses, etc. than you can get in the grocery store here, which is generally always not of the freshest quality either. Still, there are those few things that just don't seem to exist out here...you'd think you could find some Swiss chard in Switzerland, for example, although it is out of season so maybe we will see some when the weather is warmer. There are about three original "Swiss" meals, and I'm pretty sure they all include some form of melted cheese. Fondue, obviously. There is also a dish called Raclette, which I ate at a restarant. Basically, it is a plate of melted cheese with a side of fingerling potatoes and pickles and some pickled cocktail onions. When you go to the grocery store, the potatoes are not named by the type of potato (russet, fingerling, etc) but by the dish. They do this with some of the cheeses as well. There are raclette potatoes and baked potatoes. There is fondue cheese and raclette cheese. I find this all very amusing, although it is a bit of a challenge at times as well, particularly because no one at the grocery store speaks any English. I went to get sugar and there was a candy sugar, fruit sugar, cane sugar, cubed sugar, powdered sugar, dextrose, each in a square cardboard box that all look the same. No brown sugar, though. Then the flour. There were about five different kinds and each one had a picture of a different kind of bread on the front. I got the white flour and the whole wheat flour, but there is no all-purpose flour as far as I can tell and the white flour is not quite the same, which we learned when mom tried to make pie crust and it was a disaster. Sometimes a simple trip to the grocery store can take quite a while because it's tough to find the right thing. However, there are always great fresh made breads, interesting cheeses, and good cheap wine (French, Italian, or Spanish..Swiss wine is not very good). In any case, it's always an adventure. We've generally got the kinks worked out by now. Almost.