Lausanne, continued.

Two of the days of the conference were half-days (one midway through, and the other the last day). The midway day we had an 'excursion', which was mainly taking a short train (15-30 min) and then walking 4 hrs along the lake and through vineyards. I thought it might involve some wine tasting, but the grapes are still small, and all of the shops in the towns we passed through (say, 3pm mid-week) were closed.

Album from that trip:

Walk Lausanne to Vevey

View from train:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

View in the train:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

Near start of walk:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

As we walked, people settled into groups based on speed or preference. There was a nice lookout not too far in that was quite lovely. Nice breeze, random guy playing guitar.


View looking back from the overlook:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

Small white boat, blue water, blue mountains:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

Looking akin to Norway:

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

As we continued walking, we could see the forecasted rain moving over the
mountains and then the lake, towards us.

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

It overtook us close to our destination, which felt great after a sweaty hike (lots of up and down hills).

For some reason, I was discussing the funicular in Bergen, and how it'd be nice if there were one around where we were. The boys didn't believe me that it was a real word/thing. Funnily enough, the road we were walking along took us by a wall with hand-painted lettering saying "FUNICULAIRE -->", and there was an actual specimen. It was unclear if it was running currently, since there *were* ticketing machines, but no funicular operators. Also, a trip up to the first stop and back would have been 20 CHF.

Rather than put the fun in funicular, the group I was in decided to buy a few bottles of Swiss wine (~ 5-8 CHF/bottle, not the cheapest nor the most
expensive) at the grocery store and then find some place to eat. The most
reasonable place we saw was a restaurant which sold pizzas in the 20 CHF
price range (and bottles of water for 4.5 CHF :P ). We swapped slices so that everyone tried at least 3 or 4 kinds of pizza, then moved on to a sort of town square area, where we drank our wine and watched the rain really settle in to pour. It was very nice.

From Walk Lausanne to Vevey

Misc:
The only other 'touristing' I did was to attempt to seek out a cafe, which turned into a quest for iced coffee, and discover the/a Starbucks next to a McDonald's. We had our iced coffee, for a staggering 6.60 CHF.

Sebastien (or Sebastian) was the most common name at both conferences, with three people (not the exact same three) with that name at each conference (Norway, now Lausanne). Prior to this, I'd never known someone with that name.

Things I would have liked to have seen:

1. The Roman ruins along the beach
   
2. The beach, up close (although descriptions of loose metal lying around underwater was discouraging; I really wanted to go wading, to counteract the 'scorching' (rel Norway) weather -- temperatures around 26 C and up).
   
3. The Musee Brut
   

Next installment: Paris.