The bus took me from Arolla to Sion, which I stayed in for a day. It is, indeed, home to Switzerland's larges bus depot. As a result, you see a lot of people with giant backpacks wandering around, presumably waiting for their bus connection.
Not to sell Sion short, in addition to having Switzerland's largest bus depot and two castles atop some bizarro hills, there is also a
near(ish) underground lake big enough to go motor-boat on and also a half hour away (which is probably about 25 CHF, if anyone's counting) is
a castle. The
Swiss tourism site says
"Sion (or Sitten in German), the capital of the Canton of Valais, is known as the most sun-blessed town of Switzerland," which I imagine would make it a nice place to be in an Alpine winter. It has a population of about 30,000. The Castle-Church of Valere has one of the world’s oldest playable organs (15th Century), which I did not go in and see, as they were in the middle of mass when I went by.
Switzerland is...incredibly expensive. Beautiful, and expensive. The trip from the Geneva airport to Sion (~2 hrs?) was about 50 CHF. On the upside, the euro <-> swiss franc exchange is in the euro's favor, but only a bit. Outside of döner kebab, eating out meant usually 20 CHF(17 euros, 21 USD) if you got a good deal. I had pizza with raclette cheese and various delicious kinds of meat. The place was on the main street, which had tons of places to eat, all with outdoor seating.
The exciting fountain of downtown Sion:
There were two main attractions to Sion, the church-castle and the castle, one per hill.
Before getting to either, wandered a bit around the town:
A somewhat official-looking building had a fancy wooden door that had the same scene on it as one of the doors from the Hamburg Rathaus. That of the whole cut-the-baby-in-two story from the Bible. This was a favorite Hanseatic story.
Approaching the two hills, things got prettier and older.
En route to the church-castle, there was a tunnel thing to go through first which cars were not allowed through
then around the corner and up the hill. More cute buildings:
Near the top of the hill, the houses conformed a bit more to the hill, getting pretty slanty:
It was no surprise to find an archeological site near
Looking the other way gave the first view of the castle
and a third hill. It looked liked something had been built atop it as well, but I didn't make it over to check.
Here are a few pictures of the church-castle from relatively close:
The church-castle thing had a really nice lookout point. Here's the rather uneven yet picturesque last stretch of patch up to there.
The view from the vantage point.
Walking back down the hill, looked up to see the chapel:
Walking around Sion, saw this. Not sure what they old lady was doing following me around:
Sion is on the Rhone, which was a crazy blue-green color that didn't show up at all in the pictures. It was really nice walking around.
The region is known for its wine. The grapes are grown on terraces cut into the mountain.
Despite the steepness of the two weird hills atop which sit the castle and chapel, the spare space was still used for grape growing:
Sion has a pretty golf course (I don't golf, so I just enjoyed the impressive views).
Walking around, also saw this run down Brazilian Discotheque
which was around the corner from a horseback riding stable.
After the sun went down, I waited a bit too long (hey, I was hungry) to take this picture of the church-castle again:
and here's a nearby fountain:
Being in the French-and-German-speaking Canton of Valais, English worked
okay, and didn't try German until we went to the Döner place. There are at least two in town, this was the one by the main square (
here). Their answer to "Deutsch? English?" was "Sure. Deutsch, English, French, Turkish, Arabic,...". The guys were cool and I think it was the best Döner ever. To be fair, I did have chicken, which maybe wasn't your usual coagulated meat-product-on-a-round thing, but, still. I'd sworn off Döner since spending too many lunches in Copenhagen 4 years ago eating Döner (I was on a limited budget), and was glad to have given these guys a try.
Next time: Bern!
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