Switzerland trip: Day 4

I woke up bit late today, decided to have a relaxing time in Lucerne. After breakfast I started to walk along the city wall which is basically at the back of the hostel. I climbed the Mannlichturm (the city wall has several towers) to get a nice view of Lucerne. Then I continued to the old town area, the shopping street and the famous Lion monument(a sad lion indeed). I returned back to the old town following the city guides walking tour that I got from the Tourist Info Center yesterday.



I was late to catch the boat trip, but it's okay since I think I had enough sun (and lakes) already). I visited Rosengart Collection instead (tried to avoid sun a bit :-P) for its Picasso collections (also Paul Klee's and some others that I forgot the name). It was great collection since it was personally collected from Picasso (or other painter) so we got more stories behind the paintings.



After around two hours there I decided to buy lunch and some souvenirs. Then taking my luggage from the hostel. It was around 5pm already. My train departed at 05:54pm to Basel and then from Basel to Duess (oh this time I got a first class ticket with a cheap price...nice..). I got another nice sunset view on my train trip back to Duess, what a great way to finish my short trip to Switzerland :-)

Switzerland trip: Day 3

Started the day quite early to have a walk to Chateau de Chillon, the YH has really good location, it is exactly in the middle between Montreux city center and the castle along the lake Geneva promenade. It took me around 15 minutes to reach the castle and got a beautiful view of the castle and lake Geneva (a lot of nice pictures for sure :-P). I walked back to the YH and took my luggage to go to the city center. Spent some time to visit some souvenir shops (:-P) and to exchange some Swiss Franc there.

I headed to the train station to take the Golden pass trip to Lucerne via Zweisimmen (passing through Interlaken). As you know, I always love train trips so this is one of the highlight from my Switzerland trip (still have to try Glacier and Bernina express though..:-P). The Golden pass trip wad great, we passed through some beautiful lakes around Bernese Oberland area and pretty wooden houses on the green valley along the way. Though we only used the panoramic train between Montreux-Zweisimmen only.





I had two hours transit time in Zweisimmen, so I decided to explore the village a bit, bought some postcards and some food at the Coop supermarket. Then we continued the trip with a normal train, next stop was Interlaken Ost (too bad I could not spent some time there - for Jungfraujoch for sure). We had to change another train there, it was so warm outside and in the train but thankfully we had a great view outside the window :-P





I arrived around 7pm in Lucerne, still managed to visit the Tourist Information Center at the train station (and got a lot of info :-P). After having a dinner in a fast food restaurant (whose name I never heard before)I went directly to the hostel. I was tempted to join a tour to Mount Pilatus (because of the man at the hostel resception who promoted the tour and gave a good discounted price for it :-P). But not so long after I had shower, it was raining heavily (the first rain since I was in Switzerland) so I decided to leave out the Mount Pilatus trip.

Switzerland trip: Day 2

I woke up early to catch the train to Lausanne at 08:10am. Arrived in Lausanne around 08:45, still quite early.. I went directly to the old town. The map that I had was a bit confusing and I could not find the Tourist Info Center at the old town. Lausanne has hilly landscape..had a bit exercise to walk around it. My ultimate plan for Lausanne is to visit Musee de l'Art Brut, which shares the same idea with Prinzhorn Sammlung (Prinzhorn collection) in Germany. L'art Brut itself can be translated to 'raw art'. It has an art collection from people who did not get or experience art education or stayed outside the art institution, mostly some psychiatric patients, or just some eccentric people.. It was impressive, looking through the collection sometimes you're wondering how people consider something as art or not :-)..but I like it a lot, it's unusual and has some interesting stories behind it. There is a painting collection that looks like kind of Japanese manga collection (a bit erotic one though) which always pictured someone with military uniform. In fact it was painted in the beginning of 20th centuries..by Aloise who worked as a teacher and governess in the court of Kaiser Willem II in Potsdam. She had a crush with the Kaiser. It's kind of platonic love that made her obsessed and she ended up in a psychiatric institution. Duh..it's sad indeed..





I took the train at 02:20pm to Montreux, decided to go directly to the Youth Hostel but turned out it only opens after 5pm. Good thing that Chateau de Chillon is located not far away from the YH (and they have luggage storage :-P). It's nice castle with the beautiful view of lake Geneva..I stayed there until around 6pm and returned back to the YH. I spent the rest of the day walking a long the lovely promenade to the city center of Montreux, watching people, visiting Freddy Mercury's statue at the market area. I was lucky with the nice weather and bit regret that I did nor bring my swimsuit since the YH is located really close to the lake. I got a beautiful sunset by lake Geneva that day...lovely..