After Lausanne our next stop was in Milano, Italy. We were travelling by train through the alps and had organised to make a detour on the way over to Zermatt. We caught our first train to Visp where we found some luggage lockers for our bigger bags, and a convince store for coffees.
After visiting Basel we caught the train back to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.
As an Australian it is often hard to understand how small some countries in Europe are. Switzerland is about a 6th the size of the state of Victoria. Despite this, Switzerland is broken up into cantons, which are somewhere between a local council and a state.
After a successful trip to see the Tour de France, our next adventure was a whirlwind whistle stop tour of Bern and Basel.
The train wound its way around the edge of the lake leaving Lausanne, before heading north. The cliffs were full of perfectly manicured vineyards and farms.
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Château de Chillon is a castle on the edge of Lake Geneva. It was an outpost in Roman times, situated on a route through the alps. The earliest record of a castle at that location is from the 1000’s. The castle as it is now was greatly expanded in the 12 and 13 hundreds.
We arrived in Lausanne by train from Nîmes, with a change in Dijon. While travelling by train is much more dignified that travelling by air, and you get to see where you are travelling, there is the down side of you taking your luggage with you. In Dijon we found a small waiting area to sit with our bags. Inside the station was a piano, the public were encouraged to play it.
