Laussane and Chateau Chillon

Saturday was our final day in Switzerland. We woke in Lausanne after that terrible night of sleep and really pushed ourselves to get out of bed and get a move on. We decided to visit Chateau Chillon which Rick Steves described as the most impressive castle in Switzerland. We also found out that his description of Laussane was “like a giant game of chutes and ladders” which definitely checked out after yesterday’s uphill hike.

Unfortunately, Chateau Chillon was in the opposite direction of where we needed to end up at night which is Geneva. The problem: our bags.

The train station has lockers for luggage storage but after walking in circles for 15 minutes we found that all the lockers were full. Next option, bring the bags to the castle. The castle was easy to store the luggage but it was quite a trek dragging our bags from the train station to the castle. Not fun on a normal day but definitely even less so when you’re surviving on 4 hours of sleep.

But the castle was beautiful!

Rebecca is a great photographer. I have taken a total of maybe 5 photos in 9 days. Nothing looks as good on my iPhone camera as it does on her Samsung camera. Very sad to say that but it’s so very true.

We slowly walked back to the train for our journey to Geneva. Couldn’t wait to just sit for awhile.

Our trip was winding down. Geneva is the airport we are flying out of so we booked a hotel near the airport. Just one last dinner and sleep!

The change from Zurich and Interlaken to Lausanne and Geneva is really crazy. This part was so much more French, more diverse people, the buses were no longer on time, the city was so much more…city-like.

Speaking of busses, we had debated for months about getting the “Swiss Pass” which is basically a pass for riding public transportation and covers almost all trains and busses and gondolas and even some museum tickets. Sounds great? Except it was $400+ per person. After doing some math, I suspected it wouldn’t be worth it. Not only did we make the right call by not getting the pass, we learned after a few days that no one was checking tickets anywhere and we really haven’t paid for transportation for the last few days.

On to dinner at Spinella’s in Geneva. We were super impressed by this cute little spot ran by three young Sicilian brothers. The Negronis were perfect and they even bruleed the orange slice on top.

Started with arancini and bruschetta which were both excellent. We were so excited for the pasta course after those apps and drinks.

But, the pastas were so cheesy. And if you’ve been following along, I’m sort of off cheese right now. Unfortunately, my stomach has not been the same since the food poisoning. So about 2 bites of each pasta and we were done. First one is ravioli under all that fanfare and the second one was carbonara.

Disappointing end to a strong start and it was a $200 meal that we barely ate. Oh well.

Back to the hotel, packing up, early flight in the morning. Overall, we really nailed Switzerland! Saw what we wanted to see, enjoyed home cooked meals, decent accommodations, really a very well done bestie trip.