Day 573 Onto Lausanne
Departing Lyon
62° fair The Lyon Port Dieu train station is a hive of activity. From our hotel window we watch a protest against raising the retirement age of railway workers. Soon they depart and the station’s trains return to slide in and out of the tracks like the slots of a Tetris game, disgorging, and then re-supplying its travelers, busy as frantic ants. Every announcement comes with the bing bang bong that heralds each train's arrival. Since the Romans built its famous roads, Lyon has long been an important intersection as goods passed from French ports to the heart of the empire. The trains today are a legacy, and remain a hub.
After an excellent breakfast at the Ibis Budget Hotel (just outside the station), we attack the mayhem of the station and fight the hordes to locate the correct departure track. Near Starbucks and Paul's Café in one section of the station, clusters of travelers sit awaiting the next train, legs crossed, peering at their phones, sipping coffee, playing cards.
But dogs, bicyclists, babies in strollers, laughing or wailing, are all on the move, awaiting trains that will haul them in every direction throughout Europe. We are just one bee in the hive. There are enough languages swirling past us to shame the Tower of Babel.
Into Switzerland
1 PM cloudy – crossing the border into Switzerland. First stop: Geneva. The train is packed. It's the weekend and local tourists are on the move. As we rise toward the uplifted foothills of the Alps, it grows cooler. The thick stands of trees have just begun to bud in the April spring. Sharp cliffs surround us and each village and farm sits at their base, quiet, green, and serene.
We make a quick stop in Geneva and then hop the train to Lausanne where we will eventually meet up with our good friend Christian, he who crossed the Atlantic Ocean with us aboard Ponant's L'Austral. He promises to take us to factories where two of Switzerland's most adored products are manufactured: chocolate and cheese. Meanwhile we ride the rails from Geneva, passing along the lap of its famous lake. Here the land opens up into a broad valley, but beyond, to the west, the high Alps, await. Their peaks are snow capped, and run to the far horizon. It's raining now and temperatures have dropped. We are at 46° latitude north, the same latitude as Newfoundland's Viking Settlement at L’anse Aux Meadows, a place we visited a year and a half earlier.
Switzerland is home to the Matterhorn, the Eiger, the famous Swiss Guards of the Vatican, Nestlé's chocolate, iconic watches like Breitling and Cartier, secret Swiss bank accounts and that cheese with all the holes in it. And it was through these peaks that Hannibal attempted to sack Rome and make its empire Carthaginian.
The train arrives and off we go. Once again our GPS (and us with it) struggle below ground to locate our accommodations, the Continental Hotel Lausanne, chosen mostly because it is close to the train station. (Breakfast was way over priced at $30 per person.)
We settle in, but it's still afternoon so we search for lunch and find that the city has not a flat space on it unless you happen to be along the lake shore. Nevertheless it is a beautifully terraced city, with broad pedestrian walkways, steep as any mountain switchback. We are, after all, among the foothills of the Alps. We pass through shops and restaurants filled with busy Lausanneans, trekking to work, running errands, doing business Swiss style with their customary speed and focus. After lunch we explore the hillside and at one local café help ourselves to some hot chocolate because ... Switzerland! And it was delicious.
