Day Three: Switzerland

Our day started out early: 6:00 am.

We awoke to a clear London morning, not-so-bright-eyed and not-so-bushy-tailed, and made our way on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow airport. After speeding through airport security in less than twenty minutes (top marks to Heathrow for that one, though if I'd known I might have slept in a bit more) we waited around to board our Swiss Air flight to Geneva a little before 9:00 am.

Swiss Air pros: They served us awesome fresh croissants and Swiss chocolate for breakfast.
Swiss Air cons: The airline has this weird policy where you can't close the window blind during take off and landing. The nervous flyer (me) was not pleased about before forced to watch as we were launched into the sky at totally unnatural speeds. Alas, I recovered.

We touched down in Geneva at 11:30 after losing another hour to European time zones and decided to forgo any walking about the city, in favour of catching our train directly to Martigny. I know this was a slightly blasphemous decision, as there are some seriously dedicated Geneva fans reading this blog (hi Allison!), but by that point in the day 6:00 am was wearing us down, and I was starting to feel a bit like a hunchback from lugging my too-heavy backpack around with me all morning.

Geneva to Martigny by train

The train from Geneva to Martigny was gorgeous: the first half followed the outer rim of Lac Leman, giving way to stunning views of crystal blue waters and quaint Swiss towns. The second half, diverging south-east from Montreux, plunged us straight into the heart of the Swiss Alps; everywhere you looked, seemed like it had been sculpted straight out of a Disney movie.

Here are some of my favourite shots from the journey:

Loved the quintessentially European countryside views

Lac Leman from the train window

The Swiss Alps emerging in the distance

Dave enjoyed this train ride in his usual manner: fast asleep.

Final stop: Martigny, Switzerland

After checking into our hotel, we showered, unpacked and then ventured into town in search of food. I took a few minutes to look up some restaurants on trip advisor, and had the perfect treat in mind to celebrate our arrival in Switzerland: Fondue!!!!

Cafe Du Midi in Martigny is known for it's extensive fondue selection

Cafe Du Midi, was a restaurant totally dedicated to fresh cheese and meats (from what we could tell) and was just a short walk from our hotel. After stumbling through some messy French with the waiter (a process, during which, Dave was completely useless—insisting my verb tenses were wrong), we found a table on the small patio out front, overlooking the town square.

Now for the good part: the food! Dave ordered a cheese fondue flavoured with herbs de montagne, which our waited translated to herbs from the mountain, while I settled on the house salad, which came topped with a massive amounts of prosciutto (that I promptly picked off—the vegetarians' loss was Dave's win).

Fondue and a house salad topped with prosciutto

Cheese fondue with herbs from the mountain in action

We also ordered Italian "white" beers, which helped beat the heat

After dinner we headed back to the hotel: I had some work to catch up on, and Dave was suffering from too much time-zone hopping. Early to bed tonight, and the onward to Great. St. Bernard Pass tomorrow morning!

Fast asleep at 8:00 pm.

Cheers,
Heather