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Europe Part 3: Italy and Montreux

ITALY
We took an Easy Jet flight from Athens to Milan, Italy. Once we got to the train station from the airport, we tried buying our tickets for the morning train to Switzerland. After waiting 30 minutes in the International Line, the lady at the booth said "No trains - strike." But that's all she knew how to say in English, so we were left hanging. No one seemed to be able to tell us anything other than that the strike would last 24 hours.

Swati and I left and went over our choices (even renting a car), but the best way would obviously be to take a train. We had thought we could stay in Milan for the day and then skip the first town we were going to go to in Switzerland, which wouldn't be so bad. Then, a girl in our hotel said that there were a few trains running the next day, so we might be able to get on one to Switzerland, even if it wasn't exactly where we needed to go. We went back to the train station with this information, but everything was closed by the time we got there. Hungry and tired, we finally had dinner (yummy pasta with arrabiatta sauce) and gelato. I'm making myself hungry right now!

The next morning, we got up early to get in line at the train station, and after standing in line at the 2 windows that were open (and hence the line was a mile long), we got tickets to Brig, which has a train every hour to Montreux. We were set!

SWITZERLAND
Montreux
We got to Montreux at about 2 pm and walked along Lake Geneva for about 30 minutes to our hostel. The weather was gorgeous, and they had planted about 50 different types of flowers along the lake path. It made hauling the luggage not nearly as bad! I just love that path along the lake! After dropping the luggage off, we continued about 15 minutes more down the lake to the Castle de Chillon. The Castle was a fortress and a home built in the 12th century. It was simple yet elegant. One of the best parts of the castle was the view over Lake Geneva, especially from the towers above the castle.

posted by Biff @ 12:29 PM