So this was the view from our hotel room looking right! Looking strait across you were looking right across the lake and into the beautiful mountains. Unfortunately, it was pretty overcast both days we were there so the mountain photos didn’t come out as well as I would have liked!
Montreux is a lovely city right on Lake Geneva, but on the opposite corner of the lake from Geneva itself.
After taking a million pictures of the scenery and ourselves, we headed out to the Christmas Market along the lake!
The market was full of plenty of Christmas goodies and gifts. It was super nice going right along the lake and made us feel very festive!
Of course we had to grab some food along the way! Carter had a hot dog, and he’s starting to show his similarities to me because he didn’t want to eat the bread with the hot dog in it, just the hot dog by itself!
As is normal for Christmas markets here, there was plenty of mulled wine (Gluhwein), bratz and Christmas treats. I also love how they set up little pop up restaurants for fondue and raclette. They are like cute little wooden houses where you can sit and eat!
After lunch we took the mountain train up to see Santa! I’ll share about that in another post. That night we headed back to check out the Christmas Market by night, and have some dinner. They had a Ferris wheel and a few other rides and the market was definitely more crowded at night with the after work crowd coming for some wine! The market is really big and we never saw the whole thing- walking along with a three year old who needs to stop at every playground kinds of slows things up!
We had raclette for dinner, which is basically melted cheese with stuff to dip in it! I ordered the “Italian” one which included roasted tomatoes and mushrooms in addition to the normal potatoes. It was amazing! We basically ate cheese for two days in Montreux and then again on the way home when we stopped at Gruyères!
Friday morning we went to see the castle near Montreux- Château de Chillon. It’s located on an island in the lake, which is very cool and easily accessible by a short bridge. You can take the bus strait there from Montreux.
The castle dates back to 1150 when the Savoys controlled it, thus controlling the routes along this side of the lake. Over time it has been added on to and reconstructed. There is also a huge wine cellar, which is active now and they make wine from the nearby vineyard which is sold exclusively at the castle!
We also had our own private tour guide, which was nice! Carter asked a lot of questions and seemed to enjoy going in all the rooms of the castle, especially the parts that were outside. You can rent an audio tour in various languages, but we decided to skip that since we knew we’d just be trying to wrangle Carter the whole time, and decided to just follow the numbered path through the castle.
Outside there was a garden area and some steep steps down to the dock. From here you had a really nice view of the lake, and you could see the moat as well!
Last but not least, another beautiful view of the lake and mountains! I took so many pictures, there are too many to share here! If you’re interested in seeing more pictures, check out the tour video on my YouTube page!
Have you ever been to Montreux? What other places in Switzerland would you like to read about?
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