Montreux, June 21st

Again we boarded Tucker and took a day trip to a nearby town. This time we went south to Montreux. Montreux is on Lake Geneva, and French is the main language spoken. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to get there.

The main purpose of our trip was to visit Chateu de Chillon. I've seen castles when we took a river boat down the Rhine River in Germany back in 2011, but I've never visited one. We took an audio tour, and spent about an hour and a half walking around. I loved the audio tour, and felt like you really couldn't appreciate the castle without knowing all the interesting details.The castle is much bigger than I imagined, it's more like a small village behind walls. The castle is made up of 100 buildings, and 3 open courtyards.

The Chillon is actually on an island, you wouldn't know this from the road as it's really close to the main land. The oldest parts of the castle could date back to 1005, but no one knows for sure.

It's on it's own island

The wine room

The dungeon

No one knows who sketched these drawings on the dungeon wall

Prisoners were chained to a pillar

People (visitors) would sign the pillar, the framed signature is by Lord Byron. He wrote the poem  The Prisoner of Chillon in 1816, about a monk that was imprisoned here for 6 years.

Next to the dungeon is where they stored the goods that were imported

The oldest artifact found at the castle. A church altar.

Very steep and narrow wooden steps

An impressive wardrobe

The dining room

All the rooms had different and amazing ceilings

The Keep, the last resort hiding spot if the castle was invaded

Small windows so no one could get in

Chevron print wall drawings. It was trendy back then too

This bed was only 5'6". People were much shorter back then and many slept sitting half up.

A stove in the bedroom, to keep you warm

Drawings in the Lord's bedroom. The color blue was only used for important royals. 

The toilet

The chapel

Mike is too tall to live in a castle

Models of the castle

The century walk was a walkway around the castle

The view from the Keep

After touring the castle we walked along the lake and had lunch.

My lunch, and my first hamburger in Switzerland

A saw off

Montreux is also Switzerland's largest wine region, which means we will be back.

Montreux has a lake, hills, vineyards, a view of the alps, a castle and a charming french feel. It ticks all of our check boxes for a good place to visit. It's not a big city but there's enough to do to warrant an overnight trip. Plus there's ferry's that will take you to city's all over Lake Geneva.