Down... and up... and down...

The weather today was actually surprisingly better than we thought it would be. We'd come up with two travel plans for the remaining two days we had here. Today we chose to go down the highway to see Chillon Castle, on the banks of Lake Geneva near Montreux, and to come back up the highway via Fribourg, which is another European city with a really lovely old town.

Check out the two Flickr sets I've got for today. First one is for the Swiss Alps, second one is for Fribourg only:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645537279210/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645535225457/

So after heading down the hill, once again in pretty treacherous, foggy conditions, we flew down the highway towards Lake Geneva. Seriously, that 40 Francs for the vignette was money really well spent. I took a couple of photos of the lake in Montreux, and ended up standing next to a family who were talking, in German, about their upcoming holiday to Australia. I joined the conversation and gave them a few pointers on what to expect.

We got to Chillon Castle to find out that you need a 'disc' for parking. Swiss roads/car parks are strange. We got one for free from the people at the castle, and put it on the dashboard. All it basically does it tells you what time you arrived, so there's a limit of 2 hours enforced properly.

I hadn't ever intended on going into the castle, and for good reason - there were plenty of people queueing to get in, and it's not exactly a big castle by European standards. We gave it a miss and instead wandered up and down the lake taking photos for a while:

Chillon Castle

About 90 minutes later we got back in the car and went back north towards Fribourg. This time we could only find paid parking, so we put an hour's worth of coins in and set off to explore. After dad and I went our separate ways, I went down this REALLY large (like 200-large) flight of stairs down to the bottom level. "Takes lots of photos".

After a while I stumbled upon free 'disc' parking, so I sent dad a text with the GPS coordinates asking if he could drive down here so we could do some more exploring. After 20 minutes and no response, panic mode set in and I sprinted back UP the staircase to the car park, to find no Renault Megane any more. Cue phone call: dad had gone down there without sending a message. So I had to go all the way back down the staircase AGAIN. My knees wanted to die after that.

Anyways, we did some more exploring and took some more photos:

Lower old town of Fribourg

After which we headed in a straight line back to the chalet, except going on toll-free roads instead of on the motorway. We came across a couple of nice looking wheat fields, and stopped a couple of times to take photos:

Wheat fields of Switzerland

Hopefully tomorrow we'll make it to Grindelwald, which is right in the middle of some of the biggest mountains in Switzerland. See everyone then!