Our first Saturday here, we headed in to Morges, the next town over to see the weekly market.
Sam, of course, loved the train ride.
I had no idea that there were lime looking citrus fruits with clementine like insides! Nanclarines? I tried to google the name but nothing came up. Pretty neat.
Downtown Morges, walking through the market
The tile on the church roof is so beautiful!
A kiddie ride pulled by a Saint Bernard? Fun!
Street food - mini pizzas and a lemon tart.
Morges is such a pretty town. I love the side walk cafes, and the sparklingly clean brick and cobblestone roads. The lakefront is also really beautiful.
That day, there was a British car collectors show. Sam was really excited about the super fancy "race cars."
Here is the Morges castle.
After our stroll around Morges, we headed in to Lausanne to look around. We first went into the Church of St. Francois and looked at the beautiful painted ceilings and stained glass windows. It was built in 1272 at the center of a Franciscan monastery and is now a Protestant parish church. In 1664, an Englishman and former magistrate of King Charles I had fled to Lausanne and was assassinated inside of the church. Interesting.
And we filled up our water bottles at a city fountain. Then, we hiked up to the cathedral. Don and I had heard the Lausanne was hilly. We thought it would probably be like where we live in St. Prex, which is reasonable steep.
But Lausanne is far steeper than St. Prex. It is like San Francisco - only without the intermittent downhills. It is just straight up - all the way up to the top of the mountain. The pictures I took trying to show how steep the streets were just didn't do the steepness justice but you can look at the buildings on the right in the picture above and get a little idea.
And here is the Lausanne Cathedral (Cathedral Notre-Dame). It commonly thought of as the finest Gothic building in all of Switzerland. While most of the decoration was stripped during the Zwingli Reformation in the 1530s, it still has most of the original stained glass in the beautiful rose window and the statues on the exterior of one of the walls are 13th century originals.
The sun was shining through all the stained glass windows on the west side, painting the floor and buttresses. Sam loved playing in the colorful sunlight.
Sam was also pretty excited about this "man with no face."
Here is the rose window. so beautiful! And amazing that all the stained glass except from the middle panel is from the 1200s!
We hiked up to the top of the tower to get beautiful views of the city and to see the nightwatchmen's tower. Lausanne is the only European city to have a watchman who calls out that all is well between 10p-2a every night.
Stopping for a break along the way up the tower. The views were beautiful and the weather was warm. Look at Don in a short sleeved shirt!
Sam walked up all 153 stairs to get to the top of the tower.
And these are the views we could see from the top. What a beautiful place we live!
The brightly colored tile roofs and colorful painted buildings are so beautiful!
This is a seminary.
And here is one of the huge bells that ring the hour.
And here is where the nightwatchmen rests between his hourly calls. Every hour, on the hour, he calls in four directions, C'est le guet; il a sonne l'heure ("This is the nightwatch; the hour has struck")
And here are some views from the balcony by the cathedral that looks over the city.
And here are the medieval steps that lead up to the cathedral. Amazingly steep! Another indication of the steepness; the benches to wait for the metro are staggered like the doors to shops above because of the slope of the ground. The city is so charming.
And here is the old town square.
After looking around the old town, we headed to Ouchy (oo-shee), which is Lausanne's waterfront.
My camera died before I got a picture of Sam on the carousel and playground, which he loved. Then, we headed home. It was a wonderful day.