En Suisse!

This weekend, I made my first venture out of the EU and into Switzerland! I didn't get my passport stamped (which I thought was weird) but I have enough Swiss chocolate to prove I actually went there (but no promises on making it last). Anthony (who came to visit the Abbey last week too!) and I got a 7:30am train (ouch) and spent the day traveling the French/Swiss countryside until we arrived in Lucerne, Switzerland.

In all honesty, Lucerne is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and definitely one of the most random. I was first surprised by how much German was spoken there -- luckily, Anthony managed to get us around without too much trouble. The accent of Swiss German is different than "real" German though, and they also throw French words into their vocabulary: they say "merci" for thank you and "pardon" for excuse me, which is really odd.

The first day we were there, we just wandered the city -- we went up to the "old town" section of Lucerne across its famed "Covered Bridge" and to an old wall that was used as protection for the city against invaders. Behind the wall was a huge park that had bison (yes, like buffalo) for no apparent reason. We kept walking into a residential neighborhood and found llamas (yes, really) in what looked like someone's backyard. It was bizarre but I loved it.

Bison!

Yep, those are llamas.

A view of the wall from down below.

For dinner, we realized just how expensive food was in Switzerland, so we went to a little Thai takeout place with the hopes of saving some money. While we were there, a girl came in to pick up an order, walked over to us, and asked if we liked chocolate. Naturally, we said yes, and she pulled out a Lindt chocolate bar and gave us this chocolate and said "I just wanted to make someone happy today." She most definitely did :)

The next day, we tried to find a little bakery to get breakfast at and wound up in the middle of an open air market, where we ended up getting some kind of traditional Swiss pastries -- I'm not entirely sure what they were, but they were delicious.

After that, we headed to the dying lion monument, which was carved into the side of a mountain to commemorate the 500 Swiss soldiers that died during the French Revolution and it was amazing.

Right next to the carving is a glacier garden museum which was basically a mix of everything you could possibly imagine in a museum: it had glacial formations and a museum with about 3 million scale models of Lucerne over time. On top of the museum was an old Swiss house that we toured, and after that we went through a hall of mirrors with a middle eastern theme (three times), and then we climbed a watchtower to see over the whole city of Lucerne, which was an amazing view.

The hall of mirrors!

These creepy little gnomes were all over. Why? I have no idea.

After that, we kept wandering to the city churches which are very different from French churches: French churches have a lot of ornate carvings and decorations, while Swiss churches are relatively bare but have amazing altar pieces.

We also went to the history museum, which is called Depot and is literally a storage locker-type place of historical artifacts. It had nothing written on the "exhibits" but we got barcode scanners when we walked in, and we scanned barcodes to have the information about certain objects pop up on our devices.

Finally, for dinner that night we tried to find a cheap fondue place and completely failed -- literally nothing in Switzerland (aside from museums) is cheap. However, we had some delicious tomato fondue for our last night in Switzerland.

After a 10 hour train ride the next day (which was just the tiniest bit hectic since this region of France is just getting back from their ski vacations), I was finally back in Pontlevoy -- just in time to write this blog get ready for finals.

I can't wait for Paris Week -- it's coming up fast!

Amboise and Clos Lucé

Unfortunately I seem to have neglected my blog for too long now, so I'm going to publish this relatively outdated post and then I promise I'll post something new about my last weekend in Switzerland -- finals week is this week, and everything seems to have crept up on me really fast! It's crazy to think that we've already been here for over a month and that three of my classes will be over as of Thursday. It's even crazier to think that after that, I'll be traveling Europe for three weeks starting Saturday before I get back to the Abbey. I officially have tickets to Barcelona for my Vision Quest week and I cannot WAIT to go there. I may or may not be a little bit obsessed with Antoni Gaudí's architecture...

Clos Lucé

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Two weekends ago (I said I was out of date), we went to yet another chateau (believe it or not, they never get old -- honestly). Chateau Amboise belonged to King Francis I, and right next door was the house where Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last few years of his life. Apparently rumor has it that Da Vinci and Francis I were more than friends (if you get my drift...) and they literally had a secret tunnel built between their residences so they could get to each other at all hours (for a glass of wine or something probably... right? :P).

Secret love wine tunnel!

We got to see the bed Da Vinci died in as well as where he's buried, which was so cool. In the basement of Clos Lucé, models of Da Vinci's inventions were also set up on display -- I had no clue he invented so many things (the machine gun and double-hulled boat, for a few examples). We also walked around the gardens surrounding Da Vinci's house, which were kind of stark since it was so cold out, but still pretty cool.

Da Vinci's deathbed

and his grave!

Out in Da Vinci's garden

Interior of Chateau Amboise

Amboise exterior - it was up on top of a hill, so we had a great view of the city!

One of the chairs in Amboise -- apparently the royal court used to travel, so they would take these chairs with them, and the bottom part of the chair doubled as a trunk to take their belongings with them when they would visit other Chateaus!

Some gargoyles outside Amboise

Da Vinci monument in the Amboise gardens

The city of Amboise was also really cute: it was small, but there were plenty of chocolate shops open (and naturally I took full advantage of that).

Okay, that's all for Amboise. Switzerland post coming soon!