Lausanne – Day 1

With our tight itinerary of meetings, reserved lunches, and guided tours, it was reassuring that we could always depend upon Swiss Travel System’s buses and trains to be on time. Arriving at the Lausanne train station from Sion right on schedule at 11:10 a.m., 

we thought we had plenty of time to check into our hotel and make our luncheon meeting with David Werlen, Public Relations Media Representative of Lausanne Tourism, at 12:30 p.m.

Only a short walk from the train station, the Hotel Mirabeau is a lovely older establishment that is now part of the Best Western chain’s Plus category. 



Our sixth (top) floor suite was pretty posh. It had a spacious sitting and meeting area (with its own WC) that was separate from a big master bedroom and bathroom, and it had a small sundeck balcony with a superb view overlooking Lac Leman towards France on its far shore.






OMG, look at the time. After unpacking, we decided to take a bit of down-time on the balcony before lunch and, before we knew it, we had to go. From the small map in our itinerary, the Café de Grancy should be easy to get to, no more than a 15-minute walk from our hotel. 

To make a long story short, we got confused by the restaurant’s location – below, and on the other side of the train station – and to make things even worse, our cell phone wasn’t “roaming” properly. We couldn’t contact David Werlen. With a lot of friendly help from locals, we finally found the café…a half-hour late.

Despite all the glitches, lunch was delightful. I had a very refreshing and tasty Saladine de Gambas et Calamars (shrimp & squid salad), 

while Suzanne had the Bol de Mesclun de Salade et Crudités (salad of mixed greens) which came with loads of grilled mushrooms and slices of goat cheese. 

Our host had a more substantial luncheon entrée, and ordered a bottle of Chasselas, the light and fruity white wine of Lausanne, for us to sample.

During lunch, we were joined by my former high school classmate, Christie Stewart, who was coming with us on the guided city tour later.

Comments

  1. Unknown6 August 2017 at 18:08

    Lovely hotel acccommodations. Old establishments have rooms with such high ceilings. The photos of your salads inspired the theme for our supper tonight. Sorry not to have your Swiss cheese.

    ReplyDelete

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