Lausanne and Lavaux

 On Monday, September 19th, we had a croissant and coffee at our hotel, looking out over Lake Geneva.

We took the metro up into Lausanne.  It was a holiday.  According to Wikipedia:

"The Federal Day of Thanksgiving, Repentance and Prayer (German: Eidgenössischer Dank-, Buss- und Bettag, French: Jeûne fédéral, Italian: Digiuno federale) is a public holiday in Switzerland. It is an interfaith feast observed by Roman Catholic dioceses, the Old Catholic Church, the Jewish and Muslim congregations and the Reformed church bodies as well as other Christian denominations.

"It is celebrated on the third Sunday in September. In the Canton of Geneva another comparable fast, the Jeûne genevois, is celebrated.

"The subsequent Monday (Lundi du Jeûne) is a public holiday in the canton of Vaud and unofficial holiday in the canton of Neuchâtel."

This being the canton of Vaud, almost nothing was open, except for some restaurants (and the churches).  We wandered through the very quiet old town and up and into the Cathedral, then out to the overlook in front, then back down to the Catholic Cathedral, which is undergoing extensive renovation.   Just down the street from there, we had lunch outside at Le Pointu.  

Now it was time to grab our new hiking sticks and take the train to Grandvaux, to walk in the Lavaux vineyards.  This was our principal reason for being in Lausanne on this trip.  Our hotel had given us free transit cards, which not only applied to the metro, but to trains out to the suburbs, as far as Epesses.

From the station at Grandvaux we headed east, hoping to get to the village of Epesses, but we couldn't figure out the route, and eventually ended up at Cully, down by the lake, instead.

On the way into Cully, we met a man giving away table grapes.  He said that the harvest was huge this year, and he had more grapes than he could use.

In Cully, we had a glass of wine at a bar (and used the facilities), then we hurried along the lakeshore to the Epesses railroad stop (which is below the village, near the lake), to catch the train back to Lausanne.

After freshening up at our hotel, we took the metro down to Ouchy, on the lake, home of the Olympic Museum, which we had no real interest in visiting.  Instead, we just wandered around the lakefront.

Since most restaurants were closed, we took the metro up and had dinner at Holy Cow!, a burger place.  I had a hamburger and Mary Joy had a chicken sandwich.