Peace
Yesterday, Jack and I "ventured out" a couple metro stops North of our apartment to visit the Sauvebelin Tower. The Sauvebelin Tower holds the distinct honor of being the largest wooden tower in Europe. Or something like that. Anyway, it looks really cool and provides a great view of...well...all of Lausanne, some of Vevey, and a good panoramic of the French Alps. So, we thought it was worth the 7 minute trip.
As soon as we got off the metro stop, it was like we were in a whole different city altogether. Instead of the bustling French-inspired cityscape of our area of Lausanne, we set food on a more Bavarian town surrounded by a giant, autumnal forrest. A short walk uphill from the metro stop took us to the beginning of a path leading through the woods. It was our assumption that the Tower was located somewhere in the Northern midst of these woods, based on the map of the area. However, after we started down the path we soon forgot exactly what our purpose was in the first place, instead weaving around in every direction marvelling at the natural beauty of the place. There was a glacial brook meandering through the forrest along with us, providing a musical backdrop to our excursion. The ancient trees seemed to touch the sky. The colors of the place were incredible...I've never seen such vivid oranges, golds, and greens in one place before. Simply amazing. After a while, we arrived on the other end of the forrest and discovered a lookout point which (to me, at least) provided the same view I expected the Tower to offer. I'll let the photos do the describing for me, but I'll just say that (yet again) it was breathtaking. It's a good thing we came across this lookout point because despite all our exploring, we never found the Tower! It's a gigantic wooden tower in the middle of a forrest of gigantic (wooden, duh) trees, so it's no wonder it was a little hard to spot. We'll try again another weekend and take the map with us this time. Just goes to show..."Life is about he journey, not the destination."
Anyway, we headed to a bus stop on a small road that we knew would take us back in the direction of our apartment and came across a small lake (more like a pond), and beside it a small cafe whose terrace was full of patrons sipping coffee, drinking beer, and feeding the geese and mallards that were making a ton of racket. We decided to walk around the lake in a last-ditch effort to find this Tower. Alas, no Tower to be seen...but we did find a zoo!! Well...kind of like a zoo...more like a bunch of pens full of various animals. There was a pig pen with baby piglets running behind their smelly mamma, a rabbit hutch with the biggest bunnies I've ever seen, very pretty Swiss cows (complete with big cowbells), and even a couple of mountain goats! The goat with the biggest horns was chasing after the others wanting to butt heads...but the others just ran away. Not interested. So that was a pleasant surprise.
We *finally* uploaded our pictures of this adventure as well as the others that we've neglected to post (such as pics of Tex, the apartment, around Lausanne, Geneva, etc). They can be found at: www.photobucket.com/ErinEby
Enjoy!
As soon as we got off the metro stop, it was like we were in a whole different city altogether. Instead of the bustling French-inspired cityscape of our area of Lausanne, we set food on a more Bavarian town surrounded by a giant, autumnal forrest. A short walk uphill from the metro stop took us to the beginning of a path leading through the woods. It was our assumption that the Tower was located somewhere in the Northern midst of these woods, based on the map of the area. However, after we started down the path we soon forgot exactly what our purpose was in the first place, instead weaving around in every direction marvelling at the natural beauty of the place. There was a glacial brook meandering through the forrest along with us, providing a musical backdrop to our excursion. The ancient trees seemed to touch the sky. The colors of the place were incredible...I've never seen such vivid oranges, golds, and greens in one place before. Simply amazing. After a while, we arrived on the other end of the forrest and discovered a lookout point which (to me, at least) provided the same view I expected the Tower to offer. I'll let the photos do the describing for me, but I'll just say that (yet again) it was breathtaking. It's a good thing we came across this lookout point because despite all our exploring, we never found the Tower! It's a gigantic wooden tower in the middle of a forrest of gigantic (wooden, duh) trees, so it's no wonder it was a little hard to spot. We'll try again another weekend and take the map with us this time. Just goes to show..."Life is about he journey, not the destination."
Anyway, we headed to a bus stop on a small road that we knew would take us back in the direction of our apartment and came across a small lake (more like a pond), and beside it a small cafe whose terrace was full of patrons sipping coffee, drinking beer, and feeding the geese and mallards that were making a ton of racket. We decided to walk around the lake in a last-ditch effort to find this Tower. Alas, no Tower to be seen...but we did find a zoo!! Well...kind of like a zoo...more like a bunch of pens full of various animals. There was a pig pen with baby piglets running behind their smelly mamma, a rabbit hutch with the biggest bunnies I've ever seen, very pretty Swiss cows (complete with big cowbells), and even a couple of mountain goats! The goat with the biggest horns was chasing after the others wanting to butt heads...but the others just ran away. Not interested. So that was a pleasant surprise.
We *finally* uploaded our pictures of this adventure as well as the others that we've neglected to post (such as pics of Tex, the apartment, around Lausanne, Geneva, etc). They can be found at: www.photobucket.com/ErinEby
Enjoy!