Round Lake Geneva, Day 1

We arrived to Geneva the previous night and stayed overnight in a lovely bed and breakfast in Arzier, which is a village up on the hills overlooking the lake. Le Clemonie B&B is a short way out of Geneva, but on the same direction as the airport so the drive after receiving our rental C4 was short (thanks to phone satnav, which did its job here) and in the morning we woke up to a wonderful breakfast served in our room as well as fantastic sights towards the lake bathing in the morning sun.

We had booked the B&B beforehand, but didn't have any plan for day 1. We asked for recommendations from the B&B owner and she told us one popular thing is to take a boat from Nyon to Yvoire and see the garden and castle there. We ended up taking her advice and were not disappointed. Nyon is a lovely lakefront town with a medieval castle centered old architecture. It was a short drive down the hill from our overnight stay and it didn't take us long to find the place where ferry tickets are sold.

Yvoire is a small old town inside all old castle walls. There are loads of restaurants and cafes everywhere so clearly we weren't the first tourists to visit. There's a castle, but it didn't seem to be open for tourists. Another popular destination is the Garden of the five senses, a private, immaculately maintained collection plants and flowers. We took our time touring the wonderful garden under pretty bright skies, visited a couple of the cafes and made our way back to Nyon where our rental car was parked.

We headed east on the northern shore of the lake, with the intent to eat in Lausanne. The lakeside road between Nyon and Lausanne wasn't really very scenic so we made our way to the motorway further up the hillside. Somewhat un-intuitively the scenery is much better from the motorway. Being as we were on the motorway we drove straight to Montreux mainly as I remembered being there before and liking the place. This was pretty vague as halfway on the way to Lausanne I still though that was the place I had memories of. So onto Montreux we went. After some misses with hotel booking we ended up in Suisse Majestic hotel, with amazing views over the lake back towards Geneva. The hotel was great with probably the most scenic breakfast I can remember, having had breakfast in very scenic settings already before.

This seemed like a very varied and busy day, but it was nothing compared to the day that was to follow...