It was only a few weeks ago that we were staying by the shores of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman in French) at the start of an 8 day Swiss holiday. We chose to start our trip in Montreux partly because our London based daughter, Mlle, is working in the music PR industry and wanted to get a feel for the town where the world-famous annual jazz festival takes place.
Montreux Jazz Festival – Mlle at back of the Convention Centre
I hadn’t realised until I checked our souvenir programme (picked up at one of the cafes) that the 2 week festival kicked off last night! Founded by Claude Nobs in 1966 (hence the name of the main street), the Montreux Jazz Festival has been an annual fixture for over half a century. Even out of season, we felt the spirit of the festival everywhere. The ambience was particularly special at night when the lights came on.
Each evening we did a walk along the lakefront from our hotel (the Eurotel) just a stone’s throw from the one of the main festival venues, Miles Davis Hall. We wandered through the adjacent gardens with statues of music legends set amongst the flowers in the shadow of the iconic Montreux Palace Hotel.
The rainy weather must have deterred people from venturing out as we more or less had the place to ourselves. It must be a different story in the heart of the summer when the festival kicks off! Alas our budget did not extend to staying in the Montreux Palace itself with its magnificent “Belle Epoque” facade, but we did treat ourselves to a meal there on our last night in Montreux. More tales from Montreux to come!
Copyright © 2017 Rosemary Thomas Le Chic En Rose. All rights reserved
Le Chic En Rose 
We stayed in Montreux for a couple of nights a few years ago. It is a lovely town with great walks along the promenade, though eating out in Switzerland is a tad expensive!
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It’s a lovely place with a gorgeous setting on the lake – the promenade is a beautiful spot 🙂 It is of course expensive to eat out in Switzerland! After Montreux we stayed the rest of the holiday in Air BNB apartments and cooked some of our meals ourselves which was a good way to save some money. Will be writing more about that down the track. We had a bit of a splurge in Montreux though (we were there 3 nights) 🙂
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We saw some great fresh fruits and veg whilst wandering around the back streets, but we stayed in a lakeside hotel and ate out each night. Can’t grumble about the quality of the food we had 🙂
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No certainly the food we had was excellent throughout our trip. We found some lovely restaurants in Montreux and like you stayed in a lakeside hotel – a very pretty place 🙂
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Looks fabulous Rosemary – love all those statues. Looking forward to reading more!!
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We had a lovely few days in Montreux Joy – such a beautiful place and the garden with the statues was a nice touch. Plenty more to come about Montreux and the other places we went to in Switzerland! 🙂
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What a lovely post Ros – I love the photo with Ella.
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Thanks Gill – we had a lovely time and the musical theme was right up Mlle’s street! 🙂
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Good company and a beautiful place, Rosemay. You’ll not want for much more 🙂 🙂 Hope the week’s been kind to you. It was atrocious here but today we slipped back into Summer. 🙂
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We couldn’t have asked for anything better Jo – we wanted to make the most of our time with Mlle now we live on opposite sides of the world!! Bit of a mixed week with one thing or another but we had a lovely outing on a steam train with our daughter and family here yesterday (Hotham Valley Railway which I’ve already blogged about last year so better not repeat myself). We were well wrapped up as winter has well and truly arrived here – there was even snow on Bluff Knoll in the southern part of WA. Have just lit the wood fire – one of the joys of winter! Hope all’s well with you and the summer weather is here to stay for you! 🙂
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Wonderful night pictures! I don’t think I have ever read about Montreux! Looks very nice
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Thanks Gin – it was very pretty place and gorgeous all lit up night. Very attractive even without the jazz festival fame – the lakeside setting is wonderful and it has a relatively mild climate hence it’s known as the the Swiss Riviera 🙂
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