Montreux Jazz Festival

Montreux Jazz Festival

7 July 2010

Montreux, Switzerland

My Expedia pal, Joanne, also part of the relocated team, recently moved from the London office. About three months ago she called and asked if Preston and I would like to go to the Montreux Jazz Festival when we were all Geneva residents. We jumped at the chance.

We visited Montreux during our first trip to Geneva in February and fell in love with it. The village is located about 100km east of Geneva (about 80 minutes by train), also on the lake, and reminds me of the French Riviera. There are beautiful parks, lovely cafes everywhere and miles of walking paths from the village center to Chateau de Chillon (we visited in February and loved that too). Here are some pictures of Montreux from our time there in February.

Chateau de Chillon:

Not only do we love Montreux but the 16-day annual Jazz Festival is even listed in the book "1,000 places to see before you die." To quote the book entry, "...Since the 19th century, artists, writers and musicians have been attracted to this resort city [Montreux] with its French accent and worldly atmosphere, ambitiously compared to that of Cannes. You'll understand why Lake Geneva is called the Swiss Riviera when you see the palms, cypresses and magnolias that flourish there ... and the cafes that line the marvelous lake-side walks. Cannes can only convet the Chateau de Chillon, Switzerland's most important and most pohotographed castle..."

Of course, of allll the days, Expedia scheduled the "Geneve Opening" party that same night; it's as if we were back in Seattle with friends and things to do! So we stopped by the amazing party at Société Nautique de Genève, the yacht club on the lake that housed the America's Cup from 2003 through 2007, to at lease celebrate a little bit! We mingled for a bit and drank a lot of champagne in a short amount of time and bid adieu for Montreux.

Jo rented a car and we picked up her friend Sophie who had taken the train to Geneva from her home in Chamonix (no, she wasn't the lady drinking wine out of the bottle on the corner). When we arrived in Montreux we walked around for a bit to get our bearings (Jo even commented that the shopping at the festival is better than that in Geneva!) and got our wristbands for the Ben Harper show.

We really enjoyed the show and all four of us were especially entertained by the 14-yr old we stood behind who was dancing and carrying on like Ben was to be worshiped!
We walked around Montreux some more and ate dinner outside before heading back to Geneva. We arrived home just after 2 am and Preston left for the airport around 4:45 that same morning to go home for 10 days. I'm glad we were able to squeeze in one more adventure before the first visit home!