Our story continues in the lovely town of Lausanne, a little bit further round the lake from Geneva.
Our hotel in Lausanne had no staff – at least not on site. On arrival, we were contacted by someone at another hotel round the corner, via the means of a tablet. He gave us a code to open the mailbox with our room key in it. It all felt very Crystal Maze.
The visit didn’t get off to a very auspicious start, as this spinning water wheel feature tipped me into the pond. I had a bit of a lumpy tummy the next day – oh, how I suffer for my art!
There were fountains everywhere – this frog seemed very intent on filling this hole:
And these happy donkeys resided at the dock where we got the boat on to our next destination:
As we walked up the hill to the cathedral, we came across these hilarious gnomes, hanging over the street in their dozens. We got most of the jokes, even though they were in French, since the accompanying pictures helped explain:
We enjoyed playing with the various experiments in the grounds of the History of Science Museum. This parabolic dish was great fun – it enabled the humans to have a conversation at a great distance when one stood here and the other stood in front of its twin at the other end of the lawn:
Then we tested the power of a vacuum by pumping the air out of this contraption and seeing if it could hold my weight. Spoiler alert – it could…
The most beautiful part of Lausanne that we visited was the surroundings of the Olympics Museum, with great views of the lake. It didn’t hurt that it was also the one day we got glorious sunshine.
The grounds had loads of statues and exhibits, depicting various sports:
They also had a feature containing an Olympic flame:
As well as a weird, rotating torso thingie…
The museum itself was excellent, with tons of really interesting exhibits and lots of interactive bits. I think I could take part in the torch relay, with a bit of support from the humans, of course…
They had examples of most of the mascots from the various games over the years:
And some rather odd fashion that was somehow related to the Olympics:
Overall, it was a… ahem… winning experience!
Lausanne was the second stop on our lake tour – and there’s still one to go!