travelswithalice

September 13, 2017

Recipe for the Perfect Holiday

1. Basic ingredient: the PERFECT TRAVEL PARTNER.

2. Just add WATER.

-RIVERS-

Cruise along the Danube, the Main, and the Rhine, aboard the riverboat IMPRESSION.

- CANALS-

Stay canalside in Amsterdam.

Get on board a canal boat.

-LAKES-

Stay lakeside in Konstanz in the German part of Lake Constance.

Stay lakeside in Lausanne on Lake Geneva.

Get on board ferry boat LEMAN, shuttling between Lausanne and Évian.

Stay lakeside in Évian-les-Bains on the French side of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman).

- MINERAL WATER-

Get it at the source: Source Cachat in Évian-les-Bains.

- COLORED WATER-

Drink only local wines.

_______

Labels: canals, Europe, ferry, lakes, Perfect Holiday, recipe, riverboat, rivers, wines

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 13, 2017

September 08, 2017

Évian-les-Bains

Stuart and I sit on a park bench looking out on the lake, eating our lunch of hard-boiled eggs, bread, cheese, and ham. We're waiting for our clothes to finish washing in a laundromat in town.

It's just around the corner from Source Cachat, the spring where evian® water originally came from.

The Évian saga goes like this:

In 1789, the Marquis de Lessert, while walking in the Évian countryside, drank from the Sainte Catherine spring on the land owned by his friend, M. Cachat. The nobleman subsequently discovered he was cured from the kidney and liver diseases he had been suffering from.

Soon, imperial scientists and physicians were ascribing curative qualities to the spring water from the tiny rural town. M. Cachat fenced off the spring, renamed it Source Cachat, and proceeded to bottle its water.

Photo from evian® website.

Thus was born the magic that is Évian today. Our laundry is rinsing at this very moment in the world's most perfect water! 😊

*****

Later, we take the funicular and walk around the fragrant wooded hill at the top.

Hotel Ermitage is up there. It's gorgeous...I want to stay there, I say wistfully.

So we're staying for two nights until we go back to Zürich for my birthday and then our flight home...

It's perfect! We can watch tonight's full moon rise from behind the mountains across the lake.

*****

We never did get to see the full moon. Too many clouds. But the sunsets were spectacular!

*****

On the ferry.

Leaving Évian, France crossing over to Lausanne, Switzerland. Across a lake, a 30-minute crossing, and it's a different world...

Whereas our train from Lausanne to Zürich left at 14:20 bang on time, the church bell in Évian always rang the hours five minutes late...

Labels: Évian, full moon, Hotel Ermitage, Source Cachat

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 08, 2017

September 07, 2017

From Lausanne to Évian

Dinners at Beau Rivage are always special. The Café exudes sophisticated good taste, in food as well as decor. Service is gracious and proficient. And the dinner guests are mostly beautifully turned out except for Stuart and me who always turn up in our touring clothes.

We're generally more appropriately dressed for breakfast at the Terrace.

We had dinner Saturday with Rica and David at their lovely home in the beautiful old town of Chaxbres. Nestled in the hills among the vineyards, looking out on the lake and all the way across to France.

Sunday, our last day in Lausanne, turned out gloriously sunny. Rica came to lunch and we spent the afternoon together walking and chatting in Parc Olympique.

Together we walked to the quay at Ouchy where Stuart and I boarded the ferry to Évian-les-Bains.

We arrived at Évian Hilton in time for rosé and a hushed sunset.

Labels: Beau Rivage, ferry to Évian, Lausanne, Ouchy, Rica

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 07, 2017

September 06, 2017

Art brut, fake art, and stuffed wild animals in Lausanne

3 Museums in Lausanne

1. FONDATION de l'HERMITAGE

A lazy Friday afternoon in a graceful 19th century house set in a wooded park by the lake, with views looking out towards Notre Dame Cathedral and Lake Geneva. A perfect day for enjoying great art.

The current exhibition, The Bührle Collection, is a prestigious collection of 19th and 20th century art featuring Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masters.

Monet's "Poppies near Vétheuil" reminded me of Mommy. She once asked me, Alice, what do poppies look like?

She was working on one of her "counterfeit" Monets and wanted to make sure she was painting the poppies correctly. So I brought her a poppy I had picked from a field in France and dried between the pages of a book. She liked that. I miss her.

Above photo shows Swiss industrialist Emil Georg Bührle seated among his favorite pieces in his collection.

Also shown in the exhibition are two "masterworks" that initially managed to find their way into this masterful collection, and were subsequently discovered to be fakes.

Proof positive that even art experts and brilliant collectors are not foolproof.

2. PALAIS de RUMINE

We went in to get out of the rain.

It's a lavish neo-Renaissance building housing a University library and museums of fine arts, history, geology, archeology, and zoology on several floors accessed by grand stone staircases. It also has installations demonstrating theories of evolution.

The zoology museum's stuffed animals, taxidermy mounts of wild animals and birds, made me somehow sad, so we left.

3. COLLECTION de l'ART BRUT

This is a unique museum, one dedicated to "outsider art," a range of art forms outside the conventional dictates of the art world. Art that is spontaneous, free, unbiased, anti-intellectual, and raw.

In 1945, artist Jean Dubuffet started collecting various art forms created by self-taught artists, mainly social outcasts. He found them everywhere- in folk art, in the streets, in prisons, in psychiatric clinics. In 1971, he donated his vast collection, which he called Art Brut, to the city of Lausanne. It forms the core of this extraordinary museum, now seen as a focus for "artistic communication with another world."

Among the numerous creators of this art form are recognized artists. Several are unknown; some are anonymous.

I was particularly intrigued by the strange world of Michael Golz. Since their childhood in the 60s, Michael and his brother Wulf have been creating non-stop, and still continue to elaborate on, a fantastical land they've named "Althosland," an imaginary country of lush hills, mountains, rivers, and all manner of infrastructures for a utopian community.

They have accumulated a vast archive of pictures, topographical maps, intricate grids, even a made-up language, for this land inhabited by only long-haired people who enjoy absolute freedom to do whatever they wish. Legal tender includes jacket buttons, blades of grass, and tree leaves.

Labels: Althos, Bührle Collection, fake Rembrandt, fake Van Gogh, Jean Dubuffet, L'HERMITAGE, Michael Golz, Monet's Poppies, RUMINE

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # September 06, 2017

September 01, 2017

From Konstanz to Lausanne

We're winding down a long holiday. I guess you might say we're just coasting along now, not attempting anything too demanding or too energetic.

The sunny skies of Konstanz have turned grey, so we throw our meager wardrobe into our two wheelies and head down to the train station, bound for Lausanne. We aim to endure the foul weather cosseted in the Art Deco decadence of the Beau Rivage Hotel on Lake Geneva.

There's a light shower when we arrive, so we have drinks on the terrace.