Along the Lake of Geneva

On the next morning, we drove from Aigle to the Chillon Castle. It's one of the most beautiful castles of Switzerland and is situated directly onto the sea. To admire that, we stopped at the parking above and while Sabine waited with Paul & Paula, Evelin went to the seaside to take some nice pictures. With this amazing view, you don't need to be a professional photographer to take extraordinary shoots.
If you have time, we strongly recommend the visit of the castle!

Chillon Castle.

If you're interested in more castles, there is the association of the Swiss Castles.

Evelin's walk to the castle of Chillon:

If you want, you can also discover the region from the seaside.

Then we continued our Grand Tour going to the Lavaux vineyard terraces, an Unesco World Heritage. As we arrived there, we understand why it is classified by Unesco!

Grand Tour of Switzerland, this way please!

At Chexbres we made a stop. We looked for a parking place and fortunately we even found two free spaces to park Paul & Paula.

Paul & Paula waiting at the parking.

Lovely little houses in Chexbres.

That's the totally amazing view you have from Chexbres over the Lavaux and the lake of Geneva! And we promise, we didn't put a filter or Photoshop to take this picture!

Amazing view over the Lavaux and the lake of Geneva.

Discovering the vineyards in Lavaux.

We walked through the village and looked for a cave. If you are in the Lavaux, you definitely have to taste some local wine! There is no excuse because in this region you have caves just everywhere.
We looked around and decided to go to the "Domaine Bovy". We choose this cave because of it's comfortable terrace situated in a huge garden in front of the edifice.

Our little paradise on earth.

Selection of wine from the cave (the second from the right even won a golden medal).

You can have a drink on the terrace or even buy some wine directly by the producer. We took a white wine as it was "Apéro-Time".

Try some local wine is a must do!

We also had the pleasure to meet the producer and his brother. They explained us the story of the cave and you immediately see that they are passionate of their work. We could have an insight into the cave with its huge barrels filled with wine. On each barrel, there is a different painting. These were painted by the grandfather of the owner.

Barrels of wine with paintings of the job as a wine-producer.

On Thursdays you even have a "tapas evening" from 5 pm to 9pm.

After our drink we decided to have lunch at the Café de la Poste.

Restaurant "Café de la Poste"

Terrace of the "Café de la Poste" with a fantastic view over the lake.

Some impressions of the view while driving through the Lavaux:

The capital of the Valais

The Valais is the third biggest canton of Switzerland. As it is a bilingual canton, some cities have two names (that can be sometimes a bit confusing, when one is speaking about "Visp" and the other about "Viège" and you don't get your talking about the same town! Particularly when Evelin is reading the German Grand Tour Guide and Sabine the French one). 

So finally we arrived at the capital of the canton: Sion for the French of you or Sitten for the German (and if you're English native just choose the one you like more).

It is a medieval town recognizable by it's two castles on the hills next to the town. The one you see on the picture below is the basilica of Valère.

Valère above the city of Sion.

On the adjacent hill, you have the castle of Tourbillon. We could choose to go either on the hill of Valère or Touribillon. We choose the second option to take pictures in the ruins of Tourbillon.

Castle of Tourbillon.

From the hill you have an amazing view over the valley of the Rhone. On the picture below you see the upper part of Valais.

View from the castle of Valère (the village St-Léonard in front, the hospital of Sion on the right side in orange and Bramois/Brämis, the village behind).

The cool thing about Valère is that you can have fun making cool pictures of you in the ruins with an amazing landscape.

Evelin at the tor of Valère with the city of Sion/Sitten.

We used the opportunity to make a little photo session in the ruins. Our tip: if you're looking for a cool profile picture, you will find what you need.

Sabine in the ruins of Valère.

Evelin admiring the landscape.

Still admiring the landscape, but from another perspective.

Doing a shooting with this sun makes you thirsty! Fortunately we bought a little refreshment on our way to the castle. We took a refreshing pear juice from the brand "Valais". There are plenty of specialties in the Valais you can buy easily at almost every supermarket. For example we bought our juice at the Migros on our way to the castle. Click here to discover other fine specialties from the Valais.

Fine pear juice from the Valais.

On our way down: