Lost in Lausanne: Winter Wonderland

Winter hit in its full glory in Switzerland in early December, blanketing Lausanne with snow. Being Californians for the past 30 years, we were like kids with the appearance of the first snowflakes - getting out our hats, scarves, gloves and boots and even finding our Olympic-luge like driveway and the 5am snow-plow charming.

The approach of the holidays meant something even more important – the arrival of our kids! We’d been dreaming of sharing this experience with them since last July, and it was finally here. Somehow we navigated staggered arrivals, delayed luggage, and everyone finding their way by train to Zermatt to all be together for a glorious week of skiing. We spent the week exploring the ski area, with the kids pushing the limits on where we skied – especially in search of fresh powder, which wasn’t hard to find with so much snow the days before we arrived. On our third day we were greeted to a full view of the Matterhorn from our apartment. We snapped photos all the way up the lift, only to discover that we would ski with the same view the entire day.

Post skiing

The second week we went home to Lausanne to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s – with last minute shopping in downtown Lausanne, cooking up feasts of moules in wine, roasted chapon, ciopinno, and coq au van, visiting the Christmas market in Montreux, a post-Christmas visit to Guyère and the Maison Cailler chocolate factory in Broc, hikes and fondue in Challet-A-Gobet, a vineyard picnic at Alain Chollet’s vineyard and New Year’s Eve visiting our neighbor and playing card games (of which I seem to have a particular knack for – don’t deny it Bauer boys). After more two weeks together we were left with a quiet house, happy memories and promises to come back one more time before the end of our year.

Last minute shopping and touring in Lausanne