We decided to return to the Olympic Museum to tour the museum itself. Our friend Tracey spoke highly of it and said that our free transit pass also got us a discount to the museum. So after a lazy start to the day while we waited for the temperature to warm up a bit we were off to the museum.
When we arrived at the museum we did get a discount for our pass, but the guy selling tickets asked how old we were, and it turned out we got a bigger discount for being old, so we accepted it. The museum was very well done with a nice mix of audiovisual displays and artifacts from all of the Olympic games.
We both enjoyed the displays that talked about the original Greek games, and the story of the founding of the modern Olympics in the 1890’s. The games have certainly come a long way as a spectacle.
Ton wanted to check out three other places in the city center, so after the Olympic Museum we headed to the metro and took a quick ride to the center. After visiting the town yesterday I began to suspect that what we thought was a very unimpressive cathedral was actually a very large church. It turns out I was right and the actual Cathedral was much more impressive. We liked the interior arches in this church, and a couple of the stain glass windows were interesting.
Lausanne is also famous for a covered stair case that runs from the main city to the Cathedral. As an extremely hilly town in a mountainous environment the covered staircase comes in handy when the roads are slick with snow and ice. It was located right next to the cathedral and ran for a couple of hundred meters.
Our third stop was at a coffee shop that served a typical Lausanne hot chocolate. Ton likes to try hot chocolate so I was using google to get us to the coffee shop. Google finally told us were at the coffee shop, but there was no coffee shop in sight. I tried resetting the search but got the same answer. I then noticed that the Escaliers kind of went down in a shaft next to us, so I went down the stairs and sure enough we had been standing on top of the shop. The chocolate was good, and I enjoyed my local wine.
As we were heading back to the campground we came across a crowd on one of the main streets looking up at a building. The crowd even included 4 firefighters who had stopped their truck to get a view. Many European cities have clocks that tell the story of some important event using figurines, these go off at certain times of the day. In this case it seemed to be a battle won by the town as it included a line of soldiers followed by some dancers in fancy dress. We laughed and said it was not as famous as the one in Prague (considered one of the most over rated tourist attractions in Europe), but at least as good, maybe better.
