Our last morning in Montreux, after a bumpy start I've quite grown to like it here and I'm a little sad to leave.

Jeff & I started the day with an early morning walk in the streets behind and above our hotel . Saw so many cute little cobbled laneways, arched doorways leading to courtyards and narrow walkways, roses climbing over walls and over roofs and porches and of course drinking fountains in every little square we passed. I even spotted some moonflower just like Mum used to have in her garden. It's a creeper with a white flower and a heavenly perfume, and which (as the name suggests) only flowers at night time.

As usual with one of Jeff's walks, there is always a bit where he says "let's just go up here... it's not very far", and every single time I fall for it. Silly me, but the view by the time we got to the top of a very steep path was (I grudgingly admit) worth the effort. It's always lovely being out in the early morning when not so many people are around. You can get more of a sense of a place I feel.

Back to the hotel, showered, enjoyed our last yummy breakfast, paid the bill, said Au revoir to the ladies in reception, played a bit more suitcase Tetris and we were off at the crack of ... 11am!

Decided to go for a drive up the mountain for a view over Lake Leman before leaving. Wow, what a steep switchback road and we only went about halfway to the top to a little place called Caux. Amazing view over Montreux and the Lake. The storm last night washed a lot of the haze away and the colour of the lake water was astounding. A real bright turquoise blue. Magnificent!

The weirdest bit is there is a Swiss hotel management training school up there. The place looks like a palace, has expansive grounds with tree lined promenades and is situated in what has to be very valuable real estate surely with a view like this? Seems so bizarre to have a school teaching people how to work in and run hotels in such an amazing place.

After this we headed back down the mountain and had a big fight with technology. Jeff's GPS (which has all Europe maps loaded) flatly refused to find any locations in France. We tried everything we could think of (even the old standby of "turn it off then on again"), nothing worked. Piece of .....

Lucky the car had an inbuilt GPS and it didn't have a prejudice against France either. Now the next technology fail - how to turn the voice navigation on? 20mins of looking through the French and German manuals wasn't helpful. Finally found some info via good old Google . Lucky we are still in Switzerland as Jeff's local sim and internet access will die once we cross into France.

Eventually, finally, we were on our way towards Evian. Happy days! And then the GPS tried to route us through a crop of wheat. Man. Right about now was really thinking how a paper based road map would be really, really useful!

We found the right road ourselves and *then* the GPS started behaving. We will see how it goes. Hmmmmm

Nice view across the lake while driving to Evian. It's a lot flatter on this side and not nearly as built up as the Swiss side of the lake. Less glitz and more homely.

Arrived in Evian. No obvious signs showing the way to the Evian Springs so we went to the tourist bureau... which was closed from 12 to 3pm. Bunch of slackers, a three hour lunch break?? Really??

Anyway, seeing it was after 2pm we went off to have some lunch in a square nearby. Found a little place down a side street with a very friendly owner who helped us as much as possible with his limited English and our limited French. We got there in the end and the food was both tasty and cheap!

After lunch we went back to the tourist office, got a town map and found out that the Evian factory is closed but the spring is always open and only a 10 min walk away . Good-O. Off we trotted through the streets of Evian and to the Source Cachat to have a free drink of Evian water.

Very easy to find once we knew where it was. Waited our turn behind the Asian lady who was filling up about 8 two litre bottles. Unfortunately we didn't have a bottle but we cupped our hands in turn and had a taste. Not surprisingly it tasted like ... water! Haha, nice and cold straight from the spring.

Wandered around the streets a little more while eating glaces (ice creams) then back to the car and off to our last place to stay this trip.

Took awhile to get to our hotel due to a lots of traffic on the road. The downside of driving from a lake location at 4pm on a Sunday I guess!

After a few hours we were in the location of Thorens-Glieres and turned up at... someone's house. Damn GPS!! We decided to just head into the main village as (thanks to pre-trip Google Earth), I knew the castle was pretty easy to spot from there. Meanwhile, Bev who didn't know we would be staying in a castle was trying to help us find the right place and asking "what does it look like, is it big or a little place?" etc. Yeah... it's a little bigger than this house we pulled up at... ummm I'll know it when I see it Bev - don't worry!

Haha, her face when we pulled up at a castle, complete with drawbridge and announced "here we are!" Absolutely priceless and worth all the subterfuge! :)

Over the drawbridge with our suitcases loaded into an old wooden cart, through the massive entry gates and then to our front door in one of the castle turrets . Unfortunately for Jeff this meant, yes, more stairs, and rather steep old stone ones this time. Good little pack horse that he is, he carried all the large bags up for us without complaint, while Bev & I took the smaller ones up.

Worth it for such a unique stay and the apartment was really lovely with two bedrooms (with soft beds - hurrah!) and a big living / dining area complete with a kitchenette, comfy lounges and a dining table. The view from the window was over the castle courtyard so not too shabby at all! Huge bathroom here too and fast and reliable wifi. Amazingly, this was one of the cheapest places we stayed all trip so we felt like we had scored a real bargain!

After unpacking a little, we walked with the castle cat into the village (hills Bev - your favourite!) in search of something to eat for dinner. The only place we found had stopped taking orders though so we sent Jeff back for the car and headed further down the road in search of sustenance. Luckily we found another place a couple of villages over and the very friendly owners let us place one of their last orders. Just pizza but it was soooo good and another culinary first for Bev as she's never had wood fired pizza before. No, I'm not joking.

Back to our castle for an early night for a change.

Goodnight Captain "I'm staying in a freakin castle!!"