Lausanne, Switzerland

Today we took a day trip out to Lausanne from Geneva. Our goal was to see this town set on Lake Geneva, but also to do a tasting at a vineyard (more on that in another post). Lake Geneva is a glacial lake and like many of the others we've seen up until this point it has very steep sides. As such, "strolling" through Lausanne means a lot of slopes and stairs. Not as bad as Almalfi, or Cirque Terra in Italy, but in the 90°F heat it's not nuthin.

One of the highlights of our day was seeing La Cathédrale de Lausanne. It's magnificent on the outside. We were surprised when we entered the Cathedral though. We were immediately greeted with someone paying the organ. With all the cathedrals we've been to so far, this was a first. However the organist was situated right by the entrance of the Cathedral. So we had to awkwardly walk right by him before taking our seat.

After finding our seat we quickly realized this was no concert. The "maestro" was tuning the organ. In the photos below you'll find a video of him playing, but my smartphone microphone won't do it justice. It was hideous to listen to in person, but impressive. I included the organs pipes in the video and they faced both vertical and horizontal out towards the audience. If that is common, I've never noticed it before. The resonance in the cathedral was impressive.

At one point there was a group of older ladies sitting in the Cathedral and one of them had a conversation with the organ tuner. I THINK she was asking him to play a song, but he wasn't having it. After he belted out his next sour, ear shattering note the group left.Read more