A Hot Day in Lausanne

Another very hot day today. I think it got to 33 and humid. After breakfast we took the metro and walked to the Lausanne Cathedral which started construction about 850 years ago. It was nice and cool wandering around in there. After we walked uphill to l’Hermitage which is a foundation that supports art and has a museum in an old mansion. The grounds were nice with huge cedar and pine trees. Then we walked down to the Palais de Rumine which is a large Renaissance style building hosting a great museum of geology, archaeology and the natural world. They had an amazing and slightly eerie zoology exhibit with hundreds of preserved animals from different regions of the world. They had a preserved coelacanth which was neat to see. They also had a huge Great White Shark caught in the 50’s by fisherman off Spain in the Mediterranean. After that we walked into the old part of town and looked in shops. We then headed to the waterfront and stuck our feet in the lake to cool off. We walked over to the Olympic museum, which is here because Lausanne is where the IOC is based. We didn’t go in though as the admission price was high. We then went back into the shopping area and had a nice dinner and drinks in an outdoor café. We are now back in the hotel. The air conditioning isn’t working but they are apparently still working on it and the desk girl said there is light at the end of the tunnel.Read more