TRIP: Grand Tour of Switzerland pt. 3/4 – Schaffhausen – Jaunpass – Col du pillon – Montreux

This is the third installment of our tour through switzerland will show you a different area of switzerland. Rather than continueing through the mountain passes. we decided to go to the “Lake area” of the french speaking part of switzerland which i’ve never really explored before.. Well that was the plan at least.
We decided to take the more comfortable wifey’s Mazda 3 (Aka Axela) this time.

We took the Autobahn directly to the area of Gruyere, where we wanted to visit the Caillier chocolate factory. Due to COVID-19 only the guestshop was open and the factory tours limited, so we decided to check out some other tourist attractions instead.

But there was heavy rain and lots of people. So we thought about continuing to our far goal for that day, Montreux, directly. but that would mean we already would be there quite early, with not much to do in the terrible weather. Luckily we took a wrong turn at some point, and when i saw the Sign “Jaunpass” I realized, we just found accidently a detour to Montreux through some places i know – via the famous “Jaunpass”. Well, the desicion was easy. off we go 🙂

The jaunpass is a less known, smaller mountain Pass between the Alps of Berne and Fribourg. But it’s a lovely road and not very crowded, especially on rainy days like this one was…

After going through the Simmental-valley (of simmental beef fame) direction Zweisimmen, we continued to the fancy “rich and famous” village of gstaad:

Where we stopped for a bit of sight-seeing and some nice coffee and cake

Before we went back to on the road direction Montreux at the lake of geneva.

There are several routes, but we decided to take another mountain pass – The “Col du Pillon” 

The rain changed from heavy to medium and let us enjoy the beauty of haze in the mountains:

To be honest, this is one of the best driving roads i’ve ever been. Much less crowded then the Furka and grimsel pass and so much fun to drive… Since the scenery is a bit less stunning (but still incredible) it let’s you focus on driving, rather than enjoying the view. It’s just one of those perfect roads…

At the end of the pass you will arrive in Aigle. Check out the lizard of stone in the Serpentines where you drive down between the vinyards….
The lizard is the famous “aigle de murailles” white-wine brand symbol, coming from this area…

At the bottom you’ll find the beautiful “cheateaux d’aigle” castle

We just stopped for a few pictures before following the road along the lake of geneva direction Montreux:

As soon as we arrived, weather started to get a bit nicer so we were able to check out the City of montreux a bit. I just love it with all those historic hotels and houses along the beautiful green and flowery riviera, you can feel how glamorous this place once was, and still is… 

Montreux is probably most famous for the annual Montreux Jazz festival (where deep purple’s “smoke on the water” came to life as a fire in the nearby casino started while they were recording close to it)

But they also have a lot of public art installations

One of the most famous one probably beeing the Freddy mercury statue:

The next day we decided to check out the  “Chaeteux du Pillon” castle which is incredible well preserved with an important influence in the swiss history…

After that, we took one of the restored old steamboats on lake geneva for a two hour roundtrip, which stopped at places like Villeneuve, Port-valais, Vevey, etc…

They served incredible nice food inside the beautiful boats cuisine:

After returning back on land, the clouds finally disappeared and we were able to enjoy sunny side of life at the riviera with some ice-cream, coffee, drinks, live music and views…

Since the jazz festival got cancelled this year, they had a free public art exhibition called “Silent shores” at the beach walk, which i personally really enjoyed..

After a few drinks we went back to the hotel to enjoy the attached famous restaurant with some great dinner

And a great sunset from the terrace …

The next morning we got greeted with a clear blue sky, glowing mounain tops, and a great view of the valaisanne alps behind the lake of geneva.

After breakfast, we took some last views and breaths from our hotel balcony before packing up our things and continuing our roadtrip.  

See the last part of our trip here soon…