Post by Lauren

We had so many neat adventures this past weekend that I wanted to dive deeper into a few so that you could get the full experience. Luckily, guest Henry Birmingham is an amazing photographer so the next two days of posts are going to have more eye-candy than you are used to (all of the photos are his).

On Saturday, we traveled to Montreux Jazz Festival. According to wikipedia, Montreux Jazz Festival is the 2nd largest music festival in the world, after Montreal’s. If you recall, Gabe and I had been to Montreux on our first trip to Geneva – most of the sunset photos on our first post are of its beautiful Alp-view shoreline and the Chateau Chillon.

Throughout the week, artists such as B.B. King, Ziggy Marley, Carlos Santana, Natalie Cole, Jimmy Cliff, Seal, Quincy Jones, Paul Simon, House of Pain, Liza Minnelli, and everyone’s favorite Ricky Martin were playing in the different venues set up on the lakeshore. With us going the first Saturday, all the shows were sold out, but nonetheless, we decided to go check it out. Also, we heard there was a Jazz Train and Latin Music boat that could be cool options if we wanted a different pace from the land part of the festival.

We set out upon our day and had a little bit of a hiccup as it was the International Gay Pride Festival and they had started to close off the Geneva streets close to the train station. We finally decided to jump out and walk the last part. Here, Gabe is doing a victory cheer for beating the bus (bus in the distance)

After an hour train ride, we arrived and were immediately greeted by great music, beautiful art and our favorite find….reasonably priced AWESOME food. We are used to paying ridiculous prices for average food back home in Geneva. We prioritized and immediately split up to go get some eats and meet back at a table. This one kind of had a nice view.

The jazz train and salsa boat (above, bottom left) did look like fun, but we ended up just hanging out in the park watching the free jazz and wandering along the coastline to all the cool vendors.

We found the experience to be really cool, even without checking out one of the shows. We calculated that we can buy train tickets to Montreux, eat delicious festival fare and it will still cost less than an average low-budget meal in Geneva. Based on that, we may try to go back before it ends in 2 weeks. Maybe even to a real show this time!