Lausanne; Friday, 07 October, 2022

With a late afternoon flight I’d taken a half days leave, so I finished work, had lunch and then made my way out to London City Airport.

As it was London City I didn’t need to worry too much about getting there early, in fact I only left home about 2 hours before departure, anywhere else I’d already be at the airport by then. I had a smooth journey via National Rail, Overground, Underground and DLR to the airport, and by the time I got through security they had already assigned a gate to the flight and I was able to wander down and wait to be called forward for boarding.

Boarding started a little earlier than advertised, which meant that the plane was all ready to go a good 10 minutes before our departure time, but due to slot restrictions we had to sit there until it was time to push back on our scheduled departure time.

A smooth flight across to Geneva and a quick journey through the airport, taking advantage of the ticket machine that nobody else appeared to notice in baggage reclaim to get my train ticket to Lausanne, avoiding the queues several people deep at the station.

Because I didn’t need to queue for my ticket at the station I was able to make the train that was already on the station and barely 90 minutes after disembarking the plane I was getting off the train in Lausanne.

I caught the bus up the very steep hill to my hotel, checked in and dropped off my luggage, before heading back down into town and taking the metro to the bottom of the hill and Lake Geneva to take in some night time views across the lake into France.

From the lakeside I caught the metro back up the hill to the centre of town and climbed the last 120 or so steps up to the Place de la Cathedral from where there are good views out over the city. By the time I was up there it was almost 10pm so I stuck around to hear the cathedral clock chime the hour and the first call of the nightwatchman for the evening (the city still has a nightwatchman who calls out the hours from 10pm to 2am).

From the cathedral I headed back down to the station to quickly grab a light snack from the supermarket there before hopping on the bus back to the hotel for dinner and bed.