Montreux again!

My parents and sis came 2 weeks ago. We planned a short 4 day stay in Montreux as we heard a lot about the Christmas markets there. Here was our itinery.

Day 1: Chateau Chillon (on the weekends in the month of Dec, the chateau has people dressed up in old times and performances around the castle, an oldern canteen with mulled wine etc, a small petting zoo, on top of the usual castle visit)
Day 2: Took a train to Gruyeres to see the famous cheese factory and then to the Cailler chocolate factory (the choco factory is amazing!!! We had so much choco samples and it was so delicious, the whole factory visit about the history of chocolate etc was so delightful!)
Day 3: Montreux Christmas markets (this was ok, but not as fun as Colmar, we finished walking all 170 stalls in 2 hours. Good thing it was near the lake, so it was nice. There are child friendly activities and a nice performance of flying Santa across the lake.)
Day 4: Train to Rochers De Naye (we did this so E cld see Mr Santa- turns out he's a heavy smoker with bad breath 😫. I quickly took the picture and left. E got to see some snow and we had a mini snowball fight too, that was fun!)

Some pics... (Rochers De Naye, then Montreux from far)

First snow!

2 weeks ago, we finally had our first snowfall. Think it only lasted about an hour and then it stopped and never happened again. 😒 We were so excited for that hour though. E had just fallen asleep and then we got a text from our SG friend about the snow- we dashed out in our pajamas and kept snapping pictures. Haha true singaporeans 😆. M kept asking if we could wake E up to catch the first snowfall and i was like "NO WAY!!!"

Now its back to rain rain rain... 😔 disappointed coz my parents are here and we can't go out much.

Christmas markets weekend...

We went to Annecy again one afternoon when M's sister was visiting with us- Christmas in winter is really different!! Finally, i'm seeing and feeling what the Ang-moh christmas movies try to show us. They really can celebrate it - specialized Christmas-ware, real trees, lights... It's crazy. Anyways, we were there only a few hours and M decided it was not enough for the first christmas overseas, so we took off last weekend to Colmar, Strasbourg and BERN. My conclusion: the French can celebrate it better than the Swiss.

Colmar is beautiful. We spent a whole day at the Christmas markets and we did not even finish it. We had our first "vin chaude" (hot wine) and we ate churros!!! I went nuts with the crafts on sale and bought a few things for our tree. There were kiddy rides too so E was happy, he got to sit the train and i accompanied him on our first horse ride (fake horse 😄). However, M and I really struggled to carry E around 😰. He pooped after an early dinner so that was the signal to go back...

I put a pic of the hotel room here, can you believe it?? The bathroom and the bedroom are combined. Maybe they ran out of money to finish the wall. Hahaha...

The next day we went to Strasbourg. It was not as nice as Colmar but we did enjoy the food and crafts. The last day we were supposed to go back to Geneva and it was a 4 hour plus drive so we broke it up and stopped by Bern. We only saw one Christmas market but it was kinda sad. Expensive and no crafts. However, we bought our Christmas tree on the way home! M insists on having a real one as it's our first Christmas overseas... zzz... It is beautiful but our friend did not realise how much water it guzzles 😭, not to mention the falling leaves i have to sweep EACH DAY.

It's a little bare still but we will spruce it up... Now we have to start planning its funeral and burial...