A glorious sunny day, and a morning walk to the Chateau de Chillon for a look around the interior, just CHF10.50 for oldies and a ticket that allows you to come can go as often as you like during the day. It's a marvellous building, set on a rock outcrop protruding into Lac Leman. Traces of Bronze age settlements have been found among the foundations of the 12th century castle keep. It was an outpost of the Dukedom of Savoy at the outset, taken over by the warlords of the Canton de Berne at time of the reformation, and taken over by the Canton de Vaud in 1798. In each period it was added to or adapted, and its component buildings have had many uses apart from military, as residences or government offices, storehouses, even the Vaudois Cantonal prison.
Since the 13th century its vaulted vaulted cellar has been used to store barrels of wine harvested from the nearby Clos de Chillon vineyards which belong to the Chateau. You can buy bottles of both red and white at high prices. It's a rarity, and all profits made on the wine go to the restoration and maintenance of the Chateau undertaken by the Fondacion du Chateau de Chillon.
It's twenty five years since we last visited. At that time, not all the rooms were open due to ongoing restoration work. Now, nearly all the rooms are open to the public, many are arrayed with period style furniture, walls and ceilings authentically decorated. Each room has interpretation panels and educative models to give an impression of people's way of life many centuries ago. It's one of the most visited castles in Switzerland, and I guess we were fortunate not to be herded around the place along with busloads of global tourists on a sunny winter low season day. A delightful experience.
The one setback was turning up with a camera lacking its SD memory card. Only yesterday had I finally filled a 16GB card, in use since 9th September 2016, over 2350 photos, and not all of them worth keeping, but such a hassle to separate the dross from the keepers. I had planned to go into town and buy a new card before going to the Chateau de Chillon, but as the weather was so good we seized the opportunity.
Having removed the full card from the camera, I then forgot about buying a replacement. Just last week, the spare SD card I carry in my wallet for emergencies since running out on the Rhine Cruise last May, was pressed into use with my new Alpha 68 DSLR camera, and I'd not yet got around to replacing it. I had to use the BlackBerry's phone camera instead, once the HX50's internal flash memory had run out - just six photos. The results were adequate, just. It's not as good as the Samsung Galaxy S3 phone camera, I left re-charging in Church House along with the Alpha 68. You don't always live and learn in my experience. Serves me right. The Chateau is well worth a visit, and I may find time to return, better provisioned.
We returned for lunch and then walked into town to buy train tickets for tomorrow's airport journey, for Clare, who has to return to teach on Thursday , all too soon for the both of us. I needed to buy another SD card as well. I should have bought two, but didn't as I thought they were rather expensive. They are much cheaper on-line, naturally, and when I checked, Curry's are retailing them at roughly the same price in Sterling, so later, I regretted not buying a second. Ah well another day, maybe.
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