Cully Day 7 - Walking Tour

It was another beautiful sunny day in Cully. The Alps--those are the French Alps across the lake--look more awesome every day. I did the self-guided walking tour from Cully to Rivaz in the Lavaux Visitor's Guide. Up the hill to Epesses then across the hillside on this paved trail that is mostly pedestrians with the occasional farm truck. The grape vines are just starting to bud and the farmers are out tending to them already.

There are grapes above and grapes below the trail. That's Cully in the distance at the tip of that pennisula. Seems amazing to me that you could grow grapes on this steep hillside, but they have been doing that here for 1,000 years. Okay, I'm exaggerating, it's only been 900 years since the Cistercian monks first planted grapes here in the 12th century. The hillside gives the grapes great Southern exposure to the sun. Actually, they have three suns here. I know it sounds like something out of Star Trek. There's the sun in the sky, the sun reflecting off the lake and the warmth of the sun radiating out from the rocks at night. These grapes have it good! Most of the vineyards are the Chasselas grape. They also grow some Pinot Noir and Gamay. The wines don't rival the beauty of Bordeaux, but it's fun to try the local wines. And all they sell at the festival are the local wines. My favorite is the Gamay.

After 5km (about 3 miles) the trail heads down into Rivaz.

That's Montreux in the distance. My plan is to take the train back to Cully. If I can figure out how to buy a ticket. There's no attendant at the train station, so I have to navigate the ATM-like machine to get a ticket. My US credit card doesn't work in the machine. European credit cards have a chip in them (like Microsoft badges). But the machine does take cash and I brought some Swiss francs. No, Switzerland is not one of the EU member states--they have their own currency. I have a 100 francs bill and three 1 franc coins. And the fare is 3.5 francs. And the machine doesn't take bills larger than 20 francs. Well, I can always walk the 3 miles back to Cully. But, wait! The machine takes euros. And I bought some euros for the Paris part of my trip. I have a 10 euro bill. Yippee! My feet are tired. And no sooner have I gotten my ticket than the train arrives. Unfortunately it's on the opposite track and by the time I cross under the platform I have missed it. The next train is in one hour.

So I wandered back up into Rivaz hoping to taste some wine. I found three or four places to do that, but they are only open Thursday-Sunday. As it is Wednesday I can only look in the window at the pretty wine bottles. It's a beautiful day to walk around enjoy the view. Can you imagine living in this beautiful village?

Well, enough day-dreaming about moving to Switzerland. I better get back down to the train station for my 10 minute ride back to beautiful Cully.