To give you an idea of some of the spectacular places you can visit in this region, we will feature each month a photo of one of its many great locations. Since we rely on recommendations, please send us your special photo taken, for example, on a memorable day out at a water park or from a remarkable viewpoint in the area.
A day trip to the flower of Lake Geneva
Submitted by Maria Murphy, www.lulaloo.ch
Whenever we feel like going on day trip and can’t decide where to go or what to do, we always do the same thing: we look at the map of Lake Geneva and choose a town we’ve never visited before and just go. Last weekend we chose Morges – the flower of Lake Geneva!
I am a big fan of tulips and flowers in general (they are a great inspiration for my designs), and this is a place I had always wanted to visit. We arrived a bit late for the tulips (there is a festival in June lasting six weeks with over 100,000 tulips), but as you can see from the pictures I took, not for the dahlias. I did not know so many different varieties of dahlias existed. I counted over fifty! The flowers are arranged all along the lakeside, so you have the lake on one side and the dahlias on the other. Not a bad walk!
The kids really enjoyed the flowers as well; they were busy picking the petals on the ground and trading them as if they were paninis... It is a good idea to bring scooters or bikes: there are bike lanes all along the lakeside. There are also a good number of parks and playgrounds.
If flowers are not your thing, the town offers other attractions, both for adults and kids. The main street is very nice and jovial, with more of an “old Europe” flavour than you might find in Geneva or Nyon. You can also take a train ride from Morges to Bière (about 18 km, 11 miles from Morges) and visit the small country villages in the Jura. If you’re looking for something fun to do around Christmas, Morges’ is said to have the biggest (covered) Christmas market in French-speaking Switzerland (8th – 12th December). Be sure to check out the Morges Tourism website for more information about these and other activities: www.morges-tourisme.ch/en/
By lunchtime we were extremely hungry from all the walking. Day-trips are ideal for picnics, I find, but being almost winter we had decided to book a restaurant ahead of time (I highly recommend this on a Sunday, no matter where you go in Switzerland). We chose a restaurant called Le Léman, for no particular reason other than it being the only restaurant we found with an online menu. The food was very good (excellent entrecote and home-made chicken nuggets for the kids!!), the service very friendly and decently priced (for Switzerland). The only downside was that we waited a long time before the food arrived.
Overall we found Morges a very nice place for a one-day trip, with plenty of things to do for the whole family. So if you find yourself eager to get the kids out of the house but with no particular plans in mind, give Morges a chance. It is only 50 km (30 miles) from Geneva and very easy to get to either by taking the highway, the lake route or even the train.
For further information, visit:
www.morges.ch
www.morges-tourisme.ch/en/
To view more photos taken by Maria in Morges, click here.
