Une belle journée au lac Léman

After a stretch of unseasonably cool weather, the sun finally came out and summer temperatures returned for the weekend. As a result, Emilie and I tried to take advantage of the beaux temps, and ultimately decided to search for a nice spot along the lake.

From Lausanne you can follow the lake in two directions – east toward Montreux or west toward Geneva. I’ve taken the eastern route countless times and it is very nice. For some reason I’d never headed west along the lake, though, so we decided to give it a try.

While not as scenic, the western route has far more “beaches”, parks and other places to set up shop for a day at the lake. And that’s exactly what people were doing. It seemed as though all of Swiss Romande had headed to the lake and was BBQing, swimming, playing games, etc., etc.

After a while we finally found a spot that wasn’t too crowded. Unfortunately, this part of the lake wasn’t ideal for swimming. Unlike most of the lake, the water wasn’t very clear and the bottom felt kind of gross with a soft mud-like consistency and slimy vegetation.

The balance of the afternoon was fairly uneventful and around 5pm we headed back. On the way we saw a sign indicating that this area of the lake wasn’t ideal for swimming since it is where the outflow from a local water treatment plant empties. Though there were literally hundreds of people swimming in the area, it didn’t make me feel better about the inadvertent gulps of water that I no doubt took at some point.