Lausanne - a city break with a difference

Coco Chanel – and her dog – are buried here and Audrey Hepburn lived in a nearby village for three decades. Suzanne Harrington follows in the footsteps of the rich and famous and visits Lausanne.

Think Switzerland and you probably imagine Zurich banks, Geneva conventions, cuckoo clocks, cow bells and chocolate, Swiss army knives and Heidi. But there’s more. There’s Lausanne.

Switzerland’s charming little city, on the north side of Lake Geneva, is less than an hour by train from Geneva airport, and something of a hidden delight. Peaceful, elegant, and friendly, it’s perfect for a city break without the madness of big cities.

Follow the path of previous visitors and residents - Voltaire, Mozart, Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin, Josephine Baker, Rita Hayworth, Ernest Hemingway and, um, Mussolini - through its ancient cobbled streets and soaring Gothic monuments, all perched on a hill overlooking the lake.

Coco Chanel – and her dog – are buried here. Audrey Hepburn lived in a nearby village for 30 years. And TS Elliot wrote The Wasteland here: “By the waters of Lake Leman [Lake Geneva] I sat down and wept.”

This is unlikely to happen to you, however. Lausanne is just trop charmante. And yes, it’s in the French speaking part of Switzerland, but everyone seems to speak English too. Perfectly. Just don’t forget your Swiss francs and arrive with a pocketful of euros, like I did.

THE JOURNEY

Punctual trains run like, well, clockwork through 64kms of picturesque Swiss landscape from the airport train station to the centre of Lausanne.

Flying to Geneva is cheap, quick and easy, directly from Dublin or via Zurich from Cork – Swiss Air Business Class is relaxing, their lounge in Geneva Airport an oasis of comfort and free drinks, and there are plenty of budget airline options too. You may even be greeted in Irish by the nice chap at Passport Control, who charmed with smiles of Dia is Muire dhuit and Conas ta tu. (Further conversation in Irish could have ended in tongue-tied cultural embarrassment – for me. The customs guy seemed fluent.) www.swiss.com/ireland/EN/contact-us-in-ireland

THE LAKE

From Lausanne Gare, take the dinky little metro four stops to Ouchy Olympique.

Here is the lake, vast and flat, the French town of Evian hazy across the water, the Alps towering and magnificent in the distance. Breathe it in. To walk along the shores of Lake Geneva is restorative to the point of anti-ageing.

You can take a boat ride along the shoreline to neighbouring villages – the nearby Cully, pretty as a picture, has a serious jazz festival each April, international artists arriving to perform in its tiny waterside bars. Or you can go further out onto the lake, on gorgeous old wooden cruise boats, and experience a kind of calm blue bliss that doesn’t come with rivers and seas. Heaven. There are all kinds of watersports too, if you can be bothered.

www.lake-geneva-switzerland.com/lausanne/ferryboats-and-pleasure-cruises-from-lausanne-on-lake-geneva/

THE LUXURY

Switzerland is famously expensive, but dislikes Trumpian ostentation; it is all about understated luxury in the form of deep comfort and your needs being met before you’ve even realised them.

The Royal Savoy Hotel & Spa, which looks like the Grand Budapest Hotel except with a giant Swiss flag flying from its turrets, is a splendid place, where I am warmly welcomed by one of its managers, Emer Finlay from Navan, now a Lausanne resident and brimming with enthusiasm for her adopted home town.

The rose oil massage at the hotel’s spa embodies Swiss luxe – the spa itself is a five star sanctuary of fluffy robes, dim lighting, fabulous treatments, yoga, an indoor/outdoor pool perfect for lounging around, and a therapist who trained at the spa at Inchadoney, Co Cork. Your body will love you for it as your brain exhales. You can go to the cigar lounge afterwards, and undo all the good work, or visit the rooftop lounge and see Lausanne twinkling below. The resident mixologist does extraordinarily good mocktails and cocktails, and dinner is haute cuisine served with gold leaf. So I’m in Switzerland eating gold. Get me.

www.royalsavoy.ch/en

THE CHOCOLATE

Obviously you can’t visit Switzerland without checking out the chocolate. The good news/bad news is that it’s everywhere – every street seems to have its own chocolatier.

The Blondel chocolate shop at Rue de Bourg 5, founded in 1850 and at this address since 1891, is a cornucopia of handmade chocolate in all forms, a gourmet experience for the chocolate gourmand, like stepping into a very grown up version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Obviously the prices are very grown up too – but you can always just inhale the chocolatey air inside of the shop and buy a Tobelerone at the Duty Free on your way home.

www.blondel.ch

THE ARCHITECTURE

Lausanne is small but seriously hilly. Save your legs by taking the metro to Riponne, where several museums are housed inside the Palais de Rumine.

The catherdral here was built between 1150 and 1275, and the castle next to it has panoramic views over the city down to the lake. This is the architecture of fairytales, all turrets and cobbles and tiles, spires and balconies and shutters.

To reach the city centre and the neighbouring Le Flon area, you walk down some medieval wooden steps to pretty streets filled with cafes, small exclusive shops, squares, fountains and perfect places to sit and people watch. And yes, everyone is very slim and well groomed, and seem to enjoy sitting outside cafes snarfing fancy patisserie.

www.orangesmile.com/travelguide/lausanne/high-resolution-maps

THE ART

If you want a change from the Swiss watch shops, chocolatiers and medieval architecture, visit the Collection d’Art Brut at 11 Avenue des Bergieres.

Housed in an old mansion, the Chateau de Beaulieu, is a startling collection of outsider art by untrained artists whose work falls far outside the conventions of the art world.

The work has been made by people with mental health issues, prisoners, the marginalised, the unknown, the voiceless; intricate, raw, and often surreal (one elderly taxi driver’s 3D tableaux of otherwordly universes made from shells and nail varnish are mesmerising).

For ‘proper’ art, visit the Fondation de l’Hermitage at Route du Signal 2. The Hermitage houses another collection in another mansion overlooking the city, the artists insider rather than outsider – Gaugin, Degas, Braque, Magritte - as well as a Chinese porcelain collection and 650 paintings and sculptures. Although none made of shells and nail varnish.

www.artbrut.ch www.fondation-hermitage

THE OLYMPICS

Lausanne has been the home of the International Olympic Committee since 1915, and has been the world’s Olympic Capital since 1994.

The Olympic Museum, overlooking the lake, is the only one of its kind on the planet – divided into three floors (Olympic World, Olympic Games, Olympic Spirit), it’s fun and interactive and houses 10,000 artifacts that will delight sports nerds and non-nerds alike. The museum is set in an Olympic Park, full of sports themed sculptors, including a Rodin.

Lausanne is also home to 25 sports federations – gymnastics, boxing, equestrian etc – and 40 international sports organisations like the World Anti Doping Agency. Because of its surrounding mountains, hills and lake, the city itself is sporty – cycling, running, ice hockey, mountaineering, football – and the Winter Youth Olympic Games will be held in the city in January 2020. So it’s not just all about chocolate and cuckoo clocks, although there are plenty of those too.

www.olympiccapital.ch