Two Best Friends... and a place called Europe: Boats, Germany fans, Lausanne (7/3/10)

Well today was a bit more productive than yesterday. :) We woke up to the sounds and smells of the bustling market outside. As I had mentioned before, every Saturday and Wednesday the street outside Uncle John's apartment comes alive and packed with booths upon booths of food, junk, and clothes and people purchasing here and there. And since today is Saturday ("But she usually writes on Tuesdays and as you can see today is Thursday"....sorry, I had to quote Emma for a second), the market was in full swing. We headed out for breakfast (croissants again...gotta love Europe :)) and then Sarah and I walked around the market. It was fun to look at all the different displays and listen to all the sounds of the market. I did not buy anything, but Sarah got some sweet old keys from this garage sale type booth. After browsing for a while, we headed back to the apartment to get ready for our afternoon in Lausanne. We took a train up to Villeneuve to catch a boat (a "paddled steamer," corrects my uncle :)) that took us to Lausanne. It was beautiful weather to be on the water and we got to see many shots of the Alps and different parts of Switzerland. When we reached Lausanne, we headed over to the Lausanne Cathedral which was completely different from the churches in Italy, but had its own unique beauty. (Why don't we have churches like these in America? :)) Unlike the other two churches we saw in Italy, this church was still being used and had modern speakers and microphones stationed all throughout the main room. It was weird to go from an old, elaborately detailed sculpture and turn around to this bland, grey modern speaker. From the cathedral, we wondered around Lausanne and got a feel for the culture. In Florence, you felt like you had been placed in a small town still living in the olden days, but with a few modern things here and there. In Lausanne, you had the history of all the buildings around you, but the culture was very modern. Some areas even reminded me of Philly... For example, in the middle of one square there were these hip-hop dancers performing. In Florence you had artists and mimers.. :D Because of Lausanne being built on hill, all the buildings were crammed together and stacked on top of each other. I'm sure if you had spread it out on a flat surface, it would have been three times the size. One of the places we visited in Lausanne was the Olympic Museum. We did not get to go inside due to time, but we did get to walk around the outside and see all the different world records for each Olympic sport. They even had the place where the Olympic torch is lit before each Olympics and the flame never goes out. Pretty cool, I'll say... While we were in Lausanne, the Germany vs. Argentina World Cup game was going on. (The World Cup is a huge thing over here in Europe, if you had not already guessed. ;D) We stopped to watch the last few minutes of the game with a crowd of about 1,000 people and when Germany won, it got a little crazy. There were so many Germany fans and they all started celebrating as soon as the game was over. Honking car horns, blowing whistles, screaming and yelling all sorts of things... it was a blast. :) After we pushed through the crowds, we reached our boat that would take us to Morges. After a peaceful boat ride home (we passed a wedding on the shore), a pasta dinner made by Uncle John, and an evening walk on the Lake, we headed to bed.

Pictures from today -