A Day In Montreux
Travel Tips for Montreux
Listen to Queen before you arrive to get ready for the Queen hype around town. If you’re not a Queen fan, you might be converted before you leave. Not a bad fate :)
Stay near Lac Leman for easy access to the best of what Montreux offers along the boardwalk.
Chillon Castle is best visited on a weekday, a couple of hours before closing. It’ll help with crowd control, and you get to sleep in!
Time your visit to Montreux in September to experience endless grape fields being harvested in neighboring Chexbres.
Reserve a seat in well in advance on the Golden Pass Railway for your arrival or departure from Montreux. Booking a window seat earlier would have given us a better side of the train. The number of seats differs by departure time so be flexible for more options.
Our Travels In Montreux
Montreux was our first choice to visit after Chamonix because that’s where the Golden Pass Railway begins. This iconic train route travels across half of Switzerland along some of its most famous mountains and lakes. The train is painted a special shade of gold and offers extra amenities on board. Our Swiss GA Pass guaranteed free travel on the train, but we splurged to reserve window seats. We planned to ride it most of the way before hopping off near the end to reach Switzerland’s capital, Bern. Traveling Switzerland by train had been extremely scenic on every route so we were pumped for this train experience. Then our poor Chamonix luck came back full force…
A tree had fallen on the railroad and closed the route on the day of our ride! We couldn’t figure out the train departure platform, asked a ticket agent for help and learned there was no train at all! Of course, a few days later we saw the unique Golden Pass train rolling through a different town. We only missed out on riding it by a few days! Now in Montreux with unexpected extra time, we decided to grab a later train and explore the area until then. Thankfully, the Golden Pass isn’t the only route toward Bern. Here’s what we did on our full day trip in Montreux, what we should have done differently, and what you should do:
Montreux is absolutely nuts about Queen. Not Elizabeth, but the Freddie Mercury can’t stop me now bite the dust kind of Queen. We’re pretty much Queen historians now thanks to the free Queen Studio Experience tour in the Casino Barriere Montreux - this is where Queen recorded their final albums, and the last place Freddie Mercury recorded vocals before passing away. Not only do they have tons of memorabilia, there’s also a Queen short documentary film and an interactive recording room where you can mix your own versions of a few Queen songs. It’s like karaoke! Sometimes the person mixing sounds great. Most of the time it sounds like you’d expect. An unofficial part of the Studio Experience is the massive wall outside the casino covered in thousands of fan messages to Queen. Inside and out, the Queen Studio Experience is a solid visit lasting about an hour.
The Montreux boardwalk a few blocks away was our next stop. It runs along the waterfront of Lac Leman connecting all the neighboring towns and featuring the areas most famous attractions. We missed out on the boardwalk’s annual jazz festival, but we did get to see the Freddie Mercury statue. The sculpture (also seen on the cover of the final Queen album) stands tall and proud overlooking the lake as a tribute to all the love Freddie shared. It’s less than a ten minute walk from the Studio Experience so if you visit one, you should visit the other. Everybody loves Freddie, and every visitor wants a photo with his statue, so arrive early to get your solo shot in.
Heading the opposite direction is Chillon Castle. The centuries old fortress served as a prison, guard post, fortress, and even a nearly self sufficient estate once it was fully built. It’s currently the most well preserved medieval castle of its time. It’s so clean and well kept that Game of Thrones may as well have been filmed here. Stepping into it is like stepping back in time; parties and events are still hosted inside the original dining hall, the dungeon is perfectly spooky and somehow the latrines still smell, well, like latrines after 700 years. You can even time a visit to experience a centuries old castle tradition. Wine is still aged in the castle’s cellars and uncorked from the barrel once a year! Guests visiting at just the right time are able to buy this wine. You can likely visit Chillon Castle comfortably by arriving two to three hours before closing, especially on a weekday. Some corridors and staircases are narrow so avoiding those extra people would be extra nice.
Queen and castles sites were great visits, but our favorite boardwalk stop was way off to the north. We heard about a town named Chexbres that overlooked the lake and was a huge regional producer of wine. We were absolutely floored when we arrived. Millions of grapes ready for harvest stretched all the way to the horizon! We’ve visited vineyards in off season before, but never just as they’re being harvested. Two or three times we actually had to dodge trucks filled with grapes driving through the narrow roads. Scheduling a tasting or a tour should be a priority for anyone traveling this area. You’ll have many vineyards to choose from and phenomenal views of the lake. Unfortunately, timing didn’t work out for us to reserve a tasting but that would be a top priority of ours next time we’re in the area! Even if time didn’t allow a tasting, just walking around Chexbres in September is magical.
After a fantastic day in Montreux we caught that later train to Bern. Missing out on the Golden Pass was a real letdown but not a real problem because Montreux turned out to be a great choice for a day trip. We visited beautiful places while still arriving in Bern by the end of the day as planned. Part of long term travel is staying flexible and being happy with Plan B or even C. They often make us wonder if Plan A could have been as fun in the first place.
