Adventures where it snows in May

Today the plan was to head to Montreux, which is home of the Montreux Jazz Festival and right on a large lake that looks out onto the Alps and into France. Actually, it looks right into the part of France where the Evian water people are from. The view is supposed to look like this. Actually, today had the worst weather yet, and the view looked like rain and fog. The town was still lovely, and afterwards we headed out on an adventure: Jessica's grandmother, who was with us for the day, said there was a field of narcissus (narcissuses?) up on top of the mountain above Montreux that she had seen. See examples of narcissi on the right.

We headed out, excited for our adventure. The road wound up the mountain, past little villages and through the clouds, which thickened into a foglight-worthy muck. The road developed a steep grade, and then into one-laner with pitiful visibility, the kind on which you pray that no cars will be coming the other direction to force you to back up down the mountain until you can find a place to let the other car pass. Then we started to see things like this as the temperature droped to a chilly 3 degrees C:

Grandma, are you sure you saw narcissus up here?

Yes, she's sure.

She definitely saw them here...twenty years ago.

Oh.

Silly us, we forgot to ask when!

But by this point, we want to know what's at the top, and we're hoping that the mountain might be high enough to break through the clouds to a view of the Alps, so we continue onward and upward. It turns out that the road ends at a forest preserve that has been completely blanketed in snow and is just above the freezing point, temperature wise.Jessica's mom noted, though, that what could be more Swiss than snow in May at the top of a mountain with a chalet sitting there for coffee and snacks? So we go inside for coffe and snacks, naturally! Mmm, hot chocolate that comes with a chunk of chocolate on the side!

I don't think I've ever seen so much snow before! Especially not such clean, white snow, since the snow in Harbin always fell black.

And in any case, on the way down, there were some lovely views!

Also, I forgot to ask you yesterday to guess where most of the horse meat eaten in Switzerland comes from.

Go on, guess!

That's right, the US and Canada. So there!

Oh yeah, also delicious food today, too--veal for lunch and this very Swiss, pear-based jam-like stuff on bread for part of dinner. Also local meringues (we passed by the place that makes them yesterday, it's some guy's house) with local double-whipped cream for dessert. It was awful ;)