A Day in Martigny

We had not heard of Martigny before we arrived in Switzerland, but our day trip there last Saturday has made it one of our favorite places.

Martigny (located about an hour from Lausanne) is in the valley just below the Saint Bernard pass, a famous and ancient pass through the Alps.  Both Julius Caesar and Napoleon crossed here.  The pass also is home to the Monks of Saint Bernard and their famous dogs.

The monastery up in the pass is not accessible to visitors at this time of year, but in Martigny there is a museum honoring the history of the Saint Bernard Monks and their rescue dogs.  Here they have all kinds of interesting artifacts and displays about mountain climbing, the Monks, and rescues in the Alps.  But the best part of this museum is that they have eight Saint Bernards on site.

Christopher and Matthew love dogs, so visiting the Saint Bernards in Martigny was a trip we were all looking forward to.

These dogs were incredibly large, incredibly cute, and super friendly and gentle.  If not for the slobber, maybe there'd be a Saint Bernard in our future.



We didn't know what else Martigny might have to offer beyond the dogs, but after a long visit at the museum in the morning, we decided to walk around town just to see what might be there.  This being Switzerland,  we wound up exploring more Roman ruins, climbing to a medieval castle, and, the biggest surprise of all, stumbling on an amazing exhibit of Monet paintings in the town's art museum! 

The Roman ruins were located adjacent to the St. Bernard museum and kennel.  There was a large amphitheater, and some homes and baths.  We read an account of the famous battle of Martigny, a battle in which the locals almost succeeded in chasing a Roman garrison out of town, but the Roman army prevailed in the end.  (Our Latin wasn't quite up to reading this account in the original language of the contemporary historian who wrote it, but there was an English translation alongside the French and German translations.) 

It's perhaps a sign that we've been here long enough to have grown accustomed to certain aspects of Switzerland that it didn't even occur to us to take pictures of these ruins, not even of the large and nicely restored amphitheater.

After lunch in a cute little cafe, we climbed up to the castle ruin (Château de la Bâtiaz). We didn't know about this castle before arriving in Martigny that morning, but this imposing structure can be seen from every corner of town, so we decided to find our way up to it.

Château de la Bâtiaz

After a healthy hike we got to the top of the hill.  While we were able to look around the grounds, we could not go into the castle.  It was closed for a private party.  Yes, you can rent this castle for your next shindig.  Something to think about!



On the way back down, we crossed over this wonderful covered bridge that spans the Dranse river.  The bridge was built in 1820 and is the only covered bridge in Switzerland that is still open to car traffic.

And then there's the art.  While we had made the trip to Martigny to see the dogs, and while we weren't all that surprised to find Roman ruins and a cool castle in town, we had no idea that we were in for a world class art exhibit.  All over town we noticed signs for a Monet exhibit at the Fondation Gianadda museum.  I checked our trusty Swiss Museum Pass, realized that the museum entry fee was covered (as was the entry fee to the St. Bernard museum), and we headed to see some major works of art.

Boys in front of the Fondation Gianadda Museum
(no photos allowed inside)

The exhibit was incredible.  There were 70 Monet paintings from throughout his career.  There were water lilies and cathedrals and train stations.  The museum was small and we were able to get up close to the paintings. So close that on many of them we could see brush strokes and layers of oil paint.  Wow! We were able to talk to the boys about Impressionism and what Monet was trying to capture and the differences among the paintings based on light and perspective.  I'm not sure they got the significance of it all, but being surrounded by Monets brought tears to my eyes. 

While our wonderful visit to Martigny had come to a close, our fun day had not.



From Martigny we headed back to Lausanne to see our first professional soccer game. 

Allez Lausanne!

The start of the game.  The professional players are accompanied by youth soccer players.
Lausanne is in blue, so Christopher and Matthew fit right in by wearing their Duke hats!

Our team is called Lausanne Sport. We are in last place in our league, and we were playing the first place team, Bale (which is how the French say Basel). So we were the underdogs.

But we scored first!

Lausanne scores and the crowd goes wild!

It was a super fun night. Lausanne played hard. We got to see five goals, a number of fouls and yellow cards, and the Lausanne Sport coach thrown out of the game.

In the end, Lausanne lost 3-2.  But a good time was had by all!



Switzerland isn't Ireland or Italy (where our first cab driver in Rome told us it wouldn't be safe to go near the soccer stadium that night during the game because of the potential for violence), but we did see more police presence (including several dozen officers standing by in riot gear) at the Lausanne soccer stadium than we've seen during our entire stay in Switzerland.  And the Bale fans were cordoned off in their own section that was fenced off from the rest of the stands.  There was no violence, and we also were thankful that, while the boys definitely have learned some French, they haven't learned enough French to be able to understand the rabid fan behind us who was cursing up a storm during the game. They could tell something was going on because the kids in front of us kept turing around and pointing at the guy, but they did not seem to be able to follow his foul-mounted diatribe against the players and the ref.  Whew!

Something about the combination of things we did today -- playing with St. Bernards, walking around a Roman amphitheater, hiking to a medieval castle, stumbling upon a Monet exhibit, and singing "Allez Lausanne" at our home team's soccer game -- encapsulates our experience of living in Switzerland.  It was a good day.