Chamonix-Mont-Blanc Travel Forum

My son & I are hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc for his 16th birthday. Our 10 day hike ends on a Thur. in Chamonix (we stay there that night) and we fly out of Geneva 6am on Sun. What to do after breakfast Fri until Sat night? Had decided on side trip to see Chateau de Chillon but now realize that it will be the last 2 days of Montreux Jazz Fest (July 18 & 19). The castle looks so cool but am afraid the place will be a zoo and turn into a major hassle. Am really torn though since its doubtful we'll ever have another chance to see it. Any other suggestions? Anywhere that's not hard to get to between Chamonix and Geneva...Think my son would really enjoy a good medevial site. Assume we will have had enough hiking and certainly aren't shoppers. He's never been to Europe (we're from New York). Thanks so much!

I don't think the Montreux Jazz festival will cause the Chateau de Chillon to be much busier than otherwise, so you can visit that. You don't need to limit yourself to somewhere in between Chamonix and Geneva though. Switzerland is small, and trains run hourly or better everywhere. You could easily go to Sion (two medieval castles), Gruyere (small fortified town and a nice castle) and pobably lots of other places.

We were there during the Jazz Festival and the Chateau Chillon was not particularly crowded. We had no trouble driving to it, parking and visiting the chateau. It's a great day trip in a beautiful setting.

The two suggestions above (Gruyere and Sion) were also excellent. If your son wants a medieval site, Gruyere with its castle on a mountain would be super.

There are a lot of other places of historical and architectural interest such as Yvoire, the castle of Ripaille, etc, in France as well as in Switzerland.
However, you might consider something completely different. The CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is the world's largest particle physics laboratory and it is where the web was born! It is an international facility situated at Meyrin across the France-Switzerland border, north to Geneva
It is a world-leading place for informatics and particle accelerators. The newest, the LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground. It uses a 27 km circumference circular tunnel.

That might interest your son, may be better than middle-ages castles! If so, you must schedule your visit long in advance (2 month) as they have always a long waiting list for visits.

Look at :
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome.html

A wonderful medieval location is the small village of Yvoire (yvoire.free.fr), as JLBG said, on the south coast of Lac Leman, only 30 Km from Geneva. You can easily reach and enjoy it after Chateau de Chillon, is on the road...
It is true that Switzerland is not so big, but after 10 days on Mont Blanc, and only with Fri and Sat... IMO it would be better to see one or two great things not very far. Not excluding other suggestions