We stayed in Lea’s apartment in Ouchy for eight nights, 31 May to 8 June 2017 whilst using Interrail passes for touring on Switzerland’s excellent rail system. We were very lucky to find the apartment available after another Airbnb host cancelled our reservation in nearby Vevey at very short notice, after we had made all our travel arrangements.
Lea’s apartment is large, in a lovely old building, and in a quiet position a few minutes from Ouchy harbour and Lake Geneva. It has a large balcony, with a partial view of the lake, where we had most of our breakfasts and evening meals, although some spectacular thunderstorms after very hot days made us go inside sometimes!
The apartment is very personal, as Lea moves elsewhere whilst it is being used by Airbnb guests. Therefore, her clothes and other personal items, food etc, are still in the apartment and there is some very interesting artwork and photography.
The apartment has all necessary cooking facilities, including an oven and hotplate (although no microwave). It has a bath and a shower, plus washing machine and dishwasher, although we did not use these. One slight disadvantage is that only hand towels are supplied, not the usual bath size. The arrangements for getting and leaving the keys were very convenient, especially as Lea was in Paris at the time of our visit, and we were able to check out at a convenient time for our train to Paris and on to London, and Lea kept in touch with us via friendly Airbnb messages to make sure all was OK.
Note that Lea does not supply the free Lausanne transport passes that most hotels and apartments do, and the Metro is quite expensive for short journeys, at least for people from the UK, where the currency exchange rate is very poor at the moment (this also means that the apartment itself was expensive for us). However, we found that we could walk to Lausanne station in about 15 minutes via the Ficelle (the ‘String’ in English), which is a green walkway following the line of the old funicular railway, now replaced by the underground Metro. You can get to this in about two minutes by taking the street to the left of the Coop supermarket.
To summarise, we had a very comfortable stay in Lea’s apartment and enjoyed ourselves very much. Ouchy harbour and the lake are very attractive and excellent for evening walks to watch the sunset, and the old town area of Lausanne is interesting.