Abundant Travel Tips: Montreaux Jazz Festival

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Montreaux Jazz Festival

If you love music, you must add the Montreux Jazz Festival to your list.  Supposedly, it is the second largest Jazz Festival after the one held in Montreal, Canada. This week, I’ll share details about the festival; when is ithow to get to there, a little history of the festival, as well as a must see Chateau while in Montreux.

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Montreux Jazz Festival

Montreux Jazz Fest

2019 was the 53rd year of the Montreux Jazz Festival.  It was started in 1967 and is currently the 2nd largest Jazz Festival in the world. Today, it is no longer just jazz, but a mix of all music genres and international artists. The festival was originally held in the Montreux Casino, but today due to the size and popularity of the festival, most of the music venues are in the Convention Centre. Interesting fact: the original casino burned down in 1971 during Frank Zappa’s performance. Check out the Montreux Jazz Festival site for more information.

The festival is held in July every year for about 2 weeks, and this year was particularly hot. 

Abundant Travel Tips, Montreux Jazz Fest

I would recommend staying in Montreux or one of the surrounding villages, and unless you are a huge music fan, I’d stay just 1-2 nights.  There’s not much to do during the day, and you will want to be able to take a nap or freshen up before the night kicks in. Additionally, it gets really hot during the day. How hot? When we were there, I stripped down to my skivvies to take a swim in Lake Geneva…of course, there’s no proof of this 😉

Although I recommend staying close or in Montreux, we chose to stay in Geneva and take a day trip to the Festival by train. You can find train tickets here.  We just bought our tickets the day before at the Geneva train station (Gare Cornavin).  

Chateau Chillon

Chateau Chillon, France

An added treat when traveling to Montreaux is Chateau Chillon.  This medieval island castle is one of the most visited in Switzerland, and makes for great photo opps.  The best thing to do is to walk the 30 min along Lake Geneva to the castle and back, as the lake views are spectacular.  I enjoyed the Savoy Dynasty history, and loved seeing how people lived in Midieval times.  Chateau Chillon

This week’s YouTube video: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

This week’s video is about our day trip to the Montreaux Jazz Festival. Girls just wanna have fun…and drink bubbles!

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