Hermance Switzerland

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Hermance Town Hall – directly across from the church – where the civil ceremony took place.

My younger daughter was married January 9, 2010 in the picturesque lake town of Hermance right on the border between France and Switzerland and not far from Geneva. The festivities were spread over two days – with the civil ceremony on the first day and the church ceremony and reception the following day. The reception was held at the Auberge d’Hermance. Many of the guests stayed overnight at the Auberge and so the festivities went on late into the night. As you can see from the photos it was snowing.

Unfortunately I’d left my camera in a taxi (it was later returned to me) so at that moment I had only my iphone 3GS to take these pictures.

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The Church.

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The Auberge d’Hermance.

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The road to the lake

Mummy at the Depot

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We’d been for a walk at the Old West Point Foundry Preserve and on the way back home I stopped for refreshments at The Depot in Cold Spring. It was in full Hallowe’en garb. As I was leaving I spotted this life-size (if that’s the right word) mummy with a small skeleton on the wall.

The Depot has its own spooky story. It’s actually the old Cold Spring railway station converted into a restaurant. It’s reputed to be haunted.

Randolph Mase’s Weblog provides this description:

As legend has it, a wealthy socialite overheard her husband plotting to kill her on a winter night in 1898. She immediately ran down Main Street to the train station, intending to catch the 10:15 train to Poughkeepsie. When her husband discovered she was gone, he searched the village, finding her on the bench at the station. He immediately drove a knife into her chest, killing her, then he was immediately lynched by the outraged townspeople. It is said to this day that her spirit haunts the depot, and in fact if you sit on the waiting bench at exactly 10:13 pm on a Wednesday night, you can feel a chill as her ghost passes by.

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