Montreux is the Swiss Riviera in its most polished form, a ribbon of hotels, gardens and promenades stacked up the steep north shore of Lake Geneva, with the French Alps standing on the far side of the water like a stage set. The slopes behind are so sheltered that palms and magnolias survive outdoors, and the lakeside walk is lined with flowerbeds from early spring. It was a retreat for Victorian invalids and then for writers: Byron wrote about the nearby Château de Chillon, and Nabokov spent his last years in a suite at the Montreux Palace hotel, where his statue stands in the gardens today.
Music is the other local industry. The Montreux Jazz Festival began in 1967 and still takes over the lakefront each July, and the town has a deeper rock footnote, too. In December 1971 a fire destroyed the casino during a Frank Zappa concert, and Deep Purple, who had come to record nearby, turned the scene into Smoke on the Water. Queen later bought a studio here and Freddie Mercury lived part of the year in Montreux, so the bronze statue of him on the promenade is rarely without a visitor.
For riding, the lake itself is not the highlight. The lakeside road is busy, slow and lined with traffic lights. The reward is up the hill: roads climb steeply from town into the vineyard terraces of Lavaux to the west, a UNESCO landscape of walled terraces dropping to the lake, and up behind Montreux toward Caux and the Rochers-de-Naye, where a cog railway climbs to the summit. From the Col de Jaman, further up, you can look back down to the lake. For longer distances, the Col des Mosses and the Col du Pillon lead east and south into the Vaud and Valais Alps.
Montreux has a population of about twenty-three thousand, and that brings fuel, parking garages, and everything from bakeries to fine dining. Prices are decidedly Swiss. A lakeside coffee is expensive and worth it. Spring and early autumn are best, as summer weekends are crowded and festival weeks are chaos. A Swiss motorway vignette is needed on the A9 that runs above the town, and speed limits are strictly enforced.