I've been trying to get a sense of different parts of Lausanne.
Is Lausanne made up of areas with little neighborhood centers or do people tend to meet downtown to hang out? Someone said that Lausanne itself is quite residential and you'd inevitably have to take transport to the central area for shops and restaurants.
I'm thinking about branching out my apartment search to Lutry. Would that be as convenient and interesting of a place to live as areas within Lausanne? (bars, restaurants, bookstores, fun expat future-friends... )
I used to live in the suburbs of Paris and it was quite inconvenient...our town was mainly a place for us to commute from and rest our heads at nights. Would like to avoid that!
Downtown Lausanne is certainly where the action is, not really that much goes on at the periphery of the centre. Ouchy is great for walks and worshipping this magnificent Lac Leman.
Lutry is a nice quiet village-like small town and easily access to Lausanne centre by Bus 9, or the regional train, or what I do, walk on the quai back and forth from Ouchy to Lutry and back!!!!
Its a quiet village with great access to Lavaux region. Lovely port, great views across the lake, some good restos (Cafe de la Poste takes top honours), a public beach (but it can get crowded in the summer).
Bonne chance.
Thank you for the kind advice! I will keep my fingers crossed...and stay open-minded.
Lausanne is still pretty small in the bigger scheme of things, wherever you live you can (at a stretch) walk home (even Lutry, although it'll take you an hour). Certainly public transport makes the whole Lausanne area within a 30 min commute.
There are, however little centres within the whole, every named area used to be a village in its own right (Pully, Epalinges, Ouchy, Rennes etc) and has a centre of sorts. There are (as far as i know) no purpose built residential-only areas that are isolated from local services as you might find in the UK or US.
So the advice is (this is age/family dependant), be part of a little community somewhere (Lutry for example) and you can easily be part of the bigger entity whenever you like.
I make the Lutry - Ouchy stagger once a year after the Lutry Fete de Vendage, it always seems to be a good idea at the time until after an hour of walking like a crab you've only got to the kiddies train at Pully!