Geneva

We took a trip a week ago to Geneva, Switzerland.  Our first international (outside of Paris) trip!  We had a friend from church stay at our place to watch the dogs for a few days, so we took off early on a Thursday morning.  It seems rather odd to hop on a 3 hour train ride and arrive in Switzerland. 

We took a Metro to the one station in Paris where we were catching the train to Switzerland. 

We hopped on board the train and picked travel buddies.  Girls were beside girls and boys were beside boys.

The train trip was a lot of fun.  We got to see plenty of the French countryside, small villages, and lots of trees.  The highlight was probably when we were in the mountains and there was a highway on the other side of a lake from us.

We were glad to get to Geneva and start having fun!  We walked from the train station to our hotel.  That included walking through a small park area that had a rather unique sign indicating what was forbidden.  I find it odd that people have to be explicitly told not to urinate in a kids park.

The hotel was right in downtown Geneva, but it had a rural Swiss feel to it.  Hotel Edelweiss.  Yes, I sang the song Edelweiss a number of times while we were there.  The room was very spacious for a European hotel.  It had a fold out couch for the kids and 2 twin beds pushed together for Sandy and me.

After dropping our bags and getting a little refreshed, we decided to head out and see the city.  We were only a few blocks from Lake Geneva, so we started heading that way.  The city of Geneva is at one end of Lake Geneva, and the city itself wraps around the end of the lake.  In the lake at the docks is perhaps the most famous landmark of Geneva, the Jet D'eau.  It is a jet of water that sprays over 430' into the air.  It was quite impressive when we first saw it.

To get from one side to the other, you can either walk to the bridges that span the Rhone River or take the water taxi.

The city itself is beautiful.  Very modern, very clean.  It consists of the typical 5 or 6 story European structures surrounding the water.

 

There is a section around the lake called "The Beach" where people hang out and swim in the lake.  There were people there at all hours of the day enjoying the sun, reading a book, eating a meal.  It was such a communal place.  It was on a jetty type structure that went out into the lake.  The kids liked it because there were a lot of big rocks that they could climb over.

We went back several times, including both evenings for dinner.  They had a walk up place that served some basic items daily, but also had a "plat du jour" special every evening.  The first night was a vegetarian lasagna and the 2nd night was salmon with a lemon risotto.  For the 2nd night, we split a salmon and also got some of the fondue.  It was a giant pot of bubbly cheese with a huge basket of bread. 

The kids didn't really care for the dinner options there, so they had a pizza from a local place that was very good.  Needless to say, we didn't come close to finishing the fondue.  There had to have been over a pound of cheese in there!

We walked around a lot of Geneva to window shop.  Around the lakefront, we didn't do more than look in the windows since the shops included Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabanna, Rolex, and many other high end stores.  We did explore a number of the parks that lined the lake.  One of them has a huge clock with the face made out of flowers.

Nick found a few trees to climb, too.  We're not sure if climbing the trees in the park was okay, but we were stupid Americans.  We didn't care.

I think I need to finish off this post and start another one for the rest of the trip, since this only encompassed day 1 of Geneva.