Geneva Day 1

Is it just a freak coincidence that after ticking Belgium off the list, the next country that I pick to visit was Switzerland, or did my internal chocolate homing device have a say in it?  Either way, we set off bright and early, well I guess not bright because it was 5 AM and the sun wasn't going to come up for another 2.5 hours, but early for sure. We arrived in Geneva about 9 and were pleasantly surprised that the early check-in I had requested, meant we got to go straight into our room and relax. I was fighting a sinus infection of some kind so in between blowing my nose and sneezing I took a bit of a nap while Kristen planned the rest of our day.

She managed to find a tour of just about everything the city had to offer. It took us all day, but I will beak it down into 4 parts and summarize alot. 

1. Global organizations - turns out there are close to 300 organizations with global headquarters here in Geneva. I guess neutrality and financial stability are some very attractive qualities. None the less, the highlights were of course the UN, and then the World Health Organization. Kristen was excited about the WHO, I had flashbacks about contagion and held my breath as we drove past it.

2. Old city - Geneva was fully walled of and fortified from its surroundings till the mid 1800s then they broke the walls down and it expanded out in all directions. The old walled part still had the charm and history though.

 3. Lake Geneva - we took a tour of the lake and while the boat was a bit full for my liking the sights were pretty cool. Clearly the unmissable highlight is the Jet d'Eau fountain. Over 400 ft in the air.

Then all of the houses on the lake which we could only dream about living in. This was where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.  Can't imagine what was wrong with her as a person to be living in a fairy tale dream setting and come up with something like that. 

This house is where Eisenhower and Reagan stayed when they were in the city for peace and other talks. I can imagine with these kind of digs, such talks would take a LONG time to come to any decisions or conclusions.

4. The countryside - There really isn't much Swiss countryside to see around Geneva, more because Geneva is surrounded by France and its frowned upon driving a tour bus full of people between countries. What countryside there was, was super nice though. Probably only like 5 miles before you get to France so we stayed pretty close to the city. Anyway, since the city is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains the locals make good use of the terrain by growing grapes and making wine. They had already had the harvest for the season so no more grapes, but lots of foliage, and leaves turning to make for great pictures.

One of the local wineries

See I told you that the French border was close. The flag at this house means that the border is just down the road. We hung a left to stay in Switzerland.

A very unassuming building on the outskirts of town but more impressive if you actually know what it is. This is the Geneva branch of CERN. They proved that things can travel faster than the speed of light, last month, wonder what they were working on today?

On the way back into town we came past the Rolex factory, and the Patek Philippe factory. Our tour guide tried to convince us that the most famous watches were the Patek Philippe, but everyone just kinda looked at each other with faces like what are you talking about lady, so I am not quite sure if she was making things up or not.

We had already been awake for something like 18 hours by the time we got home from dinner, and I was pretty hopped up on Benadryl so it was bed time for sure. We are expecting good weather again tomorrow, so should be more great sights to see.