Geneva, Lousanne, Geneva, London

Well not much of Geneva today, we headed out this morning by train to Lausanne. Its just across the lake from Geneva, but the lake isn't at all like what we are used to, something like 50 miles long and up to ten miles across. Took about 40 minutes on the train, but was nice to get to see more of the country side. Lots more wineries and what appeared to be some lilac farms. Don't really know but alot of purple flowers.

Speaking of the lake, it is just amazing how clear the water is. Maybe we are just used to the dirtiest lakes ever, and then the Thames is even dirtier than that. Looks like chocolate milk most of the time. But Lake Geneva is literally crystal clear. I could always see the bottom standing out on docks or anywhere else. No wonder the locals have swim clubs in the lake itself.



Lausanne's big claim to fame is the International Olympic Committee, and for us the Olympic museum. A word of advise....anytime your travel guide describes the city as 'having 3 levels' just pass on the visit all together. The train arrived on level 2 and we walked downhill for 20 minutes to level 1, and of course had to come back up. After yesterday you would have thought we would have avoided hills, but you would be wrong.


They call it OUCHY because its soo steep

Anyway the Olympic Museum was great. Would have loved to take tons of pictures, but alas no photography inside. But nonetheless filled with really cool stuff. Every torch and Olympic medal from every games. Michael Jordon's shoes, Usain Bolt's jersey, Chris Boardman's pursuit bike, the list really went on and on. We used the audio guide which moved things along pretty fast, but you could have spent the entire day inside if you really read everything.

I had a little run in with a Swiss Asian lady who took exception to the size of my camera bag and told me I needed to leave. It was clear that her English and my French were not going to come to an agreement on things, so I ended up telling her boss on her and she had to let me in. It was funny to me, but she seemed pretty irate about the whole thing.

View from the entrance to the Museum

Just a couple of the torches.  The had a full set of torches
and medals from every Olympics

They never said what the mold of my
abs was for.  Now I know.

After the museum, we had some time to kill so we ventured to some of the old churches in the center of town.  Seems I never quite get tired of walking through these old churches, no matter how much each one of the looks the previous. 

 I have become a big fan or organs, too.

One of the things that seemed really strange while we were here, is just how much and ironically how little commercialism there was in Geneva. On the tops of every building were the most iconic brand names. Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and all the rest, but other than 2 or 3 McDonalds, I didn't see a single other restaurant that I had ever heard of before. Not even a Subway. It was really difficult to pick where to eat when EVERYTHING is a mystery.

And as a parting thought, just because you book a cheap flight and hotel, don't think you are going to get out of Geneva without spending some serious $$$$. Something about the Swiss, not sure why, but everything was super expensive. I try not to think about it as much as possible, but meals were rough on the pocket book. We met a couple that said they ordered drinks before dinner, and somehow managed to spend 64 francs for 2 drinks. I would have spit it up and told them they could have it back.

Just because its funny

Geneva Day 2

Kristen seems to fall into a bit of a routine when it comes to sightseeing and visiting other places. She finds the tallest thing around, and makes me climb it. Today she took it to a bit of an extreme. We left the hotel this morning, destination......France. As I mentioned yesterday Geneva is surrounded by France so it didn't take long before we were at the border. I was concerned yesterday about what would happen if you cross the border. Well we literally walked across the border today, just waltzed right into France, and....................nothing happened! Not a thing, might as well been crossing Memorial.

Anyway we made it to the cable car to go up Monte Saleve, and I had a bit of a code brown as I realized it went up some 1000 meters in like a minute and a half. In the cable car you don't have any real point of reference so it doesn't feel like you are moving that much or that fast. But then once you do get that point of reference you realize you are flying up the mountain.

At this point I just wanted off, but Kristen just stared happily out the window. From the top it was just fantasitc. The whole city down there below you. Everything that we had seen down there the day before, was all in miniture. Apparently the winds off the mountain were good for paragliding, Seemed like lots of fun, but again, scared the bejesus out of me.

As they say what goes up must come down, and we flew down the mountain, and skipped across the border back into Switzerland.

A little lunch in us, and we set out for the next HIGH light of the day. Kristen had the Cathedrale St-Pierre on the agenda, Not only did the tour of the church include 150 steps to the top of the towers, but we had to climb up some riduculous streets to get to it in the first place. As we were walking up I thought who exactly decides when a street is too steep and needs stairs or not? Pretty sure the street was steeper on the non-stair part then the stair part. The Church itself wasn't much but was fully of full of some really great history. It is best known as the adopted home church of John Calvin, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Looking down on the city from the top of the Church, was great, looked like something out of movie set.

Before dinner we ran out to the Jet d'Eau.  Saw it from afar yesterday, but today we got up close and personal. Originally installed further down the lake as a safety valve for the hydraulic power network, it became so popular they it was moved into town and its been the main tourist attraction since 1891, and upgraded to the current jet in 1951. Originally the fountain was just 100 feet, but now its close to 500 feet. 130 gallons of water per second are shot skyward at 125 mph. At any one time there are something like 16 tons of water in air. I braved the water and ventured out to the base of the fountain, big mistake but amazing to feel the force. There was probably 30 mph winds coming off the fountain, and the water coming back down into the lake. I was only there for like 20 seconds and eventhough it was just spray, I got soaked.

Not sure why there is so little safety restraints around the fountain. Just a little two foot railing and nothing else. Gotta be drunks falling off of the eddy all the time.

Kristen's travel book had us visit a little restaurant famous for its fondue. Not sure why I am always a whining baby everytime Kristen wants to get fondue. I always go into it being really sad, but by the end I am the biggest fan. As usual, I was in the pot scraping cheese off of the bottom after Kristen had long thrown the towel in. 

 

All in all dinner was great, except for Peter Gabriel's greatest hits they had playing all night.  Seriously, what is it with American 80's music and Europe.  Its all you hear everywhere you go.

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.