This weekend Becky, Templeton, and i took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Geneva. Geneva is practically in France, and the train ride was only 3 hours. We left early Friday morning and arrived in Geneva at lunchtime. When we arrived at our hostel hoping to drop our bags, they had our room ready. We got lucky with the hostel - it was nice, it was clean, the workers were friendly, we didn't have to pay extra for sheets, we got free breakfast (if we got up before nine), the showers had hot water, lockers were free, the rooms were single-sex, it wasn't too loud, and it was clean. After we dropped our backpacks in the lcokers, we headed down to the lake to search for a place to eat lunch. After scanning many, many menus, we discovered that Swiss cuisine is essentially the same as French cuisine, at least in restaurants in Geneva. The major difference is that every
standard brasserie has a pizza menu (the Italian influence in Switzerland?). After lunch we wandered around the lake, took a little train tour of the major monuments in the parks and walked around the old city and the town hall area. We saw most of the old city and that side of the river, then headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. We also started calling Switzerland the land of cheese and chocolate, and decided we would eat primarily that for the duration of our visit. And we bought our first chocolate. For dinner we decided we had to eat some Swiss cheese, and found a place to eat fondue. Our waitress was incredibly nice, and picked out a nice local red
wine for us that went perfectly with the
standard brasserie has a pizza menu (the Italian influence in Switzerland?). After lunch we wandered around the lake, took a little train tour of the major monuments in the parks and walked around the old city and the town hall area. We saw most of the old city and that side of the river, then headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. We also started calling Switzerland the land of cheese and chocolate, and decided we would eat primarily that for the duration of our visit. And we bought our first chocolate. For dinner we decided we had to eat some Swiss cheese, and found a place to eat fondue. Our waitress was incredibly nice, and picked out a nice local red wine for us that went perfectly with the traditional gruyere fondue. We ate a long, relaxing meal before heading back to the hostel to get to bed early (we had left at 7:30 a.m.). Luckily for us all our of roommates were already back and sound asleep when we got back.
Saturday morning we had hoped to visit the UN, but we discovered too late on Friday that it was only open on weekdays. We had visited the tourism office and picked up lots of brochures, and we picked out a nearby town that had a Swiss history museum, a morning market and looked very cute and Swiss. We took a 20 minute train ride and arrived in a really cute, charming town called 
Nyon. There was an outdoor market that we wandered through, and we also found a super-nice grocery store (I was able to achieve one of my weekend goals of exploring a Swiss grocery store, and we all enjoyed looking at the products). We walked down to the water (this town was also on the lake) and saw the town's landmark chateau. On the chateau terrace we met a group of high schoolers from New Haven, CT. The view from the chateau looking over the water was amazing, and basically made the trip worthwhile. It was a beautiful day, with a perfect blue sky, despite the coldness and the intense wind from the lake. Weather-wise it almost felt like being back in Midd. After exploring Nyon, we hopped on a bus to the next town over and went to the Swiss history museum, which turned out to be kind of dull, but worth the adventure to the little town. When we returned to Geneva we went to a watch museum (we figured it was a very Swiss thing to do). The watch museum was also pretty dull, but we saw some interesting watches. For dinner Saturday night we chose Indian food, since the restaurant selection near our hostel was pretty slim, and there was tons of 
international cuisine. Geneva is an extremely international city - over 1/3 of its population is international, and I've never heard such a variety of languages spoken. Everything was written in the four national languages - French, German, English, and Italian. French was definitely predominant, but we heard a variety and nearly everyone we met spoke English well (I think every single visitor in our hostel spoke English very well or natively). We went to bed early again Saturday night, so we could rise early and get in a site before breakfast.
Nyon. There was an outdoor market that we wandered through, and we also found a super-nice grocery store (I was able to achieve one of my weekend goals of exploring a Swiss grocery store, and we all enjoyed looking at the products). We walked down to the water (this town was also on the lake) and saw the town's landmark chateau. On the chateau terrace we met a group of high schoolers from New Haven, CT. The view from the chateau looking over the water was amazing, and basically made the trip worthwhile. It was a beautiful day, with a perfect blue sky, despite the coldness and the intense wind from the lake. Weather-wise it almost felt like being back in Midd. After exploring Nyon, we hopped on a bus to the next town over and went to the Swiss history museum, which turned out to be kind of dull, but worth the adventure to the little town. When we returned to Geneva we went to a watch museum (we figured it was a very Swiss thing to do). The watch museum was also pretty dull, but we saw some interesting watches. For dinner Saturday night we chose Indian food, since the restaurant selection near our hostel was pretty slim, and there was tons of 
international cuisine. Geneva is an extremely international city - over 1/3 of its population is international, and I've never heard such a variety of languages spoken. Everything was written in the four national languages - French, German, English, and Italian. French was definitely predominant, but we heard a variety and nearly everyone we met spoke English well (I think every single visitor in our hostel spoke English very well or natively). We went to bed early again Saturday night, so we could rise early and get in a site before breakfast.Sunday morning we got up early enough for breakfast, and after breakfast checked out of the hostel and hopped on a tram to the Red Cross museum (all public transportation is either buses or trams that run throughout the city...way cooler than the metro - our hostel also gave us a free public transportation pass, which no one ever checked). The Red Cross museum was definitely the best museum we visisted. It basically went through the history of armed conflict and natural disasters since the founding of the Red Cross in 1857, and the museum was well-organized and very informative. I learned that the organization is actually known as the Red Cross or the Red Crescent, because Muslims were opposed to the symbol of the relief organization being a cross. The museum had a special program where students were the museum guides, which was neat and it was cute when they talked, as many of them were clearly nervous but excited to be doing this and excited whenever we had a question to ask them.
Following the museum we headed to the train station, where we used up the rest of our Swiss francs on lunch and a bit more chocolate, then boarded the train for Paris, where we returned to sunshine and blue skies, sans wind, very nice.
Overall a successful weekend. I didn't fall in love with Geneva, but I'm glad I went. I'll probably never go back, but it was definitely high on my list of cities to visit, so I'm excited I did. I really enjoyed Switzerland though, and would love to return to another one of the cities of the land of cheese and chocolate (and watches and banks).
No comments:
Post a Comment