We are now on the train to Bern! On the way we had a brief stop at Lausanne –
and shortly after that we went through a tunnel – when we got to the other side
of the tunnel we had reached a land of snow!
It was that quick! Very exciting!
The snow isn’t all that thick and it seems to be melting – but it was still
really exciting to see it on the ground blanketing the countryside!
We enjoyed our day in Geneva – especially the Reformation
Wall in the park of Bastions, St. Pierre’s Cathedral with its very special
Chapel of the Maccabees and its panoramic views from the North Tower, and the
stunning and amazing Jet D’Eau. The
Reformation Wall had Geneva’s four major Protestant Reformers – John Calvin,
John Knox, Farel and Beze as well as a reliefs of many of the pivotal events
surrounding the development of Protestantism in Europe – like Henry IV of
Navarre signing the Edict of Nantes, Roger Williams and quotes from the
Mayflower Compact, and Oliver Cromwell’s temporary Puritan reign of
England. I was in European History
heaven! Off to the side to the left and
the right of the wall, there was a monument to Martin Luther (the one who
catalyzed the whole Protestant Reformation with his 95 Theses) and on to Ulrich
Zwingli (who expanded on Luther’s ideas – and Calvin then expanded on
Zwingli’s). The one thing Daniel
remembers about Zwingli was that he died on a battlefield – so the picture we
took commemorates just that.
St. Pierre’s Cathedral has a few interesting layers of
history as it was originally a Catholic Cathedral that the Protestants later
commandeered. Highlights included being
able to climb to the top of the South Tower, crossing over in the Cathedral’s
attic to the North Tower and getting an amazing panoramic view of Geneva with
the impressive views of the Jet D’Eau, Lake Geneva, and Mount Blanc. On our way out we dipped into the stunning
Chapel of the Maccabees which has been restored since its Protestant
Reformation days of being a salt storage room and is a beautifully handpainted
chapel. For Christmas I was given the
ultimate addition to my camera – an ultra wide angle lens and a telephoto lens
and St. Pierre’s gave us the full opportunity to put both to work as we started
to realize the true potential of both lenses!
:-)
The Jet D’Eau is just impressive – it shoots upwards into
the air almost 500 feet, at a rate of 125 mph and propels over 500 gallons of
water per minute. It really is
amazing! From the North Tower we found
it impressive – and as we walked the shores of the lake at ground level we
actually sat on a bench and watched rainbows form in the mist around it…and
found it truly beautiful to watch as well.
There were two points of interest that were closed – the
Palais des Nations (the League of Nations meeting hall that now serves as the
European UN headquarters) which is closed for most of December and January due
to meetings; and the ability to visit a statue of Rousseau which is on a little
island off one of the main bridges.
Other highlights of Geneva included the passionfruit
macarons! (omgoodness!) and our lovely hotel – which had a fantastic location –
right between the train station and the lake and was a very comfy stay – we had
cashed in our hotels.com points and paid about half price for a very nice
accommodation.
One other thing I noticed as we walked around was the number
of airline offices or banks that you really wouldn’t see in the United
States. There was an Iran Air office,
Algerian Air office, Arab Bank, etc. It
reminded us of Switzerland’s overarching neutrality and its global financial
presence.
Our day was not without hitches and glitches though…we
walked the wrong way out of the train station and dragged our luggage a good .5
– 1 miles out of the way through the red light district and then had to drag
our stuff back to actually reach our hotel…which was not far from the train
station at all. Then, as we set out to
explore the town and find breakfast we discovered that at 9 am on the morning
after Christmas…Geneva is an absolute ghost town…and nothing is open. In hindsight it is not surprising, but at the
moment it was a rude surprise and made for a discouraging morning. We finally found a very small,
inconsequential breakfast after an hour of wandering, but did manage to see
quite a bit of the city in the process.
That said…dinner was of utmost importance as the late breakfast was more
or less lunch as well. We set out around
4:30…not in a hurry to find something delicious and with the recognition that
we might need to grab a drink before dinner was available at something
reasonable like…5:30. Only…we walked
miles and miles looking for a good restaurant and found that a) nothing was
open until 7 or 7:30; b) there were very few actual restaurants, mainly just
cafes that had very expensive soups and
sandwiches and c) there weren’t many of any of these at all…we walked and
walked and walked to find very very little.
We basically walked from 4:30-6 looking for food. Grabbed a drink from 6-7 and then gave up and
just ate at our hotel. The meal was the
most expensive bad meal we have ever paid for and eaten. …And by the end of the meal I had resorted to
giggling rather uncontrollably at our painfully hilariously awkwardly
frustrating situation. We gave Geneva an
F in the food department.
This morning our breakfast was included (I am a very good
hotel shopper)…breakfast at our hotel is 31 swiss francs (about 35 USD) per
person and we really pigged out given our lack of food the day before. And it was delicious. Then we threw our suitcases together and left
at 9:55…thinking between checking out, walking to the train station, buying
tickets, and getting to our platform there was no conceivable way we could make
the 10:10 train… awesome story though –
we checked out, paid our per person Swiss city tax, walked to the train
station, went to the ticket office and got a ticket to be assigned a booth,
were called up to the booth and bought our one way tickets to Bern, and left
the office and got to the top of platform 6 with sixty seconds before our train
pulled up and we hopped on! All in 15
minutes! It was crazy…and awesome!
Now to enjoy some more Swiss landscape and scenery as we
listen to people softly speaking French and German around us. :) I
love Europe.
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