Thursday Travels - Geneva

Ah, Geneva. The land of cheese, a terrible exchange rate, exorbitant prices and Sunday closings. I like me some cheese, and even more so some fondue. But I don't like me an 8 USD hot chocolate. Or a $60 lunch consisting of 2 pizzas and 2 diet cokes.

Geneva was our second trip, we went in November of 2009. The weather wasn't great, we had a bit of rain and cooler temps, but at least it was a mellow trip. We just wandered, and ate (of course) and also took the train around the lake to Montreux (the scene of the overpriced pizza). The scenery was gorgeous, as the leaves and grapevines around the lake had turned color. And it's hard not to be impressed by the big ole mountains in the area.  

Some Geneva pictures:

Oh, those Swiss with their Swiss flags and Swiss Army Knives. Everywhere.

My kind of train. Why can't every train be a "Train du Chocolat?" How much fun would it be to commute on a gold chocolate themed train? Fattening too!

Now that is one butt ugly building. How on earth did that thing get approved? And it's so tall. And skinny. And did I mention ugly?

You know Dave and I did the 7 hour Chatel-St. Denis walk. And you know us even better if you said, "no way in hell did you do the 7 hour Chatel-St. Denis walk." 

That's it for the Geneva pictures. On to:

The Deets - 

We stayed at the Hotel Kipling. It was fine, I would recommend it, the room was perfectly nice and it was a decent price for such an expensive city. Easy location, walkable, close to the train station which was convenient as we took the train to/from the airport. When I researched Geneva hotels I remember reading that the hotel was close to the "red light district." I don't know about you, but Geneva's red light district is not high up on my list of "Areas to Avoid, Europe." Seriously, would you consider Geneva's red light district to be a hotbed of depravity and immorality? I don't and we never noticed any unsavory characters or behavior while we were there. Maybe we weren't the target audience though. Too bad. 

We ate at Cafe du Soleil where we got our fondue on. I know, me and my cheese. It was pretty good and I would definitely go back, but again, I love cheese. I probably wouldn't recommend the pizza place in Montreux, which is good as I don't remember the name, but mainly because of the prices. The horror! 

Et voila! The end of our Geneva adventure. Oh, one last detail. We flew Air Baboo, which was AWESOME. They give you snacks, like soup and mini tiramisu. BUT, and it's a big but for me, it was a prop plane, something I didn't tell my mom about until we got back to London. I HATE prop planes. I refuse to fly on them unless absolutely necessary, and since we HAD to go to Geneva then I had to fly on a prop. I brought my big ole Bose headphones to drown out the noise, but it was a newer prop plane and surprisingly quiet. So Dave's hand was spared from my squeezing, and the other passengers' ears were spared from my screaming. Lucky them!