Geneva, Switzerland!

I am proud to report that last night I arrived home to Paris, safe and completely exhausted, from my first little weekend/European travel adventure! As you read in a blog I wrote about a month ago, my friend Olivia and I had made plans to go to Belgium, but due to the closing of the French boarders from the attacks on Paris, we were unable to go on our trip. Ever since then I had been itching to get out of France and explore other places in Europe, and this weekend I had the opportunity to do just that! Shortly after the trip to Belgium was cancelled, my friend Jess and booked some really cheap plane and hostel tickets for a weekend get-a-way in Geneva, and that weekend ended up being a total success! 

The adventure began for me at about 8:20am on Saturday morning, when I left my house to meet Jess at the Saint-Lazare train station. I had packed warmly but lightly and brought with me only a backpack with a change of socks and underwear, toiletries, my passport, a journal, some snacks, and some money. I had woken up not feeling sleepy at all, and it felt as though the only thing that wasn’t perfect about the morning was that I was starting to loose my voice a little and my throat hurt. I had been battling a cold the entire week before but nothing was going to stop me from finding my way to Switzerland hahah. Jess and I met up on the train platform and then proceeded to take two trains to arrive at the airport. I was bubbling with excitement and she was nervous that something would go wrong, which was hilarious for me because usually worrying is my job. I explained to her that I wasn’t sure that everything would go well, but I wasn’t going to let the possibility of something going wrong take away my giddiness, and she agreed that that was a good idea, so we ran through the airport like two very happy children, assuming everything would be amazing and beautiful and getting a lot of weird looks hahaha. When we went to print out our tickets, we all of a sudden got very quiet. The trip seemed so perdect that it almost felt too good to be true. The computer, however, quickly located our tickets and printed them out for us! We started jumping up and down because havign tickets made our trip extra official hahah. We were so stoked that we took pictures with them. 

Going through security only took about 10 minutes, and since everything had gone by so smoothly, we ended up with about an hour to kill before getting on the plane. We spent that hour sort of wiggling in our seats and talking about how happy we were to go. When we got on the plane, we realized that we were not seated together, but since it was our luckiest day ever, Jess ended up with nobody beside her so they let me go sit with her in a WINDOW SEAT! The plane took off at 11:15am, and once it was in the sky, Jess and I got out our packed lunches and munched away on baguette sandwiches. The flight attendents brought us coffee and juice and cookies, which went nicely after our lunches, but before we even finished eating the captain announced that we were beginning our decent into Geneva! It worked out so perfectly hahah we just ate lunch in the sky and then landed in Geneva. When we got off the plane, we spotted a machine that was giving out free train rides from the airport to Geneva, so we took one each and then headed off to find the train. We kept second guessing ourselves, so what should have been a 7 minutes walk to the train turned into about 40 minutes of walking in circles. But we weren’t irritated about this, because whenever something began to feel stressful, we remembered that we had no plans and that this weekend was for exploring and there was no way to mess it up. And yeah, maybe we were lost between the airport and train station, but we were lost in SWITZERLAND, and that itself was something to be happy about. 

Eventually we found the train, and we only had to ride it for about 10 minutes before arriving near the center of the city. We got off the train, and with nothing else planned, we began to walk towards where we thought the lake would be. As we walked, we commented on how different it was from Paris. The buildings were more colorful and the streets were a lot bigger and even a little cleaner. Before long, we arrived at the lake, and it was BEAUTIFUL. The city just sort of opened up around it and there was so much room! There was room for lots of sunshine and amazingly fresh air and you could see the snow-topped mountains curving around the city. There were lots of people out and about, walking or biking or boating around. 

We crossed a big bridge and then ended up finding a map. The map showed an area called what in English would be like “Old Town Geneva”, and that sounded cool so we headed over there. When we got closer to the Old Town, the streets became smaller and the buildings really did seem older. The streets were all cobblestone and the curved up hills. We noticed that a lot of other people were heading uphill to the center of Old Town, so we decided to follow them. As we wandered, we noticed that some of them were wearing funny little white bonnets and some kids were dressed up in strange costumes. Up ahead we could see crowds of people watching some sort of demonstration, and when we pushed through to see what was happening we discovered a bunch of men wearing military-looking uniforms doing some sort of march with spears. Around us were all sorts of booths set up where people wearing traditional Swiss clothing were selling vin chaud (hot wine) and chocolate and sausages. After watching for awhile( and having no clue what we were seeing) Jess and I decided to walk down some smaller streets and just explore Old Town some more. The thing was, we couldn’t go five minutes without running into different grouple of people dressed in the Swiss clothing, or children running aorud in strange costumes with pieces of paper, looking alert and excited. We weren’t bothered by this at all, but we began to realize that some sort of important festival was going on and we wanted to know more. Up another hill, we heard musket shots and people cheering, and we ran up the hill to see what was going on up there. Up there, there were more people dressed up, but they also had cannons and muskets and they were announcing something in French that we couldn’t quite pick up with all the other noise. At some point around then, we found a pamphlet that was written in both French and English, and we learned that they were doing an annual festival that celebrates a night, a long long time ago, when Geneva was invaded in the middle of the night and was nearly taken over, but all the townspeople woke up and were able to succesfully take back Geneva! Jess and I felt pretty lucky to be there on such an interesting day and it was fantastic that we got to witness so much of their history on our short trip! We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the festival, drinking vin chaud (which tastes like yummy apple cider but smells kinda gross), and taking lots of pictures! 

When the sun began to set, we walked along the lake and out to a little lighthouse. There were groups of people all around us, sitting on rocks or benches and waiting for the sun to set. There were birds flying all around and the lake was so still and peaceful. We decided to stay there until the sunset because the pictures were gorgeous and we couldn’t think of anywhere prettier to be. When it grew dark, we decided to find our hostel before dinner just in case finding it ended up being difficult. We had some trouble, but after about 45 minutes of wandering around we were able to find it, and it was very nice! Geneva is a LOT colder than Paris, so it was nice to arrive at the warm hostel and sit down for a bit before heading off into the cold to find dinner. In our room, we met a girl named Lael and invited her to get dinner with us. She said she would be delighted to, and had even heard of a cute fondue place we could go to. Lael was pretty cool! She comes from upstate New York and is just finishing a semester abroad in Madrid. She came to Geneva for the same reason we did; because why not hahah. The three of us bundled up and headed out to find the cute fondue place, but when we got there it turned out to be suuuuper expensive, so we found a somewhat cheaper Italian pizza place to eat. I liked it there because it was so warm inside and the pizza was yummy! We sat around and ate pizza and talked for quite awhile, just getting to know each other. I, however, did not do as much talking as usual because my voice had pretty much completely dissapeared by then and talking took so much painful energy that most of the time my comments just weren’t worth the effort hahah. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and sat on our beds talking and laughing. We met the other girls in our room; a grumpy Canadian skier girl and two super sweet girls from Colorado. I told them about Cherish and they said a lot of their friends go to Boulder like she does. I would have investigated more but I felt creepy because my voice was weird so I just sat on Jess’s bed with her and smiled a lot. Some of the girls wanted to go out to a bar and explore the night life of Geneva, but we decided to stay in because it was freezing, expensive, and well, I personally was still kind of sick and thought I should rest. We were in bed falling asleep by 11:30pm with our alarms set for the next morning so we could wake up early for the complimentary breakfast that ended at 9:00am. 

The next morning, we woke up and stumbed sleepily downstairs for our breakfast. The hostel served yogurt and cereal and toast and coffee and juice and it was yummy! After breakfast, we went upstairs and packed up to leave the hostel and see more of the city. Lael decided to stick with us for the day, and she even had some ideas of things we could do! She wanted to go see CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and an Italian market that was just a tram ride away! The hostel gave us cards that made all transportation free, which was awesome, and we set off to find our way to these places. The tram system in Geneva was completely foreign to us, but it didn’t take that long to figure out! We got to the CERN dome thing, but it was completely closed off hahaha. Soooo we took pictures with it and then jumped on another tram to get to the Italian Market. The Italian market was really cool! There were lots of homemade soaps and treats and chocolates and wool things! We walked around taking pictures. Oh, I forgot to mention, that morning my voice didn’t come back AT ALL, so I was doing a lot of listening hahah. After some time, we got hungry, so we headed off to….MCDONALDS. I know, and I am sorry. But Geneva is sooooo expensive! It is ridiculous. Even McDonald’s was pretty pricey, but it was the best we could do. It was actually pretty funny because we sat there, eating our burgers, and saying how much we missed “cheap ol’ Paris!” I always thought Paris was expensive, but being in Geneva made Parisian prices seem very reasonable hahahah. 

After lunch, we decided to head back up to Old Town because we needed to try the Swiss homemade hot chocolate. We accidently walked all the way around where we were trying to get to before realizing that it had been pretty close the entire time, but luckily we got there in time to get some hot chocolate to go. We were trying to move quickly because while Jess and my flight didn’t depart until 8:30pm, Lael’s was scheduled to leave at 5:55pm so she would have to leave the city long before Jess and I. We took our hot chocolate down to the lake so get some pictures of the famous “jet d’eau”, which is this 140 meter high water fountian that just sort of shoots up lake water all day long and is really impressive and nice looking. After wandering by the lake for a bit, we ended up back over near the little lighthouse where we sat down on a dock and talked until it was time for Lael to head back to the train station. She promised to send us all the pictures she had taken on her fancy camera, and like that we said goodbye. After Lael left, Jess and I didn’t feel like moving. We still had a couple hours to kill, so we decided to stay at our cute little dock spot and watch the sun set there again. As we sat and talked, ducks and swans swam by us, and even some crazy humans too! We talked about how lucky we were to have been able to see Geneva and how excited we were to take little weekend trips in the future. As the sun sank lower and lower, we got colder and colder, and as the last bit of sun slipped away we decided to head back to the train station a little early because at least it was warm there hahah. We took our train back to the airport, where security took forever because France is still being very careful with security things, and then we sat down at our gate and ate pretzels and listened to music and closed our eyes. Our flight ended up being delayed by about 45min, so we stayed like that for awhile. My throat was killing me by then and I was pretty sleepy. The night before my throat had kept me awake for a lot of the night, but it was weird because I was so warm and comfortable that I felt like I rested well even if I didn’t sleep much. Still, now that the most exciting parts of our adventure had passed, I was ready to get home and curl up in bed and sleeep for a long time. Jess felt the same way. We got to sit on the plane together again, but we got the weirdest seats because we were on a huge plane and the emergency exits were pretty intense and we ended up sitting right next to one of them which meant we didn’t get little tables or places to put our bags hahah. I woke up a little because I felt like I had to stay alert if I was to be in charge of such an intense looking emergency exit. My mom had told me her flight to Geneva from Paris had been super bumpy and I wanted everyone to be safe so I stayed alert. The flight ended up being a lot longer than the first one because we had to do a bunch of circles in the sky because there was no room for us. After we got of the plane, my night was a blur of rushing through the metro and train stations until I collapsed into my big warm bed and slept for hours. 

 

 

Actually, when I got home, I discovered that a package had arrived for me from my Dad’s family! My birthday presen! I got an Amazon Kindle and a beautiful little card from Stella which is now haging in my room. 

This trip was a fantastic introduction to my traveling possibilites in Europe, and now I just can’t wait to book more trips!! I save all the au pair money I make to be able to do things like this, and I have so many people to visit and I am just so excited about how easy it is! 

I hope you liked my little blogblog. :)