Who decides to take a weekend trip to one of the most expensive countries in the world???
We do!
We being Mary Catherine, Erin, and me.
And we went to Geneva, Switzerland for three days and had just a splendid time and there were lots of girlie moments and giggles and gluten-free candy for everyone.
 |
| Posin' pretty. Gluten-free candy not pictured. |
We arrived early Friday morning and got settled into our hotel, which was actually just over the border into France in a town called Ferney-Voltaire where Voltaire lived for a while and bossed everyone in the town around. We were all starving by this time so we went set off to Geneva to find food and see the city.
 |
| The water is so blue because Swiss women throw their sapphires into the water when they become last season. |
Let me just emphasis again: Geneva is SO EXPENSIVE. We wandered around for a good while trying to find a restaurant that offered gluten-free dishes and/or that didn't cost 25 euros/francs/rubies for a lunch plate. We finally found a pub that had croque monsieur sandwiches and omelettes that wasn't extremely expensive.
I was seeing double at that point, and it was very yummy.
 |
| Fancy ham & cheese plus salad. I love ham. |
After lunch, we explored the town more and stumbled upon--I mean, purposefully discovered--Cathedrale de Saint-Pierre, which is a very large Reformist church that John Calvin adopted when he lived in Geneva. Geneva was where all of the Protestant leaders, including Calvin, sought refuge during the Reformation.
The church was cool on the inside, although it was markedly devoid of much decoration because the Protestants weren't big proponents of those kinds of things.
 |
| They didn't mind imposing columns. |
There was one room inside that was decorated very lavishly. I forgot what the actually story was, but I think they recently restored it to how it looked before the Protestants took over? I may be making that up, but it was a nice room.
We walked up a few thousand narrow spiral staircases to get to the towers that gave an awesome 360 degree view of Geneva.
 |
| My "the stone walls are all starting to look the same" face (à la The Yellow Wallpaper). |
 |
| Mary and Erin playing checkers in one of Geneva's many parks. They soon abandoned their game, because we remembered how boring checkers is if it isn't raining. |
For dinner, we had kebabs and fries.
 |
| Because every good European loves a good ol' kebab from an immigrant-owned restaurant. |
In our hunt for cheap food the next morning we happened upon the Saturday markets in Ferney-Voltaire. The market was very impressive; I think it took up the whole town. We had delicious strawberries, and I had an excellent slab of gingerbread that lasted me the whole day.
For our lunch we purchased a roasted chicken and potato combo for only 3 euros! We were very proud of ourselves and split two between the three of us.
(Sharing is caring; one of many lessons I've learned in Socialist France, Daddy.)
We took the bus into Geneva to find a picnic spot, but we got a little desperate and classily had our lunch in front of the United Nations. We hoped that people would not assume we were hobos and think that a) we were protesting something, b) just having lunch, or c) protesting Israeli apartheid by having our lunch.
.
 |
| Palais des Nations in the far background; Middle-ground: Giant chair with broken leg was an homage to the effort to ban land mines; well-coiffed wanderers making plates out of paper bags in the front. |
 |
| Chicken n' potatoes, sold by a jolly man who told us they were beautiful chickens for beautiful girls. |
 |
| No photo-shoot would be complete without a picture featuring a chicken carcass! |
After devouring our meal like rapid dogs, we embarked on a quest to find the Patek Philippe Watch Museum that was advertised everywhere. We mistakenly entered into the extremely fancy Patek Philippe Watch Store, but the lady gave us free tickets to the museum so it worked out well. We found the right museum and took a very long but interesting tour of the company's building and watch collection.
The tour guide informed us that Geneva is so well-known for its watchmaking because...way-back-when, Geneva was a very popular transit stop for businessmen traveling through Europe, who would often buy artisanal presents there to bring home. Thus, there was a large population of specialty craftsmen and the like. But then the Protestants came in and forbid people to wear jewelry so now the artisan class didn't know what to do with themselves. But then Calvin decided that people could wear watches since they were functional, so all these different types of tradesmen (painters, jewelers, engravers, etc.) devoted themselves to making beautiful and intricate watches instead!
And that's that.
Speaking of the Reformers....This is the Reformation Wall, in front of which we hung out for a while with some sketchy Swiss teenagers. (We saw one of them put a cigarette through her gauge hole.)
One of the well-known dishes of Swiss cuisine is fondue so, naturally, we jumped on board that bandwagon. We walked for a while looking for a place and just as we were about to give up, we found a restaurant with not-too-pricey fondue.
So. much. cheese.
I got the fondue aux bolets, which has mushrooms. It was pretty good, with a strong wine taste. It came with dried meat, bread, and tiny cocktail pickles and onions.
I could make it at home with my fondue pot though, not to be a cheese snob...
 |
| Yum. Yum. Yum. |
On Sunday, we took a train ride to nearby Lausanne, which is situated further north on Lake Geneva. It was a lovely little town, one that gave us a great view of the mountains and the lake and cute Swiss buildings. We hiked across (nearly) the entire town in an attempt to eat lunch by the lake (i.e. have our sandwiches frozen in our hands). We also visited a photography museum with a really moving exhibit of a 1960's war photographer's work.
 |
| Just the Alps behind me, no big deal. Not like I was excited to see where the von Trapp family finally escaped the clutches of the Nazis. |
On the train ride home, we made a quick stop in Morgues, a quaint lil' town, to see how the view there was (and to say we've visited three Swiss cities).
 |
| This is my best Maria von Trapp impression. It included a half-spin. |
We sang a lot of Sound of Music that weekend.
For our final meal in Geneva (my wallet was so sad), we ate a Swiss cuisine restaurant that looked just like what one would imagine a Swiss restaurant to look like. Everything was wood, there were lots of dead animals on the walls, and, overall, a very cozy atmosphere.
We got 'la raclette', which is a plate, served in individual portions, of cheese that has been melted while still on the wheel and then scraped off. So it was basically like fondue put on a plate for you, without the wine base. Also there were the crunchy edge parts that were soooo yummy.
With it, they gave us a lot of meat, tiny potatoes, pickles, onions, and bread.
 |
| For the food-lovers that find themselves too clumsy and/or impatient to fondue. |
So in summary, melted cheese.
Plus lots of fun with fun friends!
Our photo-booth picture from the photography exhibit:
(there was no screen on the inside so we had no idea what was going on).
 |
| This is way cuter than any poster for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. We know. |
No comments:
Post a Comment