Day 33: Geneva - Waterloo

(Written by Jeff:)

We finally made it home after a long day! Mary was up for nearly 22hrs and Jeff managed to stay up for 24 hours.

On the way back we had two flights. The first was a flight from Geneva to Amsterdam. We had a 1hr 40min transfer at Amsterdam before our flight to Toronto.

The flight from Geneva went well. We got to the airport really early, because we had to check out at 10:00am. However, before we were even ready to check out the cleaning staff at the hostel were all set to come in and start cleaning our room at 9:45, we were still in it! Jeff had to say in broken French that it was not 10am. Eventually, they reluctantly left us alone. We checked out a few minutes later.

We caught a bus to the train station. We must have looked really funny. Both of us had a pack on our front and back. Furthermore, both of us were carrying an additional bag in our arms. Once we were at the train station we caught one of the frequent trains to the airport. Here's Jeff next to our bags:

The check in area of the airport was tiny and it was easy to find our check-in area. Once we had our bags tied down for shipping we checked-in. After check-in we finished up the quark and headed through security.

On the other side of security, Mary submitted her tax refund papers for the cuckoo-clock. By now it was close noon, and we had another 2 hours to wait before our flight. To pass the time we did what any one would do: we fought (Mary note: I don't remember this...), made up, played a game, and ate some really old carrots.

When our gate was finally announced we got ready to board the plane, but waited until near the end of the process to get in line. Boarding was quick and easy. The plane was a small jet that had 4 seats to a row, with an aisle in between.

As previously stated, the flight went well. There was some turbulence as we gained in altitude, but it was not that bad. Once the plane had stabilized, we were given some Dutch cookies,cheese snack crackers, and some juice (we could have even had beer or wine). We were on our way to Amsterdam.

Based on Jeff's memory of the Netherlands, we also saw parts of Rotterdam. As we landed Jeff commented on how flat the land was. We had a smooth landing and then we headed towards our "terminal". It was actually a tarmac with planes parked in plane sized parking spots. We had to take a short bus ride into the main airport.

Once in the main airport we had a bit of walking to do. We had to go through customs, we even got a stamp in our passport! As we walked towards our next departure gate it seemed as though we were already through security. However, once we got to our gate we realized that we had to go through security. The security in this particular airport is composed of an x-ray machine and body scanner. Mary was not very excited to go through the scanner. Regardless, we did go through and had no problems. Jeff had a quick pat down of his shorts. He still does not know why, because the simplified image they showed of him did not have any indication of any items in his pockets. Mary also did not have any problems going through. However, they did ask to see one of the items in her bag. We don't think they know what a large mechanical clock looked like...

We boarded the plane and then had to wait an extra 30 minutes (maybe?) before the plane was ready to go. Boarding and loading cargo took a long time. We both agree that the security system is not efficient. When we were over Scotland, Jeff took this picture:

Once we were in the air almost everything became a blur for Jeff, he took advantage of the free drinks (just kidding here, he just does not want to bother remarking on details).

However, he does remember some things. He remembers being served a very good dinner, followed by an ice cream.

(Mary note: We had a hot meal with [green chicken curry or pasta] and salad and a bun, a snack of almonds, ice cream, and then a [date cake or pizza stick]. The food wasn't awesome, but better than most plane food! I would say we were fed pretty well!)

He also remembers watching a funny movie called "Hall" Pass(?). Mary can fill in the details. (Mary note: 2 married couples, females give the guys a week off marriage, so they try to go out and pick up other girls but can't, meanwhile the wives are tempted by other men, then they all realize that they don't need other people only each other. The best part of this is that it was clearly chick flicky, but Mary and Jeff independently decided to watch it, so now Mary doesn't feel so bad making Jeff watch other chick flicks :p)

The best part of the entire trip was seeing the southern tip of Greenland and parts of Scotland. Seeing Greenland was amazing. We may have missed it if it was not for our seating row companion. He had done the trip several times and was hoping for a clear day. Here is an image looking ~north to Greenland:

At this point we were roughly half way through our trip, Jeff and Mary both tried to sleep, but could not. A long three hours elapsed before we were touching down in Toronto. Unfortunately, there was a 20 minute delay getting of of the airplane. Jeff overhead something about "needing to take some cargo out first". When we finally got off, we headed towards a washroom and then to customs. However, prior to customs there were four boarder security people checking passports. We think they were making sure that people that needed to go through immigration went through immigration. This suspicion was confirmed when Jeff's passport was glanced at. The security person saw that it was a Canadian passport and then had a short look at the picture. (Mary note: The lady was talking to someone that was clearly confused, so Mary flashed her passport and began to pass the lady, and she got all upset and said "Mam please don't pass me". Then she actually looked and said "ok, go ahead". Weird.)

We arrived at customs and the entire process went well. The customs agents did not even ask Jeff what type of goods he brought back. We had several things in our favor: we had carefully kept track of our purchases, not brought any meat/cheese/seeds with us, and are Canadian citizens.

Next, we headed to our luggage area and waited. We waited, and then waited, and waited some more. All said, we waited ~2hrs for our luggage to arrive. During the wait Mary's parents were waiting outside. Fortunately, Jeff found out what was keeping the luggage and Mary was able to pass on the information to her parents (using her cell phone that she conveniently put in her purse rather than checked luggage). Apparently, a cargo door that had difficulty closing in Amsterdam would not open in Toronto. We left the airport once we had stopped for a washroom break. (They say "Last washroom before exit" a couple hundred meters before customs, and they mean it. There were none in the baggage area.)

The drive to Waterloo went well. Both Jeff and Mary were very tired and went to sleep as soon as they could.

The trip is over, and now Jeff and Mary need to give gifts to people, divide up 2kg of chocolate, and finish sorting through all the pictures. Mary hopes to submit several to hang in the halls of her new workplace.


(Mary note: It's nice to be home. There aren't mountains on the horizon, and the cows don't have bells, but it's nice to be somewhere where people speak English. It might take a few days to get used to everything again though. All the cars seem massive, and the transport trucks on the highway looked very out of place. The buildings are also very different looking, and the grocery stores are open past 6:30pm! Also a bit weird to not have to subtract 6 hours from the current time to find out what time it is for everyone else.)

Day 32: Geneva

Today we woke up at 8am and had a leisurely breakfast. We finished up and got ready to go out for our day’s activities by 9:30am.

The primary activity was visiting the natural history museum here in Geneva. We took bus #1 almost all the way to the end of the route. When we arrived the museum was open and there were many children around. Fortunately, the entire museum was composed of 4 floors. There was lots of room for everyone. We visited the following sections: volcanoes & geology, local fauna, and exotic fauna. We both decided to skip the section on Swiss geology; we had previously visited a museum with a similar exhibit.

Within the exotic fauna section we noticed some very amusing displays with North American species. For example, the common loon was group with many other species of the same genus. The interesting thing was that they were all posed standing like penguins and the background of the display looked as though the loons were in an Arctic environment.

One other aspect that we found amusing was the names they had for North American species. An example is the Grizzly Bear. Translated from French the Grizzly Bear was identified as the “Great Alaskan Bear”. (Mary note: Also, the robin from Canada was called the American Merle, which is probably true, just not the common name).

In the geology section we saw many rocks and fossils. One of the things we saw was a section of fossilized tree trunk. Here is an image:

From here we explored the local fauna. It was not amazing; they did have some strange animals that we had never seen before.

[Mary note: We also visited an exhibit about the evolution of humans, and saw a partial skeleton of Lucy (an early upright walker). They were playing the first 13-note phrase from the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (which was what the skeleton was named after), and Mary promptly got the song stuck in her head for the rest of the day. (Fun fact – this is called an ear wart).]

On our way out, we both examined live animal displays in the main entrance. There were two with snakes and another with a turtle. The enclosures did not look very comfortable. The turtle did not appear to have any water or gravel; we suspect they were in the process of cleaning it.

The most interesting element of these enclosures was the turtle. It had two heads! YES, TWO. Unfortunately, you will need to trust us, no pictures. Jeff did not think to take a picture of the turtle when it was facing him. Sorry.

After our museum visit we took an eight minute bus ride to a flea market. There was not much to see. Most people were packing up because it was very windy, had been raining, and no one was out to buy. We walked around and glanced at what people were selling. There was a lot of junk, some interesting furniture, old books, and games.

Our tour of the junk sale did not take very long, so we decided to do our lunch groceries and then head to another area to finish up gift shopping. Mary needed to buy two more items. After going to 4 different stores we finally found the store that was selling the gift she wanted to buy.

We headed back to the hostel, and ate a late lunch. Lunch was composed of carrots, apples, bread, and some quark. The quark was interesting. We are sure we even ate some strange, charm, up, down, top, and bottom quarks. (Mary note: haha, joke for the physicists out there).

We spent the rest of the afternoon starting to pack. Jeff packed his wine into the centre of the bag and stuffed it into four socks. Hopefully the bottle will not break.

We were all done by 6pm and ready for dinner. We ate pizza and a bagged salad. The pizza was very interesting. It was called “Bibap Baloooolia”. The toppings included tomato sauce, cream cheese, mozzarella, bacon, sesame seeds, oregano, and Canadian Maple syrup. Jeff told the shop owner that if he was in Geneva again (unlikely), that he would bring some good dark maple syrup. Overall the pizza was good. It could have had a slightly thicker crust in the centre. In addition, the maple syrup was not very prominent; you could only taste hints of it. Finally, here is the image of the dinner before eating:

And the aftermath of being devoured:

To end the evening we headed out again to finish off the majority of our francs. We each bought a bowl of very tasty ice cream. Mary decided to get chocolate and hazelnut flavours. Jeff decided to get coffee and stracciatella. Jeff did all of the ordering. He thinks that the server thought he was good looking. Just look at how much more ice cream he got: (Mary note: Good thing we're leaving tomorrow!)

Tomorrow we check into the airport and catch our plane for 2:10pm. The plane heads to Amsterdam. We then get another plane at 5:30pm to Toronto. We arrive in Toronto at 7:30pm. Jeff is very impressed with the speed of the plane. A two hour flight, WOW. (Mary note: haha, very funny. Too bad the entire trip is actually about 11 hours. Don’t expect a blog update tomorrow; we’ll be too exhausted once we get home).

Day 31: Geneva – Lausanne

I’m pretty exhausted, so I’ll try to brief, but I doubt I’ll actually be successful.

Today felt extremely long. We began at 7:30 when we woke up and did morning stuff including eating breakfast and looking up directions to where we planned on going today. By 9 o’clock, we were out the door and headed towards the no. 1 bus stop.

We took the train to a large open area in Geneva called Plaine de Plainpalais. We had thought that this area would be green space, but instead it was pretty much a massive gravel lot. Think Queens Park, but with gravel instead of grass and trees. Anyway, the reason we had gone there was to visit the local market. As per usual, we were pretty disappointed with its size. We did manage to purchase some strawberries for our lunch though.

From the plain, we took a tram back to the train station, and then caught a train to Lausanne. We had passed through this town when we took the train from Vevey to Geneva, but didn’t get off to check it out. The town has been called the San Francisco of Switzerland, because of all the hills. We were headed towards the main cathedral in the centre of the old town, and had to go up a massive hill in order to get there. We stopped for a carrot on the way.

On our way up the hill, we stumbled across a printing press exhibit, and went inside. All the information was in French, but we managed to watch someone use an old style printing press. He was explaining the process in French to a couple of old ladies, and told us that another man could do the explanation in English for us. So we waited until he was finished, and then the man that supposedly had better English came over. Turned out his English was terrible, so we spoke a mix of English, French, and German to him, and eventually got a little pamphlet in English, and a souvenir of the printing that they do. Jeff was pretty impressed at Mary’s German skills, and that she could actually make simple conversation.

(We thought we took a picture, but apparently not...)

When we had left, and made it to the top of the hill, we went into the Notre-Dame Cathedral. It was very clearly reformed, and had very little decoration other than the impressive stained glass windows. We spent a few minutes walking around and checking them out. The cathedral from afar:

When we had made our way to the front of the church, we turned around, as usual, to check out the organ. This organ was very large, but simple and without any decoration. We only wish we could have heard it play!

We exited the cathedral to a little courtyard overlooking the city and ate our strawberries. It was starting to drizzle, so we took refuge on a bench under a tree. We could see the roofs of a sea of old buildings from where we ate. Strawberries:

Our view:

After eating, we went into the Historic Museum of Lausanne, where we learned a lot about the history of Lausanne. Perhaps a bit more than we ever wanted to know. After going through the museum, we had accumulated 15 sheets of paper with information written on front and back in ~12pt font. Needless to say, we didn’t read it all, and rather skimmed it for what was important.

The part Mary found most exciting was the “Music Room”, which contained a forte-piano and a harpsichord. Some music:

Harpsichord:

When we had finished with the museum, we made our way back down the hill to the train station, stopping at a wine store on the way. We also made a quick detour to see the only surviving part of the old wall that used to surround the city:

On the way, Bear got his picture taken in front of another church:

As we were crossing the street into the train station, 2 people began handing out what looked to be little containers of yogurt to people, so we stopped and grabbed one each. They turned out to be little strawberry milk beverages that they called a milkshake. They weren’t amazing, but they were free, so we enjoyed them on the train.

When we got back to the Geneva train station, it was raining pretty hard, so we decided to take a bus back to the hostel. We got off in front of a coop in order to buy our salad for dinner, and just as the bus was pulling away, Mary realized she had left her hat on the seat!!! She took off down the street, chasing the bus to the next stop. It stopped briefly and then began moving again, and she thought she had missed it, so she ran next to it waving wildly and looking like a complete fool (or at least, that’s what Jeff says). It was only moving up to its proper bus stopping place, so it stopped again, and Mary jumped on and raced to the back to find her hat. After going a little too far, she thought she had the wrong bus, but eventually found it in the middle of the bus just as the doors began to close, so she quickly slipped off with her hat in hand. She was feeling pretty wiped at this point – she had chased a bus from one stop to the next!! So Jeff sent her straight back to the hostel, and he went to the coop to get the salad.

It was around 4:20 by this point, so we spent some time researching our supper. The plan was to eat the salad and then get Chocolate Fondue. Turns out that chocolate fondue isn’t very popular in Switzerland, even though the average Swiss person eats an entire 100g chocolate bar every day. We eventually found 2 possibilities, but had no idea how much it would cost. So, around 5 o’clock, we headed to the “picnic” area of the cafeteria in the hostel and ate our salad, and then headed out to look into our fondue.

The first potential fondue location was very ritzy and expensive, so we walked into the old town of Geneva to check out the second location. After a long conversation with the lady at the second location, we determined that the chocolate fondue would be 25fr per person, which was a little more than we were planning on spending. So, we left and decided that we’d just have to make it ourselves back home.

We wandered the streets in the direction of our hostel, checking menus on the way. When we had nearly run out of options, and simply couldn’t find any restaurant that had an appetizer that looked appealing, we finally decided to just go to a kebab place and get some cheap food. Mary ordered a falafel and Jeff ordered a Kebab. We’re not entirely sure Jeff got what he ordered, but he says it was still tasty.

While we were in the store, an older lady called Jeff over and asked about his Tilly hat. Well let me tell you, she just made his day. He got really excited and started telling her all about it and pulled out the little brag tags that come with the hat, and gave her one. Turns out she’s from the US, but lives in Geneva. She really admired the hat and said it looked like a good sturdy hat. She also told us that living in a snowy place makes people have good values, so we must be good people. A little later, she called Mary over and said “You look like people that like good quality. What do you suggest for shoes? My feet are killing me!”. Mary told her that both she and Jeff typically wear New Balance shoes because they’re pretty much the only thing that fit us. She seemed satisfied with the answer.

She then started asking us about our trip, how long we’d been here, and what sort of thing we’d done. She asked how we enjoyed it, and we said that we’d quite enjoyed Switzerland, and it was a lovely country. So then, she asked how we felt about Geneva, and we answered saying that it was very busy. She responded, basically saying that she really didn’t like Geneva much at all, even though she’d lived here for a long time, and that she was thinking of moving back to New York, where she’s from. We asked whether she had any suggestions of things we could do tomorrow, and she made a few but said that there really wasn’t anything great about Geneva. Eventually, we went on our way.

We got back to the hostel and ate our food, then headed up to our room. We need to figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow, as it will be our last day in Switzerland, and we don’t really have anything planned. 

Day 30: Geneva – Cern

This morning, we woke up at 7.30 and went down to breakfast. The breakfast at this hostel goes 6.30-9, so we’ve been finding that we need to get up a little earlier then needed at past hostels. We took our own muesli down this morning so we could have it with the yogurt provided by the hostel. We’ve noticed a number of people taking 6 or more pieces of bread and packing it away to take for lunch. This is, of course, extremely discouraged, and bread only costs 1fr from the coop, so we don’t do that (though we have been known to take a butter packet or two in the past to use for cooking later on).

After breakfast, we prepared for our day, and headed out to hit the grocery store before catching the tram to Cern. We decided to have a fruit + veggie lunch, since we’d had a lot of bread with our breakfast and fondue last night.

We caught the number 18 tram to Cern. The trams around here are very fancy – they run very smoothly and quietly, and have screens inside saying what the next few stops are. We have noticed during our trip in Switzerland that most of the trams have clear markings saying that they were made by Bombardier.

When we finally arrived in Cern, we were a bit confused about where to go. There were a number of buildings around, and a building that looked touristy, but a big gate prevented us from going near it. After a bunch of confused walking around, the gates opened, so we went inside.

Back when we planned our trip to Switzerland, we had planned on getting a tour of the LHC at Cern. The website said we needed to book in advance, and that they needed 5 days to process the request, so we made note of it. Approximately two weeks ago, when we were already in Switzerland, we decided that we might as well book our tour, so we filled our the individual request form. We received an email back indicating that they were fully booked until June 21st. We were obviously pretty upset about that we would clearly not be getting the tour we had anticipated so much. Upon further investigation, we found that all the tour does for you is allow you a chance to see the Atlas control room; you don’t actually get to see a whole lot unless you are with a large tour group. So we went to Cern and saw the exhibits, and decided to be happy that we at least got to see something.

During our visit, we saw 2 exhibits – the Universe of Particles exhibit, and the Microcosm exhibit. (They were in two different buildings, and after finishing up in the first one, we asked a “guide” about where to find the second one). The exhibits were perhaps not as exciting as a tour, but they were still enjoyable. The first one, the Universe of Particles, was pretty high tech, with many touch screens and a media show that projected images over the entire room. Here, we learned about the physics behind the LHC, and what each of the experiment centers aims to learn. This exhibit was located inside a dome-like building.

The Microcosm exhibit was much less high tech, and clearly much older, as many of the electronics didn’t seem to work anymore. We learned a bit about the history of the LHC, how it came into being, a bit about all the components that are used, and saw a lifesize portion of it. A few pictures:

When we had finished up with the exhibit, it was almost noon and we were feeling pretty hungry. We got on the tram to head back and had a couple carrots while we travelled. Mary did not find this particular tram trip very present, and felt extremely motion-sick by the end, so after getting off the tram, we found a bench in a pedestrian area, and sat down until Mary wasn’t feeling quite as bad. We then made our way to the English Garden on the other side of the river to have our lunch.

Lunch today was 500g of Strawberries split between us, and the last few pieces of bread left from yesterday. We also had the carrots earlier, and apples for later (which we never ended up eating – we’ll have them tomorrow). When we were finished, we went to the coop to begin our souvenir shopping.

In the coop, we purchased 2kg of chocolate for 15.70fr. This will all be travelling back to Canada with us, and I’m sure it will be shared when we get home :). We spent another hour or so visiting various tourist shops, without much success. We both want to bring home a few things, but we’re terrible at decided what to bring, and at sucking it up and paying the outrages prices for things. We ended up walking back to the hostel empty handed. We were also partially worried about the chocolate melting as it was extremely hot today (high of 29 degrees), and we desperately wanted to get out of the heat. We were back at the hostel for an hour or so, during which Jeff read a book, and Mary played some solitaire on the computer (she’s finished both the books she brought). Once we had cooled off and planned out a few places to try, we headed out to attempt some better shopping skills.

Jeff failed at purchasing anything again, but Mary managed to get a coffee table book, with lots of pretty pictures of Switzerland, and a bit of writing that explains some of the pictures and traditions. She’s looking forward to browsing the book when we’re back home and remembering our trip.

Around 5pm, we decided to start figuring out dinner. We had already looked at the meal the hostel was going to serve, and since it largely involved mushrooms (which Mary will NOT eat), we decided to do a pizza+salad meal again. We went to the coop and got a bagged salad, bottle of wine, and salad dressing, and then headed to a nearby pizzeria (with excellent reviews) to get ourselves a pizza. They informed us that they didn’t make pizza until 6pm, so we walked back to the hostel and wasted some time.

At 6pm, we headed out and ordered our pizza with Tomato, Mozzarella, Eggplant, Zucchini, and oregano. They made it while we waited, and it looked amazing – covered in lots of toppings. We tried to talk to the people making the pizza’s while we waited, but language difficulties were a bit of a problem. They had a pizza advertised that had Tomato, Mozzarella, Cream Cheese, Bacon, Sesame, and Maple Syrup. We had never seen anything like it before, and had many questions about it. Unfortunately we didn’t get many answers, but they did show us the bottle of syrup confirming that it came from Canada. We’re definitely curious about how a pizza like that would taste, so we might end up going back there sometime before we leave to give it a try.

We ate our dinner in the picnic area of the hostel. We opened the pizza box and dumped the salad on the lid. Our hostel gave us water glasses in our room, so we brought them down and used them for the wine, rather than drinking it from the bottle (which would be a terrible thing to do to a nice, but cheap, bottle of Italian wine!). We got a few funny looks from the people across the room. I’m sure everyone thinks we’re nuts for eating food the way we do :p. However, including the wine, our dinner cost about 25fr total, which we think is pretty good considering we have no kitchen.

By the time dinner was done, it was after 7, so we headed up to our room to spend the rest of the evening relaxing and writing the blog. Jeff pulled out the 85% coco chocolate that he purchased today, and we’re having that as our dessert.

It looks like the rest of our time in Switzerland will be pretty wet, as the forecast is calling for rain. We’re hoping to get to Lausanne tomorrow, where we might hit some museums and do some shopping. We aren’t quite sure what we’ll do on Wednesday yet, but we might end up doing a day trip north from here into an area that we have been unable to visit yet.

Mary tried to play some solitaire the old fashioned way (with a deck of real cards) while Jeff sorted through the pictures on the computer, but she was getting pretty frustrated when she kept losing the game. Finally, she realized that the deck appeared to be missing some cards! Upon further investigation, it turned out that the deck had no 7's or queens, and was missing a 5. Jeff claims it isn't his fault, since he just grabbed it from his "box of stuff". Good thing we haven't tried playing any complicated games till now!

Day 29: Geneva

Today we woke up early to get breakfast before 9am. Breakfast started at 6:30 and ended at 9am. As one would expect, many people were awake by 6am. Breakfast was good, as in filling. Both of us do have some complaints about the food when compared to other hostels we have stayed at.

1. There was no fruit.
2. The jam & butter were “portioned controlled”, we got 1 container of random jam and 2 containers of butter.
3. The coffee was extremely weak. Other hostels had special coffee makers that did espresso based coffee.
4. The hot water for the tea was not hot enough to effectively brew tea.
5. The musli was not very exciting.

Either way, it was filling and we had bought fruit on Saturday because we knew the grocery stores would be closed today.

After breakfast we wasted some time in our hostel room. It was still very early. Jeff read a book and Mary looked up things on the internet. By 9:20 it was time to head out and start walked towards our first destination: the Red Cross Museum.

On our way to the museum we found ourselves in front of the United Nations. We looked for the Canadian flag, but were unable to locate it. The flags are arranged in alphabetical order starting from the front of the building. We confirmed this fact by locating the USA flag. Here is a picture of the area:

The museum was well organized. However, it was somewhat uninformative and outdated. The amount of detail that was given about its founding was limited and we were hoping for more information like that. As far as we can tell it was last updated sometime 90s. The museum is definitely in need of a new exhibit. As we exited the building Jeff took a picture of the entrance, it is strange:

Our next destination was the botanical gardens. They were somewhat similar to the many other botanical gardens we have gone to. The outdoor area was much more impressive than the other gardens we have visited. However, the green houses were not as impressive as others. Still, we wandered around some and found animals. There were deer, ducks, flamingos, peacocks, and swans. Here are several random pictures.

Almost immediately, Mary picked up a seed pod from a tree and started to make “music”:

At one point we saw a bunch of ducklings:

From here we headed back to the hostel to check out what was on the menu for dinner. We found that there was “NO DINNER” at the hostel tonight. We were annoyed, the only solution was to go out for fondue at a nearby restaurant. We checked out the restaurant on the way to our next destination.

The next destination was the art history museum. The museum had Roman, Greek, and Egyptian sections. Unfortunately, much of the museum was completely in French. We had great difficulty finding any English or even German! Paintings were shown on the upper floor. The gallery had a modest selection of Impressionist paintings, and a vast quantity of paintings from the 14^th to 19^th century. We browsed most of the exhibits and spent roughly two hours there. By the time we left it was getting on to 5:20. It was time to head back towards the hostel to find some food.

We walked back to the restaurant, near the hostel. Jeff went inside and asked in perfect French (really English) when dinner was being served. The response was 7pm, we had one hour to go. After wasting an hour at the hostel we headed back and got our fondue.

Jeff managed to tell the staff that we were here for “Dinner for two”. After that the French quickly slid into English. The only French that was spoken from there on was to order food and say thank you. We ordered a traditional fondue. The meal quickly came and we spent roughly an hour eating it. We both thought it was wonderful. The fondue was many times better than our attempt.

Jeff paid for the meal and then we headed out for some ice cream. Jeff ordered a small bowl of very dark chocolate ice cream, in French! However, Jeff’s pronunciation of bowl was very much in English, it just came out that way.

We headed back to the hostel and quickly found that our massive bowl of ice cream was gone. We had barely any! Fortunately, we were able to catch the thief red handed:

Tomorrow we go to Cern. Yes CERN. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a tour o the major underground facility. We will have to live with the exhibits that do not require a supervised tour. Mary thinks it will be good anyway. Jeff still needs to sort out how we are getting there.

(Written by Jeff)

Day 28: Vevey – Geneva

We woke up at 7am this morning in order to have enough time to get our of the hostel by check out time, and do some last minute exploring of Vevey. We had most stuff packed up and had eaten by 8:30, so we headed outside to the local market that was in the public square in front of the hostel (pretty much just a big parking lot). We have to admit, we were a little disappointed with what we found. I guess we’re pretty spoiled with our St. Jacobs market back home. There were a number of food vendors, and a section that we wondered was a garage sale (mostly junk), and only a few crafts stands. Since our next hostel does not have a kitchen, we couldn’t take advantage of the food stands, which looked to be mostly from farms nearby (we think).

It took us 20-30 minutes to stroll through the market, and so we spent a few minutes sitting by the water.

We decided to head back to the hostel early and catch the 9.26 train, which we ended up being about 15 minutes early for. The train ride was about an hour, but went by pretty quickly. We both listened to music and watched the scenery go by (most of which was vineyards).

When we arrived in Geneva, we felt rather lost (or at least Mary did), and it was a challenge to orient ourselves to figure out what way we needed to go to find the hostel. It didn’t help that the map that Jeff printed off that was supposed to give us our directions was pretty much centred on the hostel with the train station nowhere in sight. Eventually, we found the hostelling international sign on a street sign, and followed it to the hostel.

Our first impressions of the hostelling staff were not great. They checked us in, but told us that there were no lockers for us to use while we were out until we could get into our room. Later, we discovered that lockers were just around the corner, though they cost 2fr to use. Instead, we left our bags behind the reception desk, but we packsafed them first. Mary did not feel comfortable leaving her clock unattended, so she put it in her backpack to travel around the city with us. Hopefully it does not mind all the travel. The salesperson indicated that it was already packed for shipping, so it should be okay.

First, we tried to find the tourist information place to get a map. It’s quite inconvenient when the info place is not at the train station, because then you have no map to find tourist information. We failed at finding it, and ended up walking all the way back to the train station to orient ourselves and look at a pubic map to figure out what street it was on. Eventually we found it and planned out our day.

Second, we headed to a park across the river to have our lunch. The park was very busy since it was right next to a dock that was loading passengers onto a boat. We noticed that once the boat was loaded, it basically went to the other side of the bridge to stop and pick up more passengers. This seemed odd since it was a big steam ship. We ate our lunch of bread, cheese, jam, and some pears. We attracted a single pidgin, but he left when we made it clear he wasn’t welcome (I much prefer the little birds, which I’ve found out are apparently sparrows rather than finches, as I have previously called them). During our walk, we noticed that they've planted spider plants in the flower beds around town. We found this pretty strange, since they're houseplants at home. They seem to go around ripping up the flower beds and replanting them fairly often though, so maybe these are just the summer plants.

Third, we walked around the park in search of the flower clock. We eventually found it next to the road and surrounded by tourists. We had to wait quite a while until people stepped back to let anyone else see it, and then there were people posing in front of it. Eventually, the area cleared and we were able to get a picture.

Fourth, we headed towards St. Pierre Cathedral. We had heard that there was some sort of museum attached to it, so that’s where we went first. It was the Archeological Site located UNDER the cathedral. We found this site very interesting! We went underground, essentially under the cathedral and surrounding area, and saw the foundations of the old roman churches and buildings, including 3 cathedrals and various buildings attached. The research done there had discovered a burial of a chiefton dating back to 1150BC. The skeleton was only partially excavated, and portions were visible. It took us quite a while to get through the entire site, and it was all extremely interesting, though a little confusing since the area had been rebuilt and changed so many times over the years, and the museum was trying to show off a portion of every stage.

The skeleton (in a prior century, someone dug a circle to exhume the skull. We have no idea whether it's still there):

The floor of a room used by a bishop to welcome guests. Contained very ornate mosaics:

A model of the church after the 3 cathedrals had been built; one for worship, one for teaching, and one for funerary activities (we think?):

The present day cathedral from the outside:

The inside of the cathedral:

Finally, we headed back to the hostel to get into our room. On our way there, we came across a Coop City, and went inside to purchase dinner. Yesterday, we cooked up the rest of our penne pasta with the intention of eating it for dinner today. We bought some Italian dressing, a tomato, and a cucumber, along with Fanta and some apples for tomorrow.

We got back to the hostel and finally got access to our room (took a couple tries since the person didn’t program our key cards properly). We got settled, and then relaxed for a while and searched for internet (which we have clearly found – some sort of free wifi for the city of Geneva). Mary might have fallen asleep for a while. Our room is very small, but pleasant. We have a corner room with a little balcony, though it is covered in bird poo. The door leading out to the balcony has not only fancy shutters that you can roll down to the ground and then change the angle of on the outside of the door, but also has blinds on the inside. I’m sure we’ll be able to have a nice dark room tonight! The room is a little strange in the sense that there are actually 4 beds, but so long as no one tries to join us, it should be okay (we booked a double room, so they probably have the bunks for the purpose of families?). We also have a personal WC, but we must walk down the hall to get to the showers. Also, the towels they gave us are really hand towels, so we’re glad we brought our own. The staff haven’t been very helpful. They were unable to give us any sort of map of the area or information about Geneva.

At around 5 o’clock, we headed down to the cafeteria to eat our dinner. We’re getting pretty good at eating salads from a bag, though I’m sure we look ridiculous. We cut up the cucumber and tomato using our Swiss army knives, and added it to the ziplock back already containing the cold pasta. We dumped in the salad dressing, sealed the bag, and shook it up. We ate from the bag using our sporks. We also had fanta, which we drank directly from the 1.5L bottle. A few people were also in the cafeteria area using their laptops, and I’m sure they thought we were ridiculous. The meal was incredibly tasty, and we wish we had more cooked pasta so we could do it again. As it is, we’re going to have to go out for dinner for the rest of our time in Geneva, since we do not have kitchen facilities.

After dinner, we went back up to our room and relaxed, which brings us to now. We’ll probably just laze around for the rest of the evening, and go to bed fairly early. We’re pretty exhausted from all the travelling and trying to figure out a new city, so we don’t feel very motivated to go out again. We will need to figure out what we will do tomorrow. It is Sunday, so most things will be closed. Hopefully we can find something. We will most likely have dinner at the hostel, and they have no excuse to not be serving it – they’re fully booked.

Day 27: Vevey – Aigle

Today was a pretty relaxing day, and we did very little. We got up at 8am and enjoyed our breakfast of yogurt and muesli. We realized that we purposely bought a large bag of muesli thinking that we would need it at our next hostel as well, but this was not true. So we’re probably going to have to end up leaving our leftover muesli at the hostel as free food. Also, we’re going to miss the Swiss yogurt when we go home. Mary has become somewhat addicted to the vanilla yogurt here (it has vanilla bean in it!!), and Jeff has been enjoying trying a new and strange flavour every day. Yesterday he had lemon, today he had plum, and tomorrow he’ll have strawberry-lime. They have many different flavours and mixes here.

We spent a large amount of time this morning debating what to do today; our last day in Vevey. The 4 things we wished to do at some point were

1. Explore Vevey – something we hadn’t had a chance to do yet
2. Visit Lausanne
3. Visit the Lavaux; the grape growing regions, and do some wine tasting
4. Go to Aigle castle where there is a Wine Museum 

Today was very rainy and cold, so we decided to first go to the museum and see how things were looking when we finished up there. We left the hostel at around 9.15 to catch our train that left at 9.34. We clearly haven’t gotten used to being so close to the train station, so we rather rushed to get there, and ended up having 10 minutes to spare. The view of Lake Geneva, later this afternoon. It was pretty stormy.

 

The train ride to Aigle took maybe 20 minutes. Mary spent the time reading her book, and Jeff looked out the window. When we arrived, we made a quick trip to the WC (very strange – no toilet seats or soap, and blue lights… supposedly to prevent people from doing drugs), and then began the walk towards the castle. The town is very tiny, and we were quickly surrounded by fields of grapes (well, at least we assume that was what was on the other side of the 8 foot tall stone walls… Actually, once we got up to the castle, we confirmed that they were fields of grapes).

When we reached the castle, it was only 10.20, and the sign indicated that they didn’t open until 11, so we sat on some chairs in an area protected from the rain at the restaurant next to the castle. It opened at 10, but was empty. A mass of tiny children walked by while we were waiting. There were 50 children, probably grade 1 or 2 aged, and only 3 teachers/supervisors. Both Jeff and I found this a little strange; we’re pretty sure the ratios are a little better in Ontario? Anyway, one of the teachers went inside the castle, and we were worried that the little children would be in the castle being noisy, but then they all turned around and left. Perhaps they thought it opened earlier? Waiting for the castle to open:

When it was about 10 to 11, we headed into the castle entrance way. The ticket area was open, so we went in and browsed the brochures. The lady at the desk told us almost immediately that the museum was ready to go, so we might as well go in early. We presented our Swiss Passes, and headed into the castle courtyard.

The journey through the castle was pretty interesting, but the rooms were much less lavishly decorated than many of the other castles we’d visited. Supposedly, the castle was actually a wine museum, but it was really a mix between castle and wine museum. Most rooms had information displaying what the room might have been used for while it was an active castle, and then had exhibits demonstrating various aspects of wine making, such as pressing the grapes (we saw 3 styles of old wine presses), planting new plants through grafting, tasting wine, how terracing has evolved and where the terraces in the area came from, the specifics of the local grapes, and how the differences in soil can change the grapes. It was pretty interesting to notice some of the differences between grapes being grown here in mountainous area, and grapes grown in Ontario where the ground is mostly flat. We learned about planting grapes in rows across the mountain rather than in rows going up the mountain, and even planting them so that they grow up a pole rather than along a wire. An old wine press:

When we had finished going through the castle, it was around 1 o’clock. It was still raining pretty hard, and we debated doing something else interesting for the rest of the day, and decided to spend the rest of the day exploring Vevey. After spending some time walking through the vineyards to get “the perfect” picture of the castle, we headed back to the train station.

In Vevey, we walked through the extremely small old town. There was not much to see other than a fountain, clock tower, and some moderately interesting stores. It didn’t take us much time to finish our walk, and we were back to the hostel by 3. Jeff took the opportunity of being back early to do some bookkeeping of our expenses, and Mary began packing her stuff up for our trip to Geneva tomorrow. Then, around 4 o’clock, we headed off to the local Coop to get a bottle of wine, loaf of bread, can of tomato sauce, and a small bottle of Disney juice for children. (Mary dropped her 100ml bottle of body wash this morning and the bottom basically broke off. The Disney juice was the smallest bottle we could find at the store, 250ml, so we drank the contents and put the body wash in.) A fountain in old town Vevey:

Our dinner was quite relaxed, as no one else was around to crowd the kitchen. We had pasta again, with tomato sauce that Jeff thickened with a little corn starch, so it was pretty shiny. We also had a salad with grated carrot and balsamic dressing from the Coop.

After dinner, we cleaned up, then cooked the rest of our pasta that we will hopefully turn into some sort of a cold salad to have for dinner tomorrow at our hostel without a kitchen. We then headed off to do some investigating into the terrible music that we could hear from the terrace.

It seems that every night we’ve been here, there has been terrible music that we can hear from our room. Most of what we can hear is just the drum beat, which is continuous and rarely changes. Sometimes we can hear a slight melody overtop, but again, it usually repeats over and over. Anyway, it always seems to be coming from the direction of the casino, but it’s much too loud to not be outside. So we walked over to the other side of the casino, and sure enough, discovered a large park area with a stage set up in the middle, and signs everywhere. Supposedly there’s some sort of improvisation festival, and it’s supposed to go until past midnight this evening. Guess we’ll be sleeping with earplugs again tonight. (Sounds like rapping tonight.. either that or someone yelling really loudly while someone pounds out some loud bass notes, but really, what's the difference)

On our way back from our walk, we took a detour and found a small convenience store that was still open and bought an ice cream cone with the Movenpick ice cream that seems to be so popular over here. It was pretty tasty :).

Tomorrow, we head to Geneva, our last stop on our tour through Switzerland. We have 5 nights in Geneva, and then we’ll be flying home from the Geneva airport. We both agree that we’ll very much miss the mountains, birds, sounds of cow bells, and old buildings, but that it will be nice to be back somewhere familiar, where we can not be in a hostel, and where everyone speaks English. Mary has not been enjoying the French part of Switzerland much language-wise, since she finds it much easier to understand German than French. Everyone speaking English will definitely be a welcome change.

Day 26: Vevey Day 3 - Zermatt

We woke up today at 7am so that we could arrive in Zermatt before noon. As one would expect Mary was cranky because she had to get up so early. (Mary Note: Yeah, didn't help that sleeping last night wasn't very easy due to noise outside...) We had a relaxing breakfast, real muesli. Mary did not enjoy it, she says the rolled grains are not cooked / not cooked enough. (Mary note: They're squishy! Muesli should be Crunchy!) Jeff thought the food was just fine, especially the pineapple yogurt.

We headed to the train station for 8:38 and arrived early. (Mary note: Yeah, by like half an hour... so why did we get up so early again?) Our train took us from Vevey to Visp with no transfers. We had some trouble finding a comfortable rail car. The first one we boarded was practically empty, but there was a odor of urine present throughout the air. We sat there for a few minutes and decided that we could not stomach it for the entire trip. After moving to another car we had a much better experience. Along the way we both enjoyed the scenery.

However, nearby power lines got in the way of many photo attempts. Regardless, here is a shot of the terraced vineyards that go up the side of the mountain slope:

After almost 1.5 hours on the train we arrived in Visp. The transfer was easy, we were on our way within 10 minutes. The train twisted through the valley as it headed towards Zermatt. Mary read her book most of the way up, but took breaks to enjoy the mountain scenery. We were both content to sit in our seats, unlike others on the train. There were two women who spent most of the trip with their heads half out of the train window. This action is potentially deadly on other tracks in Switzerland. (Mary note: all the other trains have "Nicht Heirauslehnen" or something like that, meaning don't lean out.) The entire train trip from Zermatt to Visp lasted roughly 1 hour. By 11pm we had arrived in Zermatt.

We got off the train and headed to the tourism office to pick up some form of map. The only maps that were immediately visible were panoramic style maps. These were of some use for determining the names of mountain peaks. We were still able to navigate without a city street map. The entire town takes approximately 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other.

Unlike other nearby towns, Zermatt is completely car free. Yet, we learned that car free does not mean vehicle free. There were many little electric taxies and pickup vehicles that could deliver people or goods to their destination. Here is an image of one:

We headed to the church square and found a bench for lunch: pear, carrot, bread, and cheese. After lunch we wandered around a little. Jeff wanted to climb a trail to get an overview of the town. Mary was not thrilled about this idea. (Mary note: Getting a little tired of all the crazy steep inclines...) In the end Jeff ran up a steep trail so that he could get the view. Mary only went up half way, where she could get a partial view.

Mary waiting for Jeff:

The view:

After the trail we headed south towards the edge of town. We expected to get a great view of the Matterhorn. We did not have time to walk part of the trail that heads towards the base of the Matterhorn. We also did not want to spend more money going up a cable car (Mary note: And really, we'd been up a much higher mountain already). Instead we walked to the main parking lot and sat on a bench. We watched the Matterhorn for roughly half an hour. Bear decided to come today, (and not be invisible) here he is:

In the process of waiting around, Jeff tried to eat his chocolate, he found out that his bag was acting like a greenhouse; it does not breathe much. The chocolate ended up making a huge spot on his shorts, and laundry was yesterday!

The clouds moved around the Matterhorn as we watched. We took several photos from the nearby area. Here are three of the best:

(Mary - psh, Jeff only included HIS pictures. Well here's one of mine!)

Just as we were about to leave we saw this person with milk cans (empty?):

When we finished watching the Matterhorn we headed to the church, here is the inside:

The Matterhorn museum is next to the church. However it was closed until 2pm. We had 30 minutes to wait. We shopped around a little and did not buy anything because Zermatt is much more expensive compared to elsewhere.

The museum building consists of a glass dome with an elevator and staircase on one side. The actual museum part is all underground. Inside the museum contained buildings that attempted to show the different aspects of life related to the Matterhorn. (Mary note: supposedly they were trying to mimic an archeological dig site?) One building was dedicated to the people who had attempted the climb, but had fallen to their death on the way down. In this building, broken rope and other artifacts were on display. In addition, we found out why many of the buildings were built on stilts: to keep the mice out. It turns out that these buildings are actually used as food storage.

We finished with the museum before 3pm. We decided that it was time to head out. We thought it would be nice to get back a little earlier than 7pm, as originally planned. On the way down to Visp Mary took some photos and read her book. Here are some of those shots (from both up and down):

The train ride from Visp went well, except that the train car's ventilation system was broken. We managed to sit there for half of the trip before the heat drove us to a different train car.

We arrived back to Vevey at 6:30 and promptly made dinner. We ate penne with tomato sauce and a salad with homemade dressing. It started raining on us when we ate outside, so we moved inside.

Tomorrow we hope to head into the nearby Lavaux region. In this area there are vast quantities of terraced grape vines. We may even try to sample some red wine to bring back home.

Hopefully the casino and bar outside our window area  is a little quieter tonight. They were pretty noisy yesterday, so we slept with our window closed. When we woke up in the middle of the night, it was pretty hot and stuffy in our room.