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 However, it was somewhat uninformative and outdated.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)