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).
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