Geneva, Switzerland

After spending two days in Chamonix, we drove back to Geneva to spend a day and night before traveling back to London. Apparently, Geneva was in the middle of the Geneva festival and there was plenty of action in the city.  All along Lake Geneva there were carnival rides, concession stands and other festivities taking place.  The really crazy thing is that no matter where we were at in the city there were bikers with balloons attached to their bikes.   I don't know if you could call it a race as there wasn't an apparent course or finish line, but everywhere you went there were bikers and many streets were blocked out.  We had a funny encounter trying to navigate the streets at one point when I told Cory he needed to follow the orange detour sign and he insisted on listening to Karen the GPS lady.  No, the GPS lady does not know that it's the Geneva festival and yes we went in a big circle and ended up following the detour time on the second try.  I am clearly not respected as co-pilot, but that’s ok as I would rather not have the responsibility.

First stop was the Park Des Eaux - Vive.  Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures in the park.  We walked through the rose gardens, but they weren't in the best of health.  I'm not a rose person, but I'm thinking August must not be their prime month.

After the park we walked along Lake Geneva and took some pictures of the Jet d'Eau.  At this point Brady was ready to find a playground as we failed to find the playground at the Park Des Eaux Vive despite being given advice of how to navigate the park. (Of course when we got in the car later in the day and drove on the perimeter of the park we spotted it right away)  We were able to redeem ourselves as we got lucky and stumbled upon a small playground near a cafe we stopped to get some sandwiches from in the Old Town area.  Brady went down the slide about 10 times, we found a grassy spot to have a picnic and then we were able to resume the tour.  I'm not exactly sure what the last photo is of, but it looked important so I snapped a photo.

After walking around the city, We jumped in the car and drove 30 minutes to the town of Yvoire, France.  It was a cute medieval village on Lake Geneva.  We enjoyed the shops and had some good ice cream before heading back to Geneva.  One thing that Cory and I both were a bit amazed by is the ease you can travel between countries in Europe.  When we crossed over from Switzerland to France there was a small customs/immigration building, but it was unmanned.  We just drove right on in and right back out with not interactions.  I can’t even imagine if we had this setup in the US.

Last stop on the Geneva tour was seeing the United Nation.  The chair is missing a leg, but we were not sure what the story was behind it.  Cory made up that he thought it was due to some recent protests, but the real story is that it symbolizes opposition to land mines and cluster bombs, and acts as a reminder to politicians and others visiting Geneva.  Also, I don't know the random girl in the UN picture, but there was a line to take photos so I decided they would just have to be in my photo.

Dubin, Cory insisted on taking this picture for you.

Alison, the Caterpillar office was doing well.  It appeared there were even a few folks working.