Catchup: Geneva

I woke up the next day ready for the train! It was my first time taking a TGV so I was curious how nice it was going to be. The train station was very easy to find, so we made it on time no problem. It was a little early for me to be awake, but I didn't mind.

The train itself was quite slick looking, as you can see:





Unfortunately Erin forgot her wrist bands for motion sickness buried in her backpack. Things turned out alright though, since the train was so smooth and there were things to do. I had my knitting, so I tried to work on FOX's sweater so he wouldn't get cold in Switzerland:



Out the window things were looking scenic:



Erin was writing stuff:



Here we are on our first international train journey! Woo!



It was tricky to take photos at such a high speed...



As the train slowed down though I was able to get a couple in... Before we knew it we were in Geneva!



It was kinda cloudy so you couldn't really see the mountains behind the city.. but it was still pretty.



Here's Erin looking over at the city... See it's still quite nice!



A lot of the buildings looked like this:


The old part of the city was charming, with thin windy streets and cobblestones. It was a lot of uphill however. We were going to have to have our packs for the whole day, so the uphill climbing was extra tough. Erin was still sick too so we were taking it slow up the hills, looking at all the little alleys. I was slow because I am out of shape. There was a cool bookstore full of super old books that Erin found.









One thing that stood out about Switzerland was the amount of flags everywhere. They were lining streets, bridges, everything! You could tell Geneva has money, too. No litter, no dog crap, just a lot of flags and people in suits. I felt a little out of place.



We weren't sure if we were supposed to go in here at first, but it seemed fine... one lady saw us from inside and didn't give us hassle while we took shots, so I assume it was allowed.



At this point it was time to give our backs a rest. We found an old cannon and leaned our backpacks on it. My back was really happy about this, so we took our time looking at the map and information about the city Erin had cleverly photocopied prior to coming out here:







We decided to climb one more hill so we sucked it up and went for it. It was a church, and I think the view was worth it in the end :) It wasn't the tallest thing, but it was nice up there. I went to use the toilet in the museum next door, then Erin did after me and they refused her for some reason! That was super dumb!





Inside the church was also pleasant:







We came out and Erin had to use a very disturbing toilet. Considering the surroundings, I was surprised the toilet was so shitty (haha bad joke I know)! I mean most stuff looked like this:



I guess everything can't be spotless. Apparently there were needles in there though which is pretty appalling in even the worst of bathrooms. We got the hell outta there and begun the descent towards the water thing. You know, the famous fountain thingy. Well, if you don't you'll see it in around 2.5 seconds.


this thing:




Here is a lovely Hotel!



The streets were very posh, but it was hard to find a supermarket.



We eventually found a supermarket after asking some people. We bought snacks so we could begin our next mission: hitchhiking to Lausanne.

I consider hitching to be a very liberating travel experience, nevermind the fact that it's free. We were, however, pressed for time so we couldn't be bumming around on the side of the road for days while my sister only has six weeks to spend in Europe. Instead, one short journey here was perfect for our mammoth schedule. First, it's in one of the safest countries in the world, and is only 30 km away. There are only two roads to go there so it's very unlikely we would get lost. The spot recommended on Hitchwiki was within the city and a 20 minute walk from the train station. It was foolproof: If we found no ride we could easily walk back and take the train. No chance of getting stuck!

First we had to get those snacks. Can't be hungry doing these things. We bought cereal to make our sign out of the cardboard (and to eat of course). I had some coloured pens from Berlin, so we were set to go! We had acquired a big map from a tourist office upon arrival, although he looked at us weird when I said we were using it to hitchhike. He said nobody does that here (which is total crap I have a few friends in Switzerland that do it there) and we would have to wait a long time. I was not discouraged though, since we weren't really going to get "stuck", just "delayed" if he was right. We started walking along the water towards the park and ended up walking by these things which were actually pretty cool:



We arrived at our lovely cow-painted radar point (which is really smart if you think about it! that will slow them down eh!) and made our sign. Erin turned out to be a perfect hitching buddy since she started dancing up a storm while I held the sign. Within 20 minutes we had a direct lift to Lausanne :D

This saved us a lot of money in the end since our Swiss Passes were not valid until the next day. The train was at least 20 bucks, and for 30km that's really steep. The guy that drove us was really nice too - even pulled over for us to take photos once we reached Lausanne! Erin's French came in super handy. The driver told us about some music festivals he helps set up in Switzerland, and general stuff. We had to go through some traffic, then after that we were in Lausanne!

Catchup: Paris Day 4 Part 1

Okay so we managed to wake up and try some french pastries the next day! We were in love with the pain du chocolat for breakfast. We sat outside a patisserie and ate our food in the sunshine. It was fantastic! We watched a mob of birds attack some leftovers and it got pretty intense:



here I am eating...





A lot of people were walking by taking photos of the bird feeding insanity. It got old though.

We continued our walk after this down a main street and started checking out some museums. We had walked by this at night:



I think we had worked it so that some museums were going to be free on this day, except special exhibitions of course. We made it to this one (I forget the name) but there was this MASSIVE line up outside so we weren't sure if we could get in... There was this thing about Yves Saint Laurent that was creating the line. Embarrassingly, my sister and I couldn't remember exactly what he was famous for!



We were across the street taking photos on this other huge fancy building, but hey this one was worth pictures as well! There were huge columns all over the place:





We went up to the door to see if we could just go in the normal part of the museum minus the expensive Yves thing. We were allowed to go in for free/cheap I think but through a side entrance. Not this one:



The building itself was quite pretty, plus you could look up and see bits of the exhibition! It was a little confusing to walk around at first, especially with parts that were closed off - like this one:



Erin and I both really liked this painting:



more stairs. Like I said, the building itself was quite impressive:



The courtyard:



Erin and I also really liked this picture for some reason. We stood there for ages just looking at it. We went into the gift shop afterward to look at books that would tell us who Yves Saint Laurent was... turns out he was a fashion designer!



Good to know. Well, we looked at everything kinda quickly and went to leave...



Erin was still feeling sick but she still managed to smile for me!



We went on this bridge here, and it looked like the sort of thing that would be famous, so we took pictures beside it!





We walked to Napoleon's tomb, but they wanted a ridiculous sum to get into the place and we didn't really care about looking at the thing... we were more interested in Victor Hugo's tomb which was in a different place.

The building was quite massive though so we still managed to walk around and make the journey over worthwhile...



here is the outside of the tomb thing. Yes we were cheeky and took a picture of the outside after we balked at going in:



We ended up on some street with messed up houses - one of the first ones so far! I was pleased to see it, if only for balance.



After the one messed up street, we ended up on a nice one:



It was on the way to the Pantheon. This is where Victor Hugo was buried, among others. We walked up this hill to get there, so by the top we stopped to take photos and such!









Thanks to Erin's French skills, we managed to get both of us in as students! There was the Foucalt pendulum in the center:



I tried to get a longer exposure.. you can kinda see the ball moving, but it does look mostly like a ghost.



The ceiling was super intricate:







Everything was intensely large:



There was an underground crypt, so I attempted the low light shots of famous tombs:







The man himself!!






There were information walls up around the place to explain who some of the people were in case you didn't know already... We found a picture of the city as well and decided to become... SISTERzILLA!







I was pleasantly surprised to find Marie and Piere Curie here... took me back to high school science classes and my chemistry teacher, Mr. Disney, talking about these guys. It felt very odd to see their graves so many years later. People can totally have presence after they're dead.



We came back upstairs and looked around a final time at the building itself:



Now we had been to most of the things we had wanted to see. It was our last day in Paris, so we went walking through the Latin district (my memory is faded but I think that's what it was. I remember what it looked like perfectly well but not what it was called!). We had another crepe, and decided to get one french beer at least while we were in France. I only knew of one, but all the other beer listed at these bars I knew.. and they were not French!

I know they are more into the wine, but really... one beer? Oh well... we walked around a few times looking for something somewhat reasonable in price. It was hard since this was a touristy area, and they were advertising the beer at 9 euro for the normal price!!!!! Luckily it was happy hour, so we were talked into going into a Mardi Gras themed bar so a half price beer. They were playing an animated movie - I think it was Kung Fu Panda actually - which distracted us for a while... They FOX wanted a drink, so we gave him the last bit:



There were some cool places in this area, I liked it. There were also Doner shops which reminded me of home (Berlin). Since we had to get up early the next day and I don't have any pictures, I assume we didn't do a ton of stuff this night.... maybe if we did Erin can mention this to me because my memory is most likely worse than hers!