Monday - to Geneva!

Morning
Train station by 9:00 and Geneva by 10:00!  

It was the last day our Swiss Pass was valid, so any travel we did today (and museums) were free.  We decided to go around the lake to Geneva.  

We did zero research, and didn't even have a map, but we went.   The train ride was easy.  Sara and Julia sit and look out the window like train experts.  Three of us fit on two seats, so it usually goes: window, Sara, Julia, then me.  Dan sits opposite us on his own seats.  If Sara mistakenly sits next to me, she will announce, "I want to sit next to Julia," and she will make me move.  I think it is cute.  

Stepping into the Geneva train station made us realize that it is a big city.  People were every where.  And they were walking fast, like people in a city do - since they have places to go.  We walked through the dashing people to get outside, then followed the signs to tourist information.

The nice lady gave me a perfect map and some ideas.  

We headed across the water (Geneva is on Lake Geneva just like Lausanne is on Lake Geneva) and into the "old" part of town.  

Just as the other places we've visited, there was a old, characteristic, strollable part of town.  Thankfully, it wasn't as hilly as we are used to.  Our stroll lead us to a square by the Palace of Justice, where we found the restaurant recommended to me by the young lady at the tourist office.  

Lunch
The restaurant was empty.  We usually eat early (like 11:30) so we are kind of used to that.  Plus with all the choices in a city like Geneva we didn't expect it to be full of customers.  We got the (and I do mean 'the') table by the window (which was great!) and we ordered, got our food, and had a great meal.  Minutes after we were seated (I'd say within 10  minutes) the whole restaurant was full.  I don't know how it happened that fast.  We were glad we got there when we did.  It was a long narrow place and being by the window was really desireable.  

They specialized in roast chicken.  Sara got the chicken kids meal, Dan got the chicken adult meal, and I got the chicken soup.  They had fancy names for those things, but that is my own description.  It was all good.  We ate every last bite.  They had colored pencils for the girls to use on their place mats and they even gave us tap water in a carafe for 1 SF.  (That isn't much to pay for a liter of water.)   

We joked around at the meal and had a nice time together.  The sun was shining, and we could see people waiting for a table outside.  Imagine that?!  I guess we picked a hot-spot and we were glad it was good.  It was 38 SF total.  

Under Geneva

After eating Julia walked, walked, walked, around a square and up a cobblestone hill.  We found a cathedral.  We've seen a lot of European cathedrals, but this one had a little sign that said, "archeological dig" with an arrow pointing down.  I checked it out. The man at the front desk deep under ground was nice, and it was free with our "Swiss Pass" I went back up to Dan/Sara/Julia and said we should all visit the archeological thing under the cathedral.

It turned out to be one of the best (most interesting) things about our time in Geneva!  In brief, they found reminants of buildings and so forth going back to BC (so more than 2,000 years old) and you could walk amongst the old stone walls, see the old wells, and keep in mind that all the while you are actually under an actual cathedral!  It was mind blowing really to witness it.  We've seen old stuff before, but there was just so much to explore and spanning many centuries.  They had to color code it - so yellow was Before Christ, and red was the 13th century and so forth.  So you could glance at a stone wall and see the layers of time stacked right up on top of each other!  There was a fire in one of the centuries, so in one cross-section you could see charred wood!  There was also a skeleton of some ancient chief guy.  I didn't think to much about it - but it was a tomb - and even a Roman tomb site also.  The area of that church was used for so much!  And the church/cathedral was built on top of it all! Imagine finding all that stuff, and then making it so tourists like us could go see it.  The girls just liked running around it (we were the only ones in there so it was ok.)

Back into the real world after that archeological dig we strolled the main "shopping" street (with Rolex, Cartier, etc.), then headed for the water front.  We were going to take a boat across the water but Julia was sleeping and didn't want to wake her, so we just walked across the water on the bridge and got back to the train station.  From there, we took the train back here.   The train ride was nice. Sara and Julia sat in their seats eating pretzels and French bread.  

I left out a lot of details about today, but bascially we toured Geneva for a few hours.  It was a bright sunny day.  We were all happy - and had a nice time.

Quote of the day:
(we had just saw an old leather purse from 50 BC with 210 coins in it that I found interesting, Sara, on the other hand looked at it and said:)  

Sara: "Mom, that's nice.  Let's go look at some other old stuff.  This way."  

(she liked exploring the metal pathways of the archeological dig more than she liked looking at the displays)   

END :)