sue.thomson: Geneva, Switzerland

Well here I am back online. It's been a while - I've been a bit slack... however I'll try and make amends.
Started this trip heading to Geneva for a conference, with Kylie travelling with me. After the events in London a month ago, I was a little skeptical about transiting through Heathrow, but was assured that we could take anything

on board as per usual. What no one told us was that when we actually transferred at Heathrow we would have to dump all cosmetics, deoderants, liquids and gels into the bins before we went through the second lot of security in Terminal 4. Shit. Well out went my travel bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and the deoderant, but I was not going to just toss the expensive face wash nor my nice new lipstick - just bought in Singapore! So I tucked these into my bag and went through security. Unfortunately I was stopped at this point because I had two bottles in my bag... grrrr.. however they didn't find the expensive things, just a bottle of nailpolish that I had forgotten and a lip balm, unfortunately though, the one I liked! So I helpfully threw these in the bin and went on through with my Claudia Schiffer lippy intact!
Got to Geneva to a wet, cold morning. Didn't auger well for the rest of the time there, but I had packed my umbrella so all was ok. The weather fined up and it only rained one other time through the week.

The conference went well, and we got a few touristy things done in our spare time.. as the photos will show. Unfortunately the mountains were not super clear, and as it's a few hours by bus or train to anything much, we didn't really have time to do this. The only option was to do something on the Monday - but who wants to spend 10 hours on a bus when they have travelled over 30 hours over the last couple of days?

Anyway here are some photos.. the one at the start is looking over the Left Bank of the River Rhone at Geneva with the Old Town high on the hill, The Town Hall flying the city and Swiss flags. Next one down is the Cathedral St Pierre, which was the home church of Calvin. It occupies the site of a Roman Temple and a number of other earlier churches from the 4th century onwards, The Romanesque church with its Gothic elements was built between 1150 and 1232. To the right is looking down one of the streets in the Old Town next to the Church. Below is the famous Jet d'Eau, which is 140m high and pumps out 500 litres of water a second at a speed of about 200 km/h!!

At the edge of the Parc des Bastions, set against the walls of the Old Town, is the Genevan monument to the Protestant Reformation. Here in the 'Wall of the Reformers' are 5 m high statues of Jean Calvin, Theodore de Beze, John Knox and Guillame Farel. Along the top of the monument runs the motto of the city and reformation - Post Tenebras Lux ("After the Darkness, Light").
Also in the park, giant chess and checkers are there with people often playing games.

There was a fruit and veggie market in the Plain Palais, near our hotel, and Kylie and I were both fascinated by the mushrooms - fascinated but we didn't try anything!

Two other buildings that were quite interesting are also shown - the first on the Right Bank - the Brunswick Monument. This contais the tomb of Charles II, Duke of Brunswick,

who bequeathed his fortune to the city of Geneva on the proviso that the city place him ina replica of Verona's Scaligeri Mausoleum, which of course they did!

The second is the Catholic Church Sainte-Trinite! No more to say.

Kylie and I did a short tour around Lac Leman by boat, and stopped at Yvoire, a very pretty little medieval town on the French side of the Lake (and Kylie didn't have her passport, so technically entered France illegally!).

This is one of those 'oh so pretty' touristy towns, but it was very cute and the flowers everywhere were spectacular. Put this against a backdrop of the Alps and you have one stunning piece of scenery!