Geneva, Switzerland
1/21-1/27
Geneva, Switzerland
I don’t know why I’m
having so much trouble keeping up with my blog… oh wait, yes I do. Spain keeps
me so busy! Another week of school flew by. No Friday classes. Monday was a
holiday for University of Deusto. So I was looking at a 4-day weekend to take
advantage of! The plan was Geneva, Switzerland. Six of us left Bilbao a little
after 4 p.m. on Friday and arrived to Switzerland more confused than ever
because none of us spoke French (the predominant language spoken in Geneva). But we did find our way to our hotels and settled in
(hotel > hostel since the prices were similar). I was actually the one to
find the hotel that my roommate and I stayed in and it was a success! Clean,
good location, nice staff, breakfasts included, and cheap considering all of
the above! We met up for dinner later into the night and explored a little, but
basically had an early night. On Saturday, we went to the old city of Geneva…
the old parts of cities are my absolute favorite! There, we found a museum of
the reformation that had a combined ticket to also get you into Saint Pierre’s
Cathedral. The museum was a bore; I’m not going to lie… but the Cathedral was
amazing! It was so beautiful, but the really amazing part was that we were able
to walk to the top of it in order to see the view. So many spiral staircases,
but it was worth it! You could see the whole city, and even better, the
mountains in the background. Switzerland is beautiful. After the Cathedral, we
made our way back to the area our hotels were in to find somewhere to eat
lunch. We figured we would be savvy travelers and save money by eating at
Burger King… BOY, were we wrong! I spent $12+ on a combo meal of a burger,
fries, and a drink. Switzerland is expensive. We didn’t end up doing much in
between lunch and dinner because one of the girls in the group got her purse
stolen… so we spent the afternoon at the police station, on the computer
canceling credit cards, and just letting her take some time to cool down… And I
really thought I would be the first one to have something of mine stolen.
Anyways, dinner was an adventure. We found a restaurant that wasn’t just a
regular building, but a group of three big, white, circular tents with
Christmas lights around the edge. And we didn’t even know what they sold there
until we got inside. It was a fondue restaurant. Perfect right? Switzerland is
known for its cheese. We looked at the menu and ordered two $37 pots of cheese
for the six of us. For an appetizer, onions and pickles were served… yum? And
with the cheese, we got about 10 pieces of meat each and a ton of bread to dip.
Fondue is so good! I was in love, until we got the bill. I mentioned none of us
spoke French right? Well the $37 ended up being per person! So we each paid $40
each, since you have to pay for water everywhere else besides the U.S. We were
all in such shock, but had to just laugh it off. We didn’t do much after
dinner… we simply explored the city at night. On Sunday, we had our big day of
visiting tourist attractions. We went to the United Nations – cool. We went to
a ceramics museum – right up my ally, I love ceramics. We went to the botanical
gardens – my new favorite thing to do, so pretty. And we went to a park with a
great view of the river, the city behind that, and the Alps behind that –
gorgeous, but the pictures DO NOT capture what I saw. Anyways, not much to say
about the rest of Sunday night… or about the trip home Monday morning. I was
able to pull some change together to afford Swiss chocolate… in the airport, but
Swiss chocolate none-the-less! This weekend was one hell of an experience. Switzerland
is the land of chocolate, cheese, and expensive shit.
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