Geneva: 7-9 September
Chatel-St-Denis: 9-11 September
After our delightful stay with Radu, Ozana, and the kids, we headed off to Geneva. We stayed in hostels for most of the trip up to this point; this was our first experience with Airbnb. Airbnb is a site where people with spare rooms or vacation houses can rent out their space to travelers. Travelers must evaluate their hosts, and hosts actually evaluate travelers too. That way, we as travelers can choose the safest places to stay, and the people we choose can see that we are respectful guests. It went great!! We stayed with a man named Max who has an apartment in Geneva and works at the UN. He was wonderful, very friendly and welcoming, and we had a great time talking with him.
 |
| Stealthy picture through a window at the Hotel De Ville, a 15th century building that still serves as the seat of government in Geneva. |
 |
| In keeping with wall art all over Switzerland, here is some wall art in Geneva! Also, cannons from the 1800s. |
 |
| Panorama of Geneva's port with the giant water fountain. |
I'll talk about the three main things we did while in Geneva: we saw the UN, took a tour of some awesome archaeological ruins, and visited CERN. Honestly, the UN was a bit of a disappointment. They don't sell tickets on-site, and their ticket sales line was based in the US so we couldn't get a hold of them in time. So we just wandered around and took pictures!
 |
| Just your typical UN photo! The building there is the UN Headquarters, which is behind a lot of gates and guards. The three-legged chair sculpture symbolizes the opposition to land mines buried all over the world that haven't been found and cleared. |
 |
| Of course I visited the World Meteorological Organization! I even got in the twirly door. And then I couldn't go any further for security purposes; they don't do tours. It was cool anyway! |
The archaeological ruins I spoke of exist under the St Pierre Cathedral, in Geneva's Old Town. John Calvin, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, was based out of Geneva and the Cathedral. Recent excavation below the cathedral uncovered ruins of religious sites dating back 100 BC! So they decided to be awesome and make a bunch of paths through the ruins. The oldest ruins are from some important chieftan that was buried on the site, and small religious buildings stood on his grave for many years. Eventually the religious buildings grew into three different cathedrals, which then merged into the St Pierre Cathedral we see today. It's really incredible to go inside; if you're ever in Geneva, do it!
 |
| Exterior of St Pierre Cathedral. |
 |
| St Pierre's 15th-century choir stalls, still preserved and looking good! |
 |
| Ruins of several small cells where monks lived in the 4th century. The dwellings were heated by warm water flowing through underground conduits (the troughs you can see on the floor). |
 |
| Incredible surviving 5th century mosaic pavement in the room where bishops used to receive visitors. |
Last, but certainly not least, WE WENT TO CERN AND IT WAS GREAT. The science nerd in me was blissfully happy. Our tour took us to visit the first particle accelerator built at CERN, which actually operated for about 40 years! We also visited the building for ATLAS, one of the LHC's particle detectors (LHC is the Large Hadron Collider, or the enormous circle of pipes that smashes atoms into each other). The detector itself is 100m underground where the LHC is, but we watched a cool movie about building the detector and then got to watch the engineers and physicists work in the control room. CERN also created an exhibit all about physics and the four governing forces, and the questions they're trying to answer with their experiments. I find it incredible to think that this organization started smashing atoms together in 1957 (successfully!), and have worked up to what they're doing today. Basically, go visit CERN. It's free, and you'll learn more than you ever thought you could about particle physics. I can't even express how incredible it was to visit!!
 |
| CERN's first particle accelerator, the Synchrocyclotron (does that sound sci-fi or what?), built in 1957. This one we could see because it was retired in the 90s. |
 |
| Mural on one of the buildings in the above-ground ATLAS campus. It's an artistic rendering of the detector's structure, and is about 2/3 the size of the actual detector. |
 |
| Ground control to ATLAS...the ATLAS control room here :) |
We intended to visit Montreux, which is across the lake from Geneva and has a castle, but the boat schedules all changed the day we got there and we decided to give it up. We stayed in a little town nearby called Chatel-St-Denis (another Airbnb) with a couple named Eva and Marcello, and their awesome yellow lab Pacha. The city was beautiful; we did some hiking around the area, and Marcello took us for a drive to some great overlooks. That's about it, so please enjoy a few more pictures!
 |
| Pretty view from the church in Chatel-St-Denis. |
 |
| Tiny horses, and normal sized sheep, goats, and horses were everywhere in this city. It was awesome. |
 |
| View from an overpass on our walk. There aren't many busy roads in the country, but we did cross one :) |
 |
| Gorgeous view of the terraced hillside sloping down to Lake Geneva. Most of the hillside around the lake is terraced, and most of the terraces here are vineyards. |
 |
| All the vineyards have these little cog railways that go down the hillside!! |
 |
| That's right, a vending machine for the two greatest Swiss pastimes: fondue and raclette. |
Comments
Post a Comment