Geneva, Switzerland

In case I haven't mentioned it before, there's a rule in Spain that says that you can live here legally as long as you leave the European Union at least once every three months. Even if you just walk across the border of Andorra, as long as you return with a new stamp in your passport you're good to go. So, seeing as how my three months are almost up and I don't want to have to bribe the Spanish customs officials to let me back in after my trip home for Christmas, I took a trip to Switzerland this past weekend. The thought process on choosing Switzerland went something like this: Switzerland is out of the EU. There are cheap flights to Switzerland. The cheapest flights are to Geneva. Let's go to Geneva.

Patrick and I left early Friday morning and slept through most of the hour-long flight. I woke up in time to take some pictures of the Alps as we were flying over them:




























The first day was cloudy and cold, but we wandered around and found some interesting places














including a restaurant where they let birds fly around freely






(I named these 3 Brad, Owen, and Viggo for Mom)







and my personal favorite







At night we made our way to a hookah bar (past this pretty fountain) and chilled out enjoying mint tea and strawberry hookah.




















The next day we explored even more and made our way around Lake Geneva,




















making friends with some swans along the way


















We climbed some steps for a view of the city before deciding that we needed to get higher to get a better view.














So... we went inside a church (the St Pierre Cathedral) and hopped the turnstile to get to the top (oh so rebellious!)

























































Then we climbed the approximately 1,000 winding stairs back down (I didn't trip once!) and wandered back to the lake.




This is my favorite picture from the trip:



Here's when I figured out how to take panoramic pictures on my camera:



If you look closely, you can see the rainbow off the Jet d'Eau.

Friday and Saturday involved a lot of walking around and exploring the city, which we quickly found out is the most expenive city in an already expensive country. A normal dinner meal (not including pizza or salad) was about 30 francs, and there's not a huge difference between the franc and the dollar. On Sunday, we showed up at the booth to buy ferry boat tickets only to find out that there was a time change while we were sleeping, so we were an hour early. Bonus hour in Geneva. On the ferry we took a tour around Lake Geneva and got a closer look at the huge 140 foot fountain.















































We had some time to kill, so we got off at a random bus stop, wandered down a trail, and ended up hanging out on a swingset watching the little French-speaking children play before taking the bus to the airport.

This is a pretty church near the airport bus stop.































View from the plane:



And just as I'm finally done uploading these, I have a fresh new batch of photos from my trip to Ibiza this past weekend. Here we go...