Catching up with Geneva!

HI! We have made it to Italy!!! We are staying with another couchsurfing host, Matteo. Tonight we enjoyed some aperitivos with some other couchsurfers he is hosting and some of his friends. It was a wonderful experience, but we'll tell you more about it later!

We have so much that we want to catch everyone up on, so we are going to try to post several entries a day starting with what we missed because words alone will not be able to describe everything we have experinced.

So we will start with our first day in Geneva! We stayed with Erika's friend Lisa and spent the first day exploring as much of the town as we could. This is the old catheldral, St. Pierre in the old town of Geneva. It has an incredibly old history dating back to the ancient Romans, examples of which you can see in the archelogical site under the church. The museum was closed on this day, but we made sure to go back because we heard the excavation under the church was well worth a visit.

Attached to the cathedral is the Chapel of the Maccabees. It was beautifully ornamented with detailed stained glass windows and fresco painting on every single surface. We sat for quite awhile admiring all of the decoration and we are still sure we did not see everything.
After lunch, we walked and walked and walked to the UN Building. It didn't seem too far on our map, but it proved to be quite a hike! This is a sculpture in front of the UN buildings meant to sybolize the efforts of removing landmines in areas all over the world. We just had a little fun with it!

This is the UN Building with the famous path of flags. We did not take the tour so we could not get any closer than the front gate. But we did spend a while outside of the building playing in the fountains!

Us with Lake Geneva behind us! We walked along the boulevard next to the lake which was so beautiful with the Swiss Alps and Mont Blanc in the distance. Along the street, a photography exhibit had been installed of amazing space photos. There were around 40 of them, photos of galaxies, nebulas, a black hole, stars, planats, space stations, etc. and they each had English descriptions!

Mont Blanc in the distance. It is visible from almost every place in Geneva, especially down Avenue Mont Blanc which is the main tourist shopping street in Geneva where we got the Swiss Army Knives!

Outside of the UN buildings, there are fountains that cover a large square. They are very nice to walk through or play through on a hot day like this one. It actually only took 2 tries to get this photo!

For lunch we stopped to have a picnic at this Monument Brunswick located on Lake Geneva. All around the city were fountains with amazingly cold water that you could fill up your water bottle with. We have talked a lot about how expensive everything in Switzerland is, so little things like free cold water really made a difference! A 24 oz Coke costs us $2.50! A chicken sandwich meal at McDonalds was $12 and an average meal at a restaurant was over $20 per person. It was so hot the first day we were there, but we couldn't justify spending between $9 and $12 on ice cream!

It was fun to see the different types of souveniers the Swiss have versus the French, especially since we could see France from our window! In every shop you could find a large collection of Swiss Army knives, chocolate, and watches! Much different than the Eifel Tower key chains or Mona Lisa puzzles you would find in France. Even the availability of bagettes dropped drastically after crossing the border!

This is actually Lyon, France, but no matter what we did, we could not delete the picture, so you get another beautiful view of Notre Dame de Fourviere.

We are so glad we are able to begin posting again! We hope to catch up quickly! We love everyone! and are looking forward to some Italian souveniers! kisses!