Hello loves! As I sit here sipping on my wine called "Côtes du Rhône" (or coasts of the Rhone), I am plotting to tell you about today and yesterday. The title I stole from one of my good friends here who quite accurately described all of Geneva and our entire experience. Yesterday morning, I woke up at around 9 and went for a run along the Rhône with three of my friends. It was a beautiful run which involved runnn through an archway of flowers, through a HIGH end shopping district, and running to the BEAUTIFUL Lac Léman (also known as Lake Geneva... but the natives don't call it that). We meandered all the way down to the "jet d'eau" which is essentially a manmade geiser shooting WAY up into the air. It was absolutely stunning. From there we wandered through old town in which I found what one of my friends calls a "puking lion" aka a public water dispenser made in the shape of a lion. In Geneva, you can use water fountains to fill up your water bottles because the water is SO clean. We wandered through probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen called the "vieille ville" or Old Town. It was filled with beautiful 17th century European-style buildings with stone streets.
We went back to shower and put on nice clothes, and then met up with more people to go re-explore the same area, this time equipped with make up and cameras. It was well-worth the horrible hair drier experience I had, in which I used 2 hair driers, each one opting to shut off for minutes at a time then randomely turn back on. Yes, I had the correct amount of power. Also my hair drier is the drier from HELL. It pretty much screams at me when it's on high. UGH. I almost screamed the first time I turned it on! But I digress. We explored the area around the lake and took tons of pictures of the jet d'eau, after which we stopped at this little food stand to get lunch and sorbet (I ordered une boule de pistache, s'il vous plaît), and then got chased by bees. In this area, we found stores like Louboutin, Rolex, Versace, Fendi, Dior, Chanel, Céline and Hermes. There was also this HUGE piece of topiary artwork that was in the shape of a clock, and in true Swiss fashion, was a real, working clock. I got a picture by it :). From here we went up to Old Town and explored the streets by the INCREDIBLE restaurant we ate at (Café Papon) on Saturday. Everything was just beautiful. I can't do it justice with words to this place, so I'll do it with the photos I post at some point, but take my word for it. It's amazing. After exhaustion ensued, we sat on the World's Longest Bench, which overlooks a beautiful park, which we then proceeded to walk through and fill water bottles up with, appreciating the greenness and the statues. This park is right across from the opera building, which is also beautiful. Somehow, this road led us down to the KNIE which is a circus that is in the major park in Geneva, and it's right by where we ate our first night. We saw camels, zebras and oxen, as well as visited a very cute farmer's market (everything is closed on Sundays except for these). Some of our friends' rooms are across the street from this park, the students staying for a year, so we opted to go up and see their dorms, which were very colorful with a beautiful view of the park. Downstairs from them is the Central Perk Café. Yes. That's right. F R I E N D S anyone? By this time it was pretty late and we were all very hungry so we went back to our dorm and made dinner and ended the night around 1 am after spending the entire night chatting it up and having a grand time with our neighboring suite mates, three guys from the US, Spain, and Angola. Very funny guys.
Going to bed at 1 am proved to be an awful idea, for reasons I will explain in my next post.
À bientôt
Ee