Day 6- Geneva

(Colleen via Kate's account) Today we woke up early in order to get on our 6:52 train to Lyon. It was quite chilly and raining fairly hard as we were sitting on the platform waiting for our train. The trip to Lyon was uneventful as at each stop the train filled up a little more, until we got there it was wall-to-wall people. The station is huge but they had a ramp and escalators so we had no problem with our (heavy) bags getting to the platform to go to Geneva.


We got on the train, put our bags away, and were sitting there, when an announcement was made and people started disembarking. Luckily Kate understood that they were saying there was a "technical incident" which caused them to cancel the train. We kind of wondered what to do for a while, but then went to the ticket office where the very nice young man informed us that there were no more trains to Geneva today and that we could take a bus. We were very skeptical of this because yesterday during our tour with Sue, Kate and I became extremely car sick.

While we were waiting for the bus, we realized we hadn't had breakfast, so we bought a couple of sandwiches to eat on the way. Sandwiches you get in France, by the way, are essentially meat, bread, and/or cheese. There might be some butter on there, but I didn't see any on mine. Mine was thin pieces of meat and bread, which was just right. When we went to the bus depot we met three young women who are cousins travelling for five weeks throughout Europe and told us that they were having trouble getting to Rome because apparently there is severe flooding in Nice. I had noticed we seemed to be having quite a bit of rain, but apparently Nice is having an unprecedented amount.  
The bus ride was very smooth, we didn't feel ill at all and the scenery was awesome.  As we neared the French border, the landscape became more mountainous and the towns in the valleys were gorgeous.  Kate tried to take a picture, but from a moving bus, it didn't work out so well.


We were dropped off at the train station in Geneva so we went and got some Swiss Francs at the ATM  and headed to the Taxi stand, where it was easy to flag down a taxi to take us to the Hotel, which was a short drive away.  The hotel has a beautiful setting across from the Brunswick Monument and has a view of Lake Geneva and the mountains which is quite breathtaking.  We also found out our room has "sleep shades" that at the push of a button go down to cover the windows.  We both think that is pretty cool.


Once we put our suitcases down, we went for a walk along the lakefront.  We noticed there are a lot of banks here and watch makers across the lake.  There is a Jet d'Eau, which is a huge fountain in the middle of the lake that squirts up about 100 feet in the air.  We sat on a bench overlooking the lake for a little while just taking in the scenery and then it began to get chilly and we headed back to the hotel, arriving just before it began to rain.  

Tomorrow we are thinking of walking over across the lake to the shopping area before our tour.  We will probably just eat dinner tonight at the hotel restaurant which overlooks the Brunswick Gardens and the Lake.  Right now we are enjoying some of the wine we purchased yesterday on our wine tasting visit.


We think of you all every day and hope all is well back home.  We miss you all, especially you, Sarah.