We've always said that our best holiday was when we visited Zurich in 2006/7 (not quite sure), and both of us thought that if we were likely to go anywhere abroad again, the chances are it would be to Switzerland. It took about two years for Rose to persuade me to get back on a plane, but in the event I found it relatively okay. In fact Rose seemed a lot less calm on the plane than I was... but I still detest the whole 'travelling' experience, it's exhausting, takes far longer than it needs to and you feel like every last second of it is designed to extract every last crumb of change out of your pocket...
But still, it is what it is, I suppose, and so we headed off to Luton at 9:15am, for our 1:30pm flight - because if I must fly, then I absolutely refuse to get out of bed at 2am to do so, what's the point of getting there early on the first day if all you want to do is go to bed?
So obviously we hadn't got a bloody clue what we were supposed to be doing, there was the endless trudge from the car park (even though we paid a King's ransom to park in the closest one) and then we stood about trying to work out where we supposed to go. Eventually we stumbled into the right area and and we were in to the wonderful world of 'Duty Free' shopping. It looked for all the world to me that supposedly VAT free shopping was a lot more expensive than normal shops, so we didn't bother (more on this subject later).
We eventually wound up in the departures lounge, waiting to be informed which gate we were supposed to head to. Well, run to - if you want any chance of getting your carry on luggage into the overhead lockers! As we were sitting in the lounge there was a Russian/Polish girl sitting opposite who was on the phone, when she came off the phone she asked us if she could go 'back'... it transpired that she didn't want to fly because apparently she had just split up with her boyfriend.
The gate was announced and we took off like the unseasoned travellers we are, smugly arriving close to the front of the queue and confident our luggage would not be stowed in the hold - which would have been galling given the amount of 'tiny' sized toiletries we had to buy to negate the need for baggage collection! Dimmers that we are, we didn't make the connection between the 'SB' on our boarding passes and 'Speedy Boarding'... we'd chosen tickets with extra legroom (by the emergency exits) and forgotten that that also qualified us for speedy boarding, though why I'm not really sure. Fortunately our innate stupidity was discovered sooner rather than later and we were allowed to jump the rope into the other queue, phew!
Once on board I felt surprisingly relaxed, but Rose seemed quite jittery. I thought this plane was quite alright, there seemed to be plenty of legroom and the seats in front didn't make me feel claustrophobic like when we went to Zurich on the tiniest plane in the world. The flight went pretty smoothly and we were quickly and efficiently deposited at the airport where we printed our 'free travel pass' tickets and caught the train to Geneva. Needless to say everywhere you looked at the airport there was huge posters advertising all the major watch brands, and even some less well known ones like Romain Jerome.
Geneva Train Station
Once we'd arrived at the train station we decided to purchase our tickets for our journeys to Gruyeres and La Chaux de Fonds in advance. We had to wait a while but once we got our turn it proved fairly simple and the guy who served us was friendly and helpful (he also looked a lot like Nick Hewer of 'The Apprentice' fame).
Travel, like just about everything in Switzerland, is expensive... but at least we'd got the tickets sorted and that was one less thing to worry about (it still left catching connecting trains in very short windows, but we'll come to that later). Once that was sorted out we made our way outside and painfully ineptly tried to follow the map to our hotel. I really don't know why we made such a hash of this as it was very simple and very close by, but for some reason we found it rather trying!
Thankfully when we got to our hotel it was rather nice and even had an Omega wall clock and display stand in the foyer.
Hotel D'Alleves, Rue de Cendrier, Geneva
Reception area.
Omega Wallclock
Omega Sales Display.
For a fairly small hotel, this place had an abnormally high number of receptionists... peaking at four on one occasion! But they were helpful and friendly, like just about everyone we encountered in Switzerland to be honest.
After unpacking, we decided to walk down to the lake, which was simple enough. Once there we crossed the bridge (Pont du Mont Blanc) and wandered around (what turned out to be the high end shopping area) trying to find a baseball cap for me so that I wouldn't burn my head the next two days! We eventually found one in C&A (who knew that was still going) that was predictably too small, but actually okay if you undid the back. Most importantly it was cheap, which since it was likely to get suncream all over it was a good start.
Pont du Mont Blanc
We caught our first glimpse of (what by the end of the holiday would become known as 'that bloody fountain') the 'Jet d'Eau'... which is impressively high and visible from many places around the town.
Jet d'Eau
As we wandered about we came across a Hublot clock over a stairway. Not entirely sure where it was going, it could have been a subway I guess... it must be said that Geneva is rather lacking when it comes to signage, something that would become a mild frustration over the next few days.
We decided to walk down by the lake to where the flower clock was. It was a bit of a faff to get across the road, but we made it in the end - as we were standing at the crossing a lady came and stood next to us with a lovely cat in her arms. The cat looked oddly relaxed among quite a lot of people and lots of cars flying by... I can't imagine carrying a cat around in a city to be honest.
Time was knocking on and we were getting a bit grumpy since every restaurant everywhere seemed to sell the same three dishes (cheese, ham, fish). We wandered back over the river and after much fruitless searching and frustration we finally happened upon a restaurant called 'La Matze' which served 'chicken'. Finding a restaurant that serves 'poulet' in Geneva is not as easy as you would imagine, I can assure you!
La Matze, 7 Rue Chapponiere, Geneva
We both had half a roast chicken and fries (very nice) and then we had Movenpick caramel ice cream and mango sorbet (bloody gorgeous). Rose attempted to throw in some French phrases, while I stuck to tried and tested English. It seems to me that greeting someone with 'bonjour' suggests to them that we speak French, whereas if you say 'Hello', they know to speak English. It just saves a lot of confusion in my opinion.
Time was knocking on, so we headed back to the hotel for a shower (it was bloody hot from the moment we arrived), did some planning and then went to bed, where we slept absolutely terribly. We couldn't even watch TV because the only English channels we could get were BBC World News and CNN, both of which recycle their content about every seven minutes and quickly become tedious beyond belief.
We both felt pretty awful on Tuesday morning, and being woken up at 6:30am by some selfish arsehole having a very noisy phone call somewhere in the hotel (it sounded like right outside our door, but probably wasn't) but at least the breakfast was nice. Muesli, croissants and pastries gave us a bit of a boost, and then we were heading back to the train station to catch the train to Gruyeres. This included a change, which needed to be executed within a four minute window, which seemed like an unnecessarily stressful bit of programming! Especially since our train was late... and missing it would consign us to an hour in a place where there was nothing to do and waste an hour of our time in Gruyeres.
Photos taken from the train to Paleziux
Fortunately, we managed to make the connection at Paleziux (despite struggling to find the right platform - once again the signage was a little lacking) and headed on to Gruyeres. The train journey seemed to pass very quickly, perhaps because there was always mountains and lakes to look at out of the huge train windows.
When we arrived at Gruyeres, we were a bit stumped as to where exactly we were supposed to go. The cheese factory was across the courtyard but there wasn't any clear indication of which direction the main village was in. Eventually we found a map and headed up a steep path that was lined with streetlights that looked like they belonged in Victorian England. When we got to a certain point there was a car park and a very steep pedestrian path up to the back of the village.
The hill up to the HR Giger Museum, Bar and the Chateau Gruyeres
View from the hill back towards the mountains.
Again it was already very hot and the steep path wasn't much fun to traverse, but once we got to the top we came out onto the main (pretty much the only) street and headed off to find the HR Giger Museum. On the way we spotted a potential lunch source, and as we walked through the passageway we came across the entrance to the Museum on the right and the Giger Bar on the left.
The first thing you see when you enter the Giger Museum is the amazing reception desk which is modelled according to Giger's aesthetic designs.
Reception Desk at the Musee HR Giger
If you buy the tickets for the museum and the Chateau together it's cheaper (CHF19) which is a good deal because the castle isn't really all that amazing and you wouldn't want to pay top dollar for it!
It was a concern of mine that after all the travelling required to get to the Giger museum it might be a disappointment, or more likely that it wouldn't be of a sufficient size to warrant the time and cost. However, we spent about 75m in there at least, and there was definitely a good number and variety of pieces to view. The only thing that I really hoped to see, that was missing (or maybe we somehow managed to miss it?) was 'Satan 1', the artwork used on the 'To Mega Therion' album by Celtic Frost. Speaking of Celtic Frost, we enquired about Thomas Fisher* (Tom Warrior: ex Celtic Frost frontman) but unfortunately he was in Zurich the day we visited.
(*Tom Fischer was HR Giger's personal assistant up until he died and is now Carmen Giger's assistant)
The museum is quite dark, and in some ways perhaps a little shabby around the edges. It could perhaps do with a bit of a refurb, especially when it comes to the panels around the walls which are coming away here and there and held on with screws in some places. But really the artwork is so impressive that it doesn't really detract too much. We saw so many amazing pieces on display, including a couple of complete Alien suits and two or three Alien heads (presumably either used in, or made as prototypes for the movies).
Almost as soon as we got in there I spotted a guy in a Suicide Commando T-shirt, and we seemed to keep bumping into him everywhere we went thereafter. In one of the rooms there was a curtained off section labelled 'Adults Only', but this didn't seem that much 'worse' than the rest of the museum, it's not like the rest of the museum was 'kiddie friendly', but this area did contain the notorious 'Penis Landscape' which was issued by Dead Kennedy's as a poster with their 'Frankenchrist' album and subsequently got them into a lot of hot water with the relevant authorities due to breaching obscenity laws in the USA.
HR Giger poster distributed by Dead Kennedys in the early 1980s
One of the coolest things in the museum is a 'Harkonnen' table and chairs which were designed for Jodorowsky's failed 'Dune' film project. Also in the picture below you can just see the 'train' designed for the same film (hanging from the ceiling in the perspex box).
One of the last rooms in the museum features four huge paintings which take up the entire wall space, these are the four paintings in 'The Spell' series.
The Spell IV
The Spell II
Seeing these pictures in such massive scale really makes you appreciate the level of detailing that Giger put into his pictures, and perhaps also the tedium of repeating endless tiny details which nevertheless give the final pieces some of their huge Wow! factor.
Elsewhere in the museum there was a separate exhibition of artwork by Martina Hoffmann and Robert Venosa. Venosa was the artist responsible for the artwork used on the first Cynic album and I instantly recognized his style when I saw the picture below.
Robert Venosa
Colibri by Martina Hoffmann
Also, in the loft there is Giger's own personal collection, which features some very weird (and interesting) pieces including a panel made from many keyboard keys and this dress decorated with Giger 'dead baby' faces...
Alongside the many paintings on display there were also a lot of sculptures, including quite a few chairs and a table featuring six crucified Christs as the base (three of which are upside down). In a way I think it's quite cool that you have to travel to Gruyeres to see the museum, it would be great if it was in Geneva of course and a lot more people would see the artwork, but somehow having to make the extra effort (and not being able to park nearby even if you wanted to) made it seem even more interesting and special. Giger bought the Chateau St Germain in 1998, presumably to house his artwork because as far as I can tell he lived in Zurich with his last wife Carmen (who is the director of the Museum). Quite why he bought a place in such a remote spot is unclear...
But perhaps the most remarkable moment of the visit came when (notorious sci-fi hater) Rose turned around to me and suggested perhaps watching 'Alien', you could have knocked me down with a feather...!
After the Giger Museum we walked back down the hill and bought a couple of very cheesy Paninis. They were very nice and the perfect snack to keep us going until dinner, albeit we could have got by with just a little less cheese perhaps - but I guess the Swiss don't really do 'less cheese'!
The bench where we ate our Paninis!
To be honest, Paninis were about the best option for us, as we looked at several restaurants around the village and pretty much every single one sold the same old things: plates of cold meat, fondue, cheese, meringues and cream and soup. Woe betide the Swiss person who doesn't like cheese, their life must be hard.
HR Giger Bar, Gruyeres
Paninis devoured we took ourselves off to the Giger bar for a Coke Zero. At the time it seemed quite expensive, but the longer we stayed in Switzerland we realised that everything is more expensive and CHF11(£9) is pretty normal for two soft drinks! The Giger bar is very cool, but probably looks better at night and again it feels like it might benefit from a bit of a refurb. The 'Harkonnen' chair I sat on was a bit worse for wear, with a big chunk of the rubber seating panel missing, and our table had been repaired with some bright yellow tape, which detracted slightly from the overall aesthetic.
One thing about the bar that we thought could have been better was the choice of music being played, we heard Phil Collins, Bruno Mars and the theme music from Friends... perhaps it would have been better to have had something a little less cheerful, ideally the soundtrack to the original Alien film or the kind of atmospheric music that was playing throughout the museum itself?
The bar is a lot smaller than it looked in photographs, so I can well imagine it getting very busy in the height of the season.
Thankfully the barman let us into the secret location of the toilets... across the road behind an unmarked black door! Here we found some Giger themed graffiti and some very cool doors!
Leaving the Giger bar behind, we headed further up the hill to the Chateau Gruyeres... and to be honest it was fairly underwhelming. There were some good bits, the views in particular, but probably the most interesting thing about the Chateau was the art exhibition there, which isn't exactly a glowing endorsement is it? A lot of these paintings featured the castle in one way or another and I wish I'd taken some pictures because it seems very difficult to find out anything about the exhibition now that we are back home...
Terribly wonky hand painted wall decorations...
Amazing views...
WTF?
Aside from the exhibition of paintings in the upstairs room, the Chateau was also hosting a couple of modern art installations, which were completely out of place and complete bollocks frankly, and sticking modern art pictures up in rooms that are hundreds of years old looks ridiculous AF as well.
The heat wasn't getting any less oppressive and we headed back down the very steep hill to the car park, half expecting to find we'd just missed the train back, but lo and behold luck was on our side and a train was expected shortly. In fact two trains were expected pretty much at the same time going in different directions, but there was only one platform.... we were confused to say the least. However, all became clear when the trains arrived and we realised we got to our train by walking across the track. No really... you'd never be allowed to do that in the UK!
It was another lovely train journey back to Geneva, where we unsuccessfully tried to get some more detailed information about the train times from Neuchatel to La Chaux de Fonds and completely failed to buy some 'alcool' (ostensibly to help us get to sleep!). So we did the only sensible thing and walked back down the hill to the Tourist Information office and asked them where to buy wine (although we asked them something else so as not to appear completely desperate and dependent). We rushed off to the Manor supermarket that was near to the hotel and managed to buy a bottle and a few cans of Smirnoff Ice (and a couple of bars of Swiss chocolate to try).
Thankfully our room was equipped with a fridge, so all the mini-bar goodies were extracted and put to one side and chilled drinks were then on tap! Fridge stocked, we decided to head straight for the burger bar opposite the Tourist Information office and enjoyed a couple of very nice burgers. Our waitress was very nice and funny, and talked me into having the herb fries (which I thought were very nice actually).
Edwards Burgers, Rue Pecolat (off Rue de Mont Blanc)
We finished off our meal with a couple of tubs of Movenpick ice cream, Rose had the Strawberry and I had the Stracciatella, both lovely but rock hard to start with and amazingly still quite hard when we'd got to the bottom despite the air temperature...
After another little wander around we ended up back at the hotel, and decided to sedate ourselves with 'alcool' in the hopes of getting a better night's sleep. Thankfully we did, and oh how we laughed the next morning when I noticed the controls for the air conditioning on the wall.
Tuesday night at the hotel - too bloody hot for words!
Wednesday was the BIG day... a couple of weeks before the trip Rose suggested that I put on the Calibre11 Forum that we were going to Geneva and did anyone have any suggestions for things to do or see while we were there. David at C11 suggested we make the trip to the TAG Heuer HQ and over the next few days managed to get us an appointment to see the museum at La Chaux de Fonds.
This meant another train journey, but it was well worth it. Our appointment was for 2pm, and we left Geneva at 9:15 - we already knew we had to change at Neuchatel and we'd checked that it was okay to leave the station in between. Indeed the Swiss rail tickets are very flexible, you can travel however you want and they are valid for 10 days into the bargain!
It was another hot day as we walked down from the station to the town, and the thought of having to walk back up the massive hill to the station in the heat was less than pleasant, but we managed it.. but first we had a look around Neuchatel. We'd highlighted an Irish bar on our map and we managed to find it relatively easily, but it was closed when we got there and we couldn't remember if it did food or not.
The plan was to stop over at Neuchatel on our way back to Geneva, so we spent a while scoping out possible places to eat. We also sat by the lake for a little while and then walked along the front to a nice little flower garden.
Trying to stay cool under some trees by the lake.
Lakes, big in Switzerland apparently...
Dunno what this is supposed to be all about...
Tyra Banks approved 'Next level fierce!'
Huge slabs of chocolate, of which we had precisely none!
Our time in Neuchatel seemed to fly by and before we knew it we were heading back to the station, but not before we'd stopped at the Migros supermarket and bought ourselves a couple of ham baguettes for lunch. The trek back to the station was fairly arduous, it seemed to have got even hotter and steeper, and when we finally made it to the top we collapsed onto a bench opposite the station and tucked into our baguettes... only to discover that there was a gherkin inside each one. One might think the simple act of removing a gherkin would be sufficient (in much the same way as one might remove a slice of tomato from a sandwich) but sadly, the pungent nastiness remained, even in the places where the gherkin hadn't been. But... it was all we had so we ate it anyway and tried to ignore the revolting aftertaste.
Then it was back to the station and off to La Chaux de Fonds...
We managed to sort out the bus ride fairly easily and arrived in plenty of time for our visit, it was still very hot and we were glad of the water the receptionist offered us on arrival. She also gave us a couple of Goldkenn chocolates (which we saved for later) while we waited for our host Paul Buchs to show us around.
I'm not going to go into much detail here, as I will be posting about this in infinite minutiae on my TAG Heuer Enthusiast blog...
Suffice to say that (the surprisingly youthful) Paul was a splendid host and that the time went by so quickly, but we saw so many amazing things that most people have never seen and will never get to see. I could have spent hours in that museum, though I'm sure Rose would have got bored eventually. Also the museum is so striking, you walk in from the reception and it's like entering a spaceship or something! The lighting is very dramatic, albeit not terribly good for taking photographs - part of me wanted to forget the camera and just experience it, but it was over so quickly I'm glad I've got the photographs.
After our visit to the museum (about 45min) Paul took us around the factory, showing us every department from R&D to prototypes to testing to manufacture... it was a great insight and when it came time to leave we were given two bags of TAG Heuer goodies - sweet!
Originally Paul had planned to take us back to the station, but unfortunately he wasn't able to so after saying our goodbyes we went back out into the heat and walked the short distance back to the bus stop. We couldn't see anywhere to buy a ticket and the bus driver didn't seem very interested so we chanced our arm and got back to the station gratis! Perhaps they don't really bother checking because most of the people on that bus were either living there (with prepaid cards presumably) and any tourists that were staying there would have their free tourist travel passes (as we had for Geneva).
And so it was back to Neuchatel and another bus ride to the base of the funicular... where we struggled in vain to understand the ticket machine. We enlisted the help of a French speaking lady, but she couldn't understand it either so we waited for the (very friendly, indeed you might say he put the 'fun' in 'funicular') driver, who helped us to get our tickets sorted.
The funicular ride was a good ten minutes, taking us up high above the Lac du Neuchatel, but once up there it quickly became apparent there wasn't an enormous amount to do. We went up the viewing tower which offered a fine view of the lake, town and surrounding scenery but as far as the extra height goes was a bit unnecessary. It was a bit like going up the Empire State building and standing on the roof, on a stool.
The funicular and viewing tower (to the left).
There was no funicular back down the mountain for an hour, so we sat under a tree in a deserted kids playground and made some notes for this blog. Then once we got back down we caught the bus back to the train station, deciding along the way that stopping at Neuchatel for dinner wasn't really going to work time-wise, and heading back to the hotel to dump our bags and a quick change before returning to Edwards for another burger (chicken this time) which was rather solid and Bernard Mathews-ish but adequate and a million times nicer than the gherkin infested baguette consumed earlier!
After that we wandered about a bit and then ended up at Willi's Bar where we enjoyed some Movenpick strawberry sorbet and one more drink.
Willi's Bar (Rue de Mont Blanc)
When we got back to the room, it was nicely air-conditioned and we were able to enjoy some drinks and chocolate from the fridge. The creamy 'Cailler' chocolate was quite nice, but the other one (Frey) contained Kirsch liqueur which I hadn't noticed. It didn't taste of cherry, but it did rather taste like those 'rum' flavoured Thorntons that you only eat when you're truly desperate. Hmm... disappointing!
After another reasonable sleep, we headed into the last day of our Swiss adventure - stopping off for one last muesli and croissant breakfast before handing our bags over to one of the multitude of ladies behind the reception desk. Packing had been a bit of a mare, mainly because we hadn't anticipated the need to fit all our TAG Heuer goodies in our case. Thankfully everything got home in one piece, but my laptop bag weighed a ton with all the TAG books inside!
So the last day was really our first chance to look around Geneva proper, and because time was limited we made a plan of attack and pretty much stuck to it. Our first port of call was the station, where we caught a tram (finally we got to use our Geneva travel cards!) to the United Nations building, outside of which is a large broken chair sculpture thing. Absolutely no idea what it's supposed to be, but there it is.
After we'd shot a couple of pictures we crossed the road and followed everyone else... then realised that we were kind of inside the outer railings of the United Nations building and went back out to the pavement. There was no indication of which way the lake was (even though it was reasonably nearby) and inevitably we chose the wrong way and wasted ten or fifteen minutes coming back and going the other way.
As we walked down this road we came across a park and went through there (it was hot yet again so we were glad of the shade from the trees) and walked around the edge so that we knew where the road was we were trying to follow. Eventually we found the lake and started to walk South to where the 'highest' boat station was positioned.
Well, we walked and walked and sweated and walked some more... to the point where we were convinced we had missed the boat stop altogether. Along the way we found an art installation, although it was rather hard to see what it was from the ground.
Still we walked, past the ladies doing Thai Chi and the guy doing yoga with his beat box... and still the sun beat down on us. It was a low point, it was beautiful by the lake, but it was so bloody hot and we were getting a bit fed up with it to be truthful.
Then, finally, we found the boat station and it was indeed the first one - hurrah! We caught three boats in total, one after the other, which took us from de Chateaubriand to Geneve Plage to Paquis to Molard.
Now it was time to find the TAG Heuer boutique, and this proved slightly more troublesome than expected. The road it was on was between two larger roads so it wasn't the first road you'd choose to walk down, indeed it seemed like we'd walked all around it over the last few days but never actually found it, until we took the map and looked for it.
It was actually rather small in comparison to the ones in Sheffield and London, and didn't really have anything particularly unusual - which was a shame as I'd hoped they might have something special in there. Still, Rose tried on the Bella Hadid Lady Link Ceramic which she liked a lot and I tried on a couple of watches that I hadn't tried on before. The lady in there was very nice and friendly as well and we talked to her about our visit to the factory the day before.
TAG Heuer Boutique Geneve, Rue Robert-Ceaud
After this we headed to the older part of Geneva, up some steps and another very steep hill then some more steps... then left towards the cathedral. The cathedral was okay, but not that exciting really - it looked a lot like the ones we have in England, but slightly less elaborate perhaps...
St Pierre Cathedral, Place du Bourg-de-Four
On leaving the cathedral, I discovered that I had lost the map and went back in to see if I had dropped it somewhere. In the meantime Rose found it again outside on a bench on the opposite side of Place du Bourg-de-Four, which was a relief! The sun was still beating down and we were getting hotter and hotter and a little bit irritable...
Tavern de la Madeleine, Rue de Toutes-Ames
We headed downhill and came across a restaurant which did ice cream, we grabbed a couple of waffle cones, one with coconut ice cream and one with stracciatella. It wasn't Movenpick though, and while it was okay, it definitely wasn't as nice. Rose was rather reluctant to give me my stracciatella back as well, so I mostly ate the coconut. While we were sitting there a little bird came looking for food so I gave it a bit of waffle cone which it gamely battled with and devoured before it flew off.
After visiting the smallest toilets in Geneva, we headed off once again in search of the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery. I must admit I was a bit hesitant about visiting this place, since everything that I'd seen suggested it was very high end and expensive and in England we might have felt a little out of place looking at clocks that cost £29,000. But once we'd found the place and realised that there were some more affordable pieces in the window I felt a little more relaxed about it and in truth the lady in there was very friendly and welcoming.
When she came to talk to us I explained that we had seen the M.A.D. Gallery on the Watches TV Youtube channel and so she got an idea of where we were coming from straight away. There were some amazing pieces in there, lights that swayed when you walked by them, a clock which told the time using steel balls and ramps and several MB&F watches which included the MoonMachine 2 Sarpaneva and the Aquapod which was pretty impressive. Also on the wall there was a clock which was made up of about a hundred separate clock faces which coreographed themselves to make one big time display.
I think this may be an earlier model as the one we saw definitely had more clock faces on it.
The other particularly memorable piece in the window was the levitating lightbulb which utilises magnets to facilitate it's floatiness and solar power to illuminate the LEDs inside.
Clever stuff at the MB&F M.A.D. Gallery...
We stayed in the M.A.D. Gallery a little while and managed to leave without knocking anything over (though I did come quite close when I was backing away from an exhibit to try and see it properly), and then set off in search of the Reformation Wall. Again this proved a little trying, but we got there in the end. It was baking hot still and we were very happy to sit under the trees for a little while.
As we'd planned earlier, we managed to find the tram stop on the other side of the park where the reformation wall was and caught a ride back up to near the station. We got out at 'Coutane' and visited the Manor shopping centre again to check out the restaurant (and the chocolate) but didn't fancy it. But from there we spotted a place called 'Alfredos' which looked rather nice and we headed inside to get some lunch. Unfortunately our waitress didn't speak very good English (a lot better than our French to be fair) and it was a bit hard to explain that we wanted to share a pizza and have fries each. We got there in the end though, and then she brought us two wine glasses to drink our warm Coke Zeros from...
Alfredos, Rue de Chantapoulet
Alfredos seems to be the only restaurant in Geneva that does Hawaiian pizza, and it was actually very nice, although even for two it was a bit on the large side. The fries were pretty good too, and it wasn't too pricey, considering it was probably the nicest place we'd been in overall.
By this point we were definitely starting to get a bit frazzled, the weather wasn't letting up at all and we were getting to the point where we just wanted to go home. We had a couple of hours left before we needed to collect our bags so we decided to see if we could get the tram to 'Jonction' where two rivers are supposed to meet in a dramatic way (one river being blue, one being green).
We got out of the tram and there was no sign of the river in either direction, so we started walking towards a bridge and found it, but couldn't work out how to get to the right place. We started walking to the right but quickly seemed to be stumped by a dead end... then, noticing the direction of flow (which I wrongly assumed was moving towards the lake) we started walking back the other way. Either way we were never going to reach the bridge we needed to get to actually see the effect as it was miles away (and we probably wouldn't have had time to get there anyway).
X marks where we should have been, the dotted line shows our pointless meandering!
Eventually we admitted defeat. It was too hot and too frustrating to waste any more time when we could be sitting in a nice cool bar having one last drink before heading home, so that's what we did. Sort of...
M.A.M.C.O., Rue des Vieux-Grenadiers
On the way we passed the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which we'd completely forgotten about (and which I'm sure would have been a better use of time than hopelessly trying to find the bridge we needed to see the bloody river properly), plus it might have been air-conditioned!
The last thing we did before hitting the bar one final time was go back and find a T-shirt Rose had seen on one of our walk abouts. I had a pretty good idea where it was and we found the street fairly easily, but the T-shirt had gone from the window. Fortunately I was able to explain to the lady in the shop what we were looking for and she still had them in a couple of sizes. So while Rose tried them on I took a photo of the cuckoo clocks on the wall, and then we went back to Willi's.
Cuckoo clocks in ALPtitude on Rue des Alpes
Willi's is a nice bar, but cool it was not. Indeed, as we sat sweltering with our Coke Zeros and Movenpick mango sorbet we remarked how few places in Geneva have air conditioning and how they should get some as a matter of urgency. By now the rot had set in and we were ready to leave, and so we headed back to the hotel for the final time to collect our bags.
The journey back to the airport was uneventful, once we got there though our fratchetiness reached new heights! There was a display showing information but as we didn't know which gate we were supposed to go to we were a bit stuck. Eventually we realised that we needed to go to the special Easyjet part of the airport and then we were through into the departure lounges.
For some reason, best known to the Swiss, all you seem to buy in there was chocolate. There literally wasn't a bottle of water to be found anywhere and it wasn't until our gate was announced that we encountered a shop selling last minute chocolates and, remarkably, bottled water! Possibly the most expensive water we have ever bought though at CHF5.70 - but amazingly that was the exact amount of coins we had in our pockets, so that was something.
Earlier, in the airport, Rose had bought a copy of Marie-Claire magazine for a frankly shocking CHF12.90 (£10.32). As we now had two hours to kill and she was reading a different magazine, I picked it up and flicked through it, but could find nothing to read in it whatsoever. Considering the situation, that was pretty disheartening... because frankly with two hours to kill in an airport you'll read pretty much any old shit!
Still the time passed relatively quickly and we boarded our flight on time... only to then sit on the runway for twenty minutes FOR NO GOOD REASON. It didn't help that a couple of rows in front of us there was an absolute knobhead Englishman explaining to his Swiss neighbour why England was better than Switzerland. Truly shameful.
Finally we took off and once in the air we both listened to our iPods to kill the time. As we approached home the pilot informed us that it was windy, cool and raining in Luton - which was actually nice to hear after the baking hot Geneva weather we'd encountered over the previous days.
The pilot told us to fasten our seat belts for our final descent, but we seemed to take ages to actually start going down nearer the ground... it must have been a quarter of an hour at least. And then we started getting buffeted by the wind, which wasn't that nice... and finally we started dropping down and down and at last we were on home turf!
After another long wait for the bus to arrive (which seemingly visited every corner of the flipping airport before dropping us off!) we were deposited with our (by now) very heavy luggage and started trudging back to car, ever mindful of the approaching car parking deadline and the hefty charge for being late.
The drive home wasn't very pleasant, it was raining heavily and there was a lot of spray, not to mention it was very windy... indeed as we got nearer home it seemed the wind had really battered the trees with bits of them laying all over the road.
It was about 1:15am when we got home, but we stayed up anyway because we really both needed a shower and we ate garlic bread while we caught up with an episode of Ink Master before finally calling it a night at about 3AM.
Without a doubt, Geneva has surpassed Zurich as our best ever holiday, but I can't say it's inspired me to travel the world. If there's one thing travel is good for it's reminding you how much you love being at home, but I have to say that I did think the flying wasn't as bad as I remember, it's just all the hassle that goes with it.
