Erin’s parents are here…well, they’re not actually here right now; they’ve been in France for the last 5 days and are returning to Amsterdam this evening. Her parents stayed with us for about 4 days before heading off to a tour of the Loire Valley in France and will be in Amsterdam again for the rest of this week until they leave Saturday. John took last week off work but is back to work this week. However, he's just in the Amsterdam office and will be working normal 8-hour days. Thus, we are in the middle of a vacation, kind of.
Since Erin’s parents left Thursday morning for France, we decided to take a 4-day weekend trip to Switzerland. We drove, so that took up two of our days. The drive was a bit longer than the computer directions had estimated: closer to 11 hours than 8 ½. Perhaps this had to do with road construction and the fact that, at one point on our way to Switzerland, it took us almost 2 hours to drive 12 km! The drive was definitely worth it. We didn’t get to see much of Switzerland, but the Geneva and Lake Geneva area is absolutely gorgeous! The weather was perfect, too. After the last couple weeks of cold, rainy weather in Amsterdam we were ecstatic to enjoy weather in the upper 70s and lots of sunshine! We definitely want to visit other areas of the country and stay for longer than a couple days sometime.
We stayed almost on the border of France and Switzerland right near Geneva. While the apartment we rented was cheap and very convenient to Geneva, staying right on the French side of the border meant that we had to cross over and go through the border patrol each day. Yep, Switzerland is not part of the EU so there are still border patrols. After arriving the first evening the border patrol just waved us through. However, the following morning they motioned for us to pull over to a parking spot. The guard did not speak any English and it is a wonder we even figured out what he was asking for. We had our passports ready to hand over, but then he wanted something else having to do with the car. After unloading everything from the glove box and extracting every sort of important-looking piece of paper we finally found what we thought was the insurance, but that’s not what he wanted. We then handed him what looked like something saying John is legally renting the car with an official signature on it at the bottom. That must be what he wanted since he took it, along with our passports, inside the tiny office. He came back a few minutes later, returned our things, and waved us on. Whew. All the car documents are in Dutch so we don’t really know if he actually figured out what he was looking for on that piece of paper we gave him. The second day the guards stopped us and started saying something to us in French. John told them we speak English. Then they asked if we speak German or Italian (we guess those are the only other languages some of the guards on duty spoke). We said “no” and they just let us continue on our way.
Another down side of Switzerland not being part of the EU is that they do not use Euro currency. When we went into Geneva the first evening we were there to eat dinner, we ended up parking in a parking garage. It was actually really cheap since it was a week night, but when we were ready to leave at about 10:30 we discovered the parking garage does not take credit cards. Soooo, we walked around for a while until we found an ATM and took some cash out. After returning the second time to the parking garage we found out that the machine also did not take 50 franc bills unless the total amount owed is 30 francs or more. We owed only about 3 francs. Hmmm. Of course the ATM machines do not distribute amounts less than 50 francs so we decided we might just have to buy something at McDonalds to break our 50 franc bill. We hadn’t had dessert so we thought a McFlurry would be perfect…and it was. We ate the ice cream on our third walk back to the parking garage, now with appropriate change in hand, and finally got our car out of the garage. Thank goodness for McDonalds – it was about the only thing open that late at night!
Our first full day was pretty uneventful, if you can believe that. Well, except for being stopped by the border patrol. We toured Geneva in the absolutely beautiful weather. The old part of town is really pretty. We love the Mediterranean architecture, red roofs, stone streets and fountains everywhere. Jean Calvin, the famous Reformer, was from Geneva so there are lots of things to see involving the Reformation in the city. We went to Bastions Park and saw the Reformation Wall with statues of all the famous Reformers. We also saw a chaotic group consisting of about 15 2-year olds with 4 adults and several strollers built to hold 4 kids at a time and a few people playing chess on the giant chess boards in the park.
We visited the Espace St-Pierre which includes the cathedral where Calvin preached for about 30 years and a tower you can climb to see a great view over the whole city and lake. There are some archeological ruins underneath the cathedral and plaza that were really interesting. Some of the unearthed ruins date back to the 1st century before Christ! The International Museum of the Reformation is also in Espace St-Pierre. It’s housed in a really pretty, large old mansion and is very informative. We didn’t actually go through the entire museum since we were getting hungry and Erin was starting to get really tired, so we left the museum in search of sustenance. We had baguettes for lunch every single day, but they were so good (and easy to find). There’s a park, the Promenade de l’Observatiore, near the old part of town that is on a hill and overlooks some of the city and the Jet d’eau, Geneva’s famous fountain in the lake. We decided to eat there and lay down in the shade for a short rest before going to see the Jet d’eau, which shoots 7 tons of water 140 meters into the air and was built in 1891, up close.
We got to the Jet d’eau just in time. After we walked out on the dock, got a bit wet, and took pictures of the famous landmark we headed to the other side of the city across the water. Soon after reaching the other side we noticed the fountain was no longer on. We read that sometimes they turn it off during gusty winds. We think it might have been getting a bit gusty just as we were on the dock near the fountain because that’s why we got so much wetter than the previous tourists. It was so sunny though that we dried pretty fast. The rest of the day we just walked around the city, enjoying the sights and the parks and noticing all the expensive cars: Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls Royce…we saw them all! People in Geneva have some money.
Our second day involved driving around Lake Geneva. We stopped at the Chateau de Chillon, a castle dating from Roman times and built up a lot in the 11th-13th centuries. The castle sits on a rock right on a cliff of Lake Geneva and there are great views of the Alps from the towers. It’s quite a big place and we spent several hours wandering around. We stopped again further around the lake in a town called Vevey. Saturday was the day for weddings in Switzerland. We saw a few wedding parties as we were walking along the lake shore in Vevey and passed a couple vehicle processions as we were driving. The processions always begin with a car covered in flowers and everyone honks to wish the bride and groom congratulations. Absolutely everyone we saw in Vevey was eating ice cream. There were even people eating ice cream standing in line to order more ice cream! We decided to join in and got a couple cones ourselves. Apparently the west and north shores of Lake Geneva are good places to grow vineyards and some good wine comes from that area. It has something to do with being in the area between the lake and the mountains. We passed a lot of vineyards on our drive back to Geneva. We arrived in town just in time for dinner and Erin finally got to try some of the “famous” filets de perches that we kept reading and hearing about. It was OK. Maybe the place we decided to eat at wasn’t exactly first class, but we got to sit outside while we dined.
Oh, Erin almost ran into a motorcycle while trying to reverse out of a parking spot at a rest stop just as about 50 bikers pulled into all the spots surrounding our car, but we won’t go into that. Nothing too alarming happened, other than a few bikers getting a bit angry at Erin before she finally got the car out of the spot and sped away.
So, in summary, our trip to Switzerland was beautiful! It was all about being outside and soaking up the sunshine before returning to Amsterdam, where it is rainy and cold…still.
