Geneva Fail = Annecy Win

So my friends Cara (United States), Krista (Canada) and Camila (Brazil) and I all decided to go to Geneva for the weekend. A rather last minute decision, but all booked our train tickets and rooms at a hostel. Bright and early on Saturday morning we all met at the train station, well all of us but Krista, who slept through her alarm.

As the three of us got on to the train we wondered what the weekend would bring, and if Krista (who had yet to get a cell phone) would try to get on to a later train. After around 2 hours or so we arrived in Geneva. It was raining and gray and all gloomy. Perfect. After a decent amount of time walking in the rain we found our hostel and dropped off our bags. Time for lunch!


So here's a little tidbit of information about Switzerland: it's really expensive. Everything costs a lot more than they do in France (even with the exchange of currency into Swiss Francs). Out of general curiosity we went into a McDonalds, and it was 8 francs for a Big Mac. Not a Big Mac meal, just the hamburger! That's around $10 Canadian!!! WTF??? We settled on the plat du jour from a Italian restaurant (moderately priced).

After that we ventured to the United Nations building. It was pretty cool, but besides that and the Tamil Tigers protest going on outside, not too much to do. We then walked around the lake to "old town"Geneva. The older section of town is quite pretty with some old buildings and a great view of the rest of the town. We actually went inside a church that Calvin used to preach in (that was pretty interesting). Another highligth was the wall dedicated to all the Protestant martyrs (Thomas Cromwell was on it among others). After spending some hours wandering we made our way back to the hostel. As I checked my facebook using their wifi we realised Krista HAD come to Geneva and was wondering waiting for us to contact her via internet. oops.

We met up and went for dinner. In the end we figured "screw it" and had a fairly expensive dinner of fondue (when in Switzerland!). While incredibly delishes, it was legitimately only cheese and bread, my stomach sort of regretted the decision afterwards. After that we decided that we had had enough of Geneva and that the next day we would exchange our train tickets and head to Annecy, France.

The next morning, after a pretty good breakfast courtesy of the hostel, we took to the streets of Geneva in an attempt to buy cute little Swiss chocolates. Mission accomplished, they didn't even make it back to France. We then took the train to Annecy. Not after much difficulty though in trying to exchange our tickets (why is nothing ever easy?). 

Once we arrived in Annecy, we knew we had made the right decision. Annecy is BEAUTIFUL! It's known as the Venice of France because it has a river that runs through it and does indeed look very Venice-like. It is clearly a huge tourist attraction as there are many adorable shops, cafes and restaurants everywhere. It's also a very historic town and has 3 castles in it! I can not stress how gorgeous it was, and how you must go there!! It has castles, mountains, beaches and a lake. I mean c'mon!

While walking around, I had the well-balanced lunch of salted caramel gelato. Then we rented out a paddle boat and toured a bit around the lake. For dinner we went to a little crepe shop and I had a savoury crepe with bechamel sauce, ham and mushrooms. We would have stayed longer were it not for our train.

Oh hai castle!

My god was the train packed! Cara and I were forced to sit in between six 16 year olds from the Czech Republic. They were very loud and very excited to be talking to two 20 year olds from North America. Many pictures were taken and they tried to teach us words in Czech. It was funny and awkward, but they were very nice (even if they did try to get us to say dirty things in Czech-we figured it out pretty fast).

As I arrived home I was relieved to find that my internet hotspot was back up! Thank god! I procrastinated a bit then went to bed. While Geneva was sort of underwhelming, Annecy definitely made up for it.

Fun Facts/ random musings:
-"Ahoy" means hi in Czech. "Ano" means yes.

- The Swiss must be the most punctual people on earth. There are clock/watch stores everywhere! They're like our Tim Hortons!

-Is the cow the national animal of Switzerland? They have cow stuffies and stuff everywhere as well.

-Honestly, go to Geneva for the afternoon, no longer. It's kind of a boring city. We hit all the tourist attractions in 4 hours.