Weeeelp, I'm guilty again of not writing in forever (this time I think it's more than past due). My friend Megan and I spent the weekend in Geneva, Switzerland and Chamonix, France, where the views are surreal and delicious chocolates and cheeses are abundant. Here are some anecdotes from the trip!
Viaje de Ida (Trip there): Departure from Salamanca's bus station at 8:30 p.m. Megan and I met earlier and walked to the station in a downpour, under the shelter of our umbrellas. It was dark and the first time that I decided to take that route to arrive to the bus station, and needless to say, I couldn't find the street I wanted. So, (as is a typical "Katie O" moment), I decided to turn down a street in the general direction of the station. Megan was a little worried about making it on time, so I crazily said "Aren't you glad I'm your tour guide?" and turned around, offering her a look of sheer hysteria in a valiant effort to comfort her. Needless to say, the whole tour guide thing kind of stuck and became a theme to our trip.
My First Sleepover in an Airport:
Well, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but there is a little more to this story. I dozed on and off throughout the night on the cold, linoleum floor, switching from backpack to jacket as a pillow. At around 5:30 in the morning, I woke up, and as if I were dreaming, my vision slowly came into focus and I became aware of my surroundings. What I found was a line of passengers waiting to board a plane staring at me, the girl in pajamas and a frog eye mask groggily rolling over in a post wake-up daze and.......lying on the Spanish flag. Awkward.
Megan and I lucked out (that or we're just secretly psychics) and we slept one gate over from our gate for the flight to Geneva. In the morning, we had coffee and donuts (2.50 euros for a donut....that's a little steep...) and then hopped on our 9:50 a.m. flight to Geneva!
Day One in Geneva:
Despite the fact that Switzerland will rape your bank account, they do have some cool deals! One of those is a free train to downtown if you fly into the Geneva airport. Megan and I went back and forth and back and forth in the train station trying to figure out which platform to get onto, and finally a worker who didn't speak English but spoke a little Spanish and insisted that we should choose Barca over Real Madrid told us the right train.
Our first stop was the tourism office to purchase tickets for the next day's excursion to Chamonix, France, home of Mont Blanc. Afterwords, we wandered around for a bit and then checked into our hostel (which was surprisingly nice as far as hostels go).
The outside of our hostel
Hostel room
After checking in, we were hungry. We decided to start walking to the Palace of the Nations and look for food on the way, but tour guide Katie got so focused in getting to the Palace that she almost forgot to feed herself and Megan. We went into this cute little cafe, said "Bonjour" and sat down. A waiter came over and without us saying a word more than "Bonjour", he said "hola" and proceeded to explain to us in Spanish that we had arrived to late to eat (it was around 3:15 p.m...we clearly weren't in Spain anymore...also, I'm still not sure why he thought we were Spanish and not Americans...) and recommended a market down the street to eat (called Coop). We had chicken sandwiches and water (mine was chicken curry!).
The Palace of the Nations and the Incomplete Chair
After the palace, we came across a beautiful garden.
Megan in a tree!
After the garden, we walked along the lake for a bit, and a French family asked us to take a picture of them. After Megan took the picture, I used some of my newly acquired French (which is the bare minimum) to ask them to take a picture. I said, "Vous pouvez, S'il vous plait?" and pointed to the the button to take a picture on my camera. Not exactly the most eloquent of sentences that I've said, but it works! Below is the picture that the man took.
We went downtown next, looking for the historic district, but of course got distracted by the shopping. I was naughty and bought some winter boots and a jacket, thinking of the cold to come for Saturday's excursion to Mont Blanc. We ate dinner at a cute Italian restaurant called "Molino", splitting a cheese pizza and a bottle of water.
Excursion to Mont Blanc:
Wow. I can honestly say that the views that I saw on Saturday were the most incredible views I've seen in my life. Hands down. The tour guide wasn't so impressive, but that didn't matter.
We woke up at 6:50 a.m. and headed down to the bus station, witnessing an amazing sunrise on the way.
After an hour and a half bus ride to Chamonix, France (they didn't even check our passports....) we took a gondola up to Mont Blanc. When we passed the poles on the way up, the gondola kind of sort of flung itself vertically (not 90 degrees of course, otherwise we would've smashed the poor people in the back), and shocked everybody. Luckily, I was just getting my camera out to document how jammed we were in the cable car and was able to capture Megan's expression of sheer terror.
It was really cold at the top, but views like this made it worth it.
After the Mont Blanc experience came lunch in L'M, a cute Brasserie in Chamonix. I had a salad with croutons, cheese, hard boiled egg and bacon to start, followed by chicken with mashed potatoes and mushrooms and the "dessert of the day", chocolate cake with melted vanilla ice cream on the side. They must've known I would be there that day because the dessert was heaven in my mouth.
After lunch, we had free time before taking the bus home since the train wasn't running to go to Mer de Glacier (we got a 10 swiss Franc refund for that...something tells me that that is highly un-proportional given the price of the overall trip and the fact that the train is basically 1/3 of the excursion). We thought about shopping, but decided that we were looking more for souvenirs from Switzerland than from France, so we ended up sitting down on the steps of a church and contemplating this amazing view.
So, speaking of our tour guide... Not only was he pretty grumpy most of the tour, he left without waiting for people multiples. First, he left for lunch and left a couple behind and then we left at 4:45 p.m. sharp from Chamonix even though four people had been left behind. It's a 300 euro taxi trip to go from Chamonix to Geneva! YIKES!
We decided to splurge for dinner Saturday night, and went to Restaurante Les Armures for fondue and salad. We ordered red wine and the salad had goat cheese and ham. So delicious! The only college-budget part to it was that the only thing we dipped in the cheese was the bread that came with it. No meat for us (minus the ham in the salad...dirp).
Día tres: Ginebra -----> Madrid.
We left the hostel by 10 on Sunday and decided to wander to the "art district". We didn't find the pacman string (not sure if it's only up at night or during a specific season), but we did find a park with giant chess boards and the reformation wall!
Chess in the park!
Reformation Wall
After tiring out, we decided to call it a day on the touring (or call it a trip, I suppose) and we sat down on a bench by the river to do a little reading.
Well, as you know is a theme to my trips. Something always has to go wrong...or almost wrong. When we got to the airport (really early), we lazed around and did a little browsing in the stores. Then, we decided to go through security. When we got there, the security agent asked Megan if she was "traveling tomorrow" as in Monday the 22nd and not Sunday the 21st. UH OH! Megan had booked the wrong flight. Sooooo we had a brief moment of stress but then went downstairs and changed the ticket. It was more expensive for her to change the ticket to Sunday than to buy a new one, so she had to pay for a new ticket, buuuutttt, the important thing was that we got home.
Last night, we stayed NH Pacifico, a hotel close to the bus station (and REALLY nice for the price..especially when you divide it between two!). We arrived at midnight, and woke up at 5:50 to make sure we made it to the station on time for our 7 a.m. bus. I slept most of the way, but kept thinking that when I got home it would be bed time and not time to get ready for the rest of the school day!
That's a wrap!
<3 Katie
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