The flight from London to Geneva is about 1 hour 20 minutes. Security and check in plus immigration adds another 2 hours; the train to the airport outside London adds another hour or so and the Tube to the train station ... Add that the Internet tells us to go to Kings Cross instead of St Pancras (same tube station, different overground station) and the ticket machine at St Pancras only sold weekly tickets. You get the picture! At the other end the train into town was quick and spacious and our hotel was right near the station.
Geneva is in the French speaking part of Switzerland and is famous for its lake and its Convention. The lake is very pretty and it is fed by the melting snow from the mountains around. All through the city there are fountains - both ornamental and drinking fountains that are fed by the lake water and even in mid summer - (with temperatures of 33 degrees) the water was cold. The headquarters of the United Nations are in Geneva and the number of people having photos taken at the gates of the building in colourful national dress indicate that all over the world people believe in the UN ideals - if not always happy with the performance.
On Sunday we took the train to Lausanne, which is also on the same lake. Lausanne is much more hilly than Geneva and the lake is downhill (not surprisingly) while the Old Town,where you find all the old buildings, cathedral and so on, was uphill. We walked down to the lake to a lovely old fishing village called Ouchy. Walking uphill is not my forte, so we caught the local bus up to the old town. We still then had to negotiate about 50 steps to get up to Notre Dame Cathedral. I felt like having a T-shirt printed when we finally got to the Cathedral. Most of the Cathedrals used to be Catholic but are now Protestant. In this one we saw the chair that Calvin used to use. I'm not sure if he liked all the stained glass,(which was beautiful) as I'm sure he preferred simple churches. Later in the day we found a smaller church dedicated to Mary Magdalene that apparently he liked better. So did I - it was more peaceful and simple (still had stained glass). However it had a neon sign on the front wall advertising "OPEN" which seemd a little incongruous.
We had a good 4 days trip and it was lovely spending this time with Luke. I'm now in my final days in London and leave on the Baltic Cruise in a few days.
