Geneva, Switzerland – Day 17
July 11, 2015
Today we slept in a little bit for the first time in I don’t know how long after getting a full nights sleep. Say what?! It was AMAZING. The only way it could have been any better is if the neighbors weren’t having a rager and it wasn’t 90 degrees in the apartment. Other than that, I slept like a baby. Or a rock. One or the other. I needed it.
We got up had a quick bite to eat and headed to Mont Saleve by metro. The metro system in Geneva is not nearly as nice or as easy to use as the one in Barcelona, but it gets the job done. And I don’t think anyone buys tickets because they don’t check tickets at all so we got pretty much free transportation all weekend which was so great in such an expensive place.
We got to Mont Saleve at the end of the line and it towered over us with a vertical face. Luckily we were tacking the gondola up to the top. We boarded the gondola with about 20-25 other people and made a very rapid ascent up all 4500 feet of Mont Saleve. Mont Saleve is also known as the Balcony of Geneva and is technically a French prealp, but for all intents and purposes we like to think that we hiked in the Swiss Alps, so shhhhhh. We got off and were met with an amazing panoramic view of Geneva. Stunning.
Then, we decided which trail we were going to hike. We settled on the 2 hour circuit of Telepherique and set off.
Along the way we saw a lot of incredible views from several different vantage points.
We saw a Buddhist Monastery at the top and a lot of prayer flags hung in the trees.
There is a bar and restaurant Observatory at the top as well.
My favorite part of the hike was all of the herds of cattle though! Initially we heard some ringing and thought, “Wind chimes?” But quickly realized that they were real cow bells! And we actually got to pet the cows because they were so close! Mission accomplished! (I have always wanted to pet a cow haha) ;p
Unfortunately the trails are not very well marked and we had a very difficult time finding and staying on the trail so our two hour loop turned into a four hour out and back in which we almost succeeded in inadvertently hiking down to the bottom of the mountain! Oops!
We made it back eventually and took the gondola back down and grabbed a bus ride back home to shower.
We decided to get some pizza for dinner from a place below our apartment because it would be relatively inexpensive. The owner mistook us for 16 year olds when we tried to buy wine, we told him we were 20 and then he told us we were beautiful and gave it to us for free. Weird? I think yes. But we’ll take the free wine.
This morning when we were waiting for a bus transfer we met a kid our age from California who goes to USC who has family in Geneva and comes here every summer and who wanted to meet up tonight. So after dinner we decided to meet up with him because we figured he would know where to go. So we met up with him and went to a surprisingly expensive rooftop bar for an hour before heading to a club in a nearby hotel. It was a fun night, but you can always feel cultural differences between the US and other countries between how we dance etc and how they dance etc. Between Spain and Switzerland too. Interesting.
Tomorrow we head back to Barcelona! Yay for normal prices!
xoxo J