Month: October 2016

We initially went to Lausanne because they have a satellite office for Starbucks.  We had a tour scheduled for 9:30am, but got there kind of early, so we walked down the road and took in some of the sights near the office.  There are lockers in the train station, which our luggage fit into, which was a lifesaver.  It was $9 (Swiss Francs), but so worth it so we didn’t have to carry all of our stuff around.  We stopped at a park that had mancala in it! We went back to starbucks (no pictures from this part of the trip, sorry) about 15 minutes before we were supposed to be there, and the person who answered the door asked us to come back.  So we went to starbucks around the corner while waiting.  When we came back, we were greeted with open arms.  They were very excited to show us the (small) office and what they do.  We had a brief tour (the office was really small, so it was quick), then were taken into the kitchen area for a “cupping.”  This is quality assurance in the coffee world.  We were handed an apron and a spoon and told to grab a spittoon to take with us (they were on wheels).  There were bowls of coffee beans and 6 small cups of coffee, brewed from those beans.  We watched as one of the employees showed us that you take a spoonful of coffee, make sure to slurp it and get it to the back of your mouth to ensure it gets to the taste buds in the back of your mouth, then swish it around in your mouth, then spit it into the spittoon.  The employees did this 6 times per bowl (there were about 20 bowls), but we just tried a few from each country.  The people who were working would take notes after each, and if something seemed off, they would compare notes.  After the cupping, we were taken into a meeting room and shown a slideshow about what that office does.  This small office buys all of the coffee for EVERY STARBUCKS IN THE WORLD. After the slideshow, as we were leaving, again, everyone was very welcoming and said they were happy that we came in.  The man who toured us told us to reach out to him if we made it to Amsterdam (where there is another office), or if we needed help when we got to Germany.  He told us that the waterfront was “just at the bottom of the hill,” so we decided to walk toward the waterfront.  It was actually quite a ways down the hill, and realized that when Swiss people say “just over there,” it is actually further than you expect.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we were very hungry, so we decided to get some food.  After looking at a lot of the menus, we decided on pizza, which was SO GOOD at Boccalino.  The pizzas are named after celebrities and they have Pharell Williams, Lady Gaga, George Cloony and Barack Obama, for example.  We chose the John Kerry pizza and it was delicious.  This was also the first full meal we had in Switzerland (not counting those hot dogs from the day before).  After eating and grabbing a few souvenirs, we walked to the water front.  They had checkers AND chess in the park.  It seems that all of the parks in this city had some sort of giant game.  When we decided to head up to Montreux, we thought about taking the bus up the hill, but then decided to walk (I think it was about 0.7 miles, all uphill).  We grabbed our stuff from the lockers and moved onto the next part of our journey.

Neither one of us had slept well for the days coming up to the trip, and we had a super quick layover at Reykjavik airport.  When we booked the flight, we were concerned about the 35 minute layover.  Wardell tweeted Iceland air and was told it should be fine because it was a small airport.  However, when we arrived, there was an issue with the doors of the plane opening properly, and we were not able to get off right away.  As soon as we got off the plane, we ran to the passport check area and had to wait.  Our flight had already started boarding and was set to leave in 15 minutes! When we were almost to the front, a man came up and asked if he could cut in front of us because his flight was boarding.  I let him know that ours had already started boarding, and it was set to leave very soon.  We got through the check area and ran to our gate (which luckily was close by).  Then we had to stand in line to wait.  After all of that, we had to hurry up and wait for the plane to even board!

Needless to say, when we got to Geneva, we were exhausted.  However, we knew we only had one night there, so wanted to at least see the city briefly.  We got a free train ticket from the Geneva airport into the city.  Our hotel was 600 meters from the train station.  It didn’t look that far on paper, but when you have all of your luggage, it seems very long.  Luckily at that point, I still had my backpack (I’ll share story about this when we get to Germany).  We got to the hotel and dropped off our stuff and decided to try to see the fountain Jet D’Eau.  We had seen it shoot up in the air on the way to the hotel, so thought it would be fun to go to the base.  The hotel we stayed at included a public transit pass, so we decided to take the bus, as it was a bit of a walk.  We found out that as long as you’re connected to wifi when you download a map on google maps, it will still work, even when you’re offline, so that was very helpful throughout the trip.  We saw the fountain shoot up once again while we were on the way.  When we got there, we waited for about 30 minutes before leaving and actually never saw it go off again (photo of the base of the fountain below), but it was a fun walk and lake Geneva was beautiful. On the way there, we had seen a lot of small food carts and I thought the food would be better at these than at a restaurant.  So we went on an adventure to find a cash machine, which seemed more difficult than it should have been.  This was because people will tell you that it’s “just down the road,” and this does not always mean within a few blocks down the road.  We asked 3 different people and finally found the bank after walking multiple blocks (and getting distracted at a dress shop on the way).  After we got the cash, we headed back towards the waterfront and stopped at one of the little carts and ordered some hot dogs.  These were disappointing, and I learned that I was wrong about the food from these carts being better (although it was less expensive than a restaurant would have been).  After this disappointing meal and a $4.50 (Swiss Francs) sprite, we decided to head back to the area where our hotel was.  We booked this hotel specifically because we found out that it was Geneva Cocktail week and a bar nearby had a facebook event that day (Moe Bar).  We walked into Moe bar, and it was not busy at all.  It was connected to a hotel near ours, and seemed very upscale.  We looked at the menu outside (one thing I love about Switzerland is that most places have the menu on display outside of the restaurant/bar) and saw that the prices were pretty high (about $25 or more for each drink), but decided that since it was cocktail week and there was supposed to be an event there, we would try it.  We sat at the bar, and there were 3 employees at the other end of the bar.  One brought us a menu, which we looked over, and then waited for about 15 minutes before we decided that it’s not worth the money and since no one has come over since they initially brought over the menu (all 3 of them were still standing at the end of the bar).  We got up, and said sorry and left.  It seemed like there was no event there at all, and it was very slow.

We went to another place nearby to grab a drink and watched the city below out the window.  At one point, we saw a woman in the top window across the street watching down as well. Then later, we saw a dog looking from one of the windows (pictured below).  We had dessert and a quick drink, then headed back to the hotel.  We actually fell asleep by 7pm because we were so tired.  We woke up around 5:30am, which worked out well, since we had an early morning the next day.

Where we stayed: Hotel des Tourelles – 1 night.  600 meters from the main train station.