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.
