Geneva overnight

We took a short overnight trip to Geneva arriving early afternoon at the same time as a cold wave swept down from the north along with high winds. It was cold for April!!

The French have a diction for the month:"En avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil." Essentially, don't take off a single layer of clothing (not one thread). In Geneva the sky was blue, sun was shining but if you got into the wind WOW!!! This sculpture by the river is called "the Arms of the Wind!"

There were white caps on the Rhone river which comes through Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) from its source in the Swiss alps. We walked down rue des Alpes on the way to the cité (old town) on the other bank...this meant we had to cross the river so super windy.

The flags were all standing out from the flagpoles and they had cancelled any boat trips on the river unfortunately!

This whole city had a feel of Tallinn, Estonia but more austere with less colorful buildings (some nice doors however).

I guess a city of Calvin and the Reform has to look a bit more "serious."

I liked the row of pointed chimneys (I think) on this building. The modern structure in front is a school. The kids were on Easter break.

We went into the Maison Tavel museum to get warm. This is a cultural museum sort of like the Oregon Historical Society with interesting items about the early days of Geneva.

These are some examples of wind vanes from old buildings...

I found this rooster to have lots of personality!

Another series of doors with smaller inset doors perhaps for making sure who was knocking.

She is one of the carvings up along the edges of downspouts. I liked her braids peeking out from her scarf.

There was a very impressive scale model of the city from the 1800's created by an architect in amazing detail. It made me think of the recent novel All the Light We Cannot See. You can still see the walls of Geneva which have been removed to allow the city to expand.

After a few hours of walking through the cité we were ready to go in somewhere warm for a cup of coffee or chocolate. Here is a quiz on my cream cup...can you guess the answer?

In case you can't....its a mountain!

These two "gals" looked really chilly out in the wind there....

Since we had a picnic lunch on the train, we were ready to have dinner early (in French terms). There are places in Geneva which serve food all day and the tourist office suggested the Brasserie de l'Hotel de Ville in the cité which was once a military barracks. The whole place had military hats lined up around the ceiling.

We had a delicious Swiss fondu for dinner...perfect for the weather!

I was so cold I had on three layers: two merino wool, one cashmere/lambswool plus an undershirt! Thank goodness Emmanuelle loaned me a warmer jacket to take along "just in case."

When the fondue is finished the waiter scrapes off the bottom cheese which is like a crèpe and they call it "la religieuse" (which means nun...apparently it has to do with bits of cheese that were given to the nuns when they visited homes...sort of the leftovers I think)...this is very tasty with a small glass of kirsch!

We couldn't spend longer in this interesting city...look phone booths!!!

A really pretty florist shop...all the flowers inside were organized by color.

this was at the train station....Fruit for Thought....

This made me smile...just add glitter!

 At the tourist office!!!

We are coming to the end of our stay in Provence so we headed back to Carpentras via Lyon where we had lunch and changed trains. Outside of the train station a large square surrounded by cafes and bistros.

The TGV trains coming and going were perfect but the local TER train that took us to Geneva was disappointing...not very clean, rather rundown and the window where I sat was so dirty I couldn't actually get a good photo!! Nevertheless, taking a train over here is wonderful compared to the very slow, cumbersome trains we have in the USA. It is faster to get to Paris from Carpentras with a train change than to go Portland-Seattle!! A bientôt!