Europe trip: Geneva 18th June 2009

Our Europe trip started through Geneva and we were delivered to Geneva literally through Mont Blanc's backside. It was an amazing site; after 11 km of tunnel, (and 2 failed attempts at holding our breathe through the whole thing) we popped out of Mont Blanc and arrived in France. It is a staggering height old Blancety Blanc and a great first foreign site of our immense road trip.

It was a strange feeling to know we were in another country although our liquids hadn't been monitored or our bags checked for bombs; in fact we weren't stopped at the border at all. The guard did ask us who we were visiting but it was more out of interest than national security! I did wonder to myself:
"Have these terrorists worked out this security loop hole?" Bloody hope not!
Mind you, had we been driving around looking like trouble we probably would have stopped, but there was no way we looked suspicious in what is, let's face it, Louis Vuitton Mecca!

Anyway it was onto Geneva with not much difficulty, as our American traveling partner, we call her Nav girl, knew the way!

We parked up in a central parking lot, making use of Nav girl's canny knowledge of local parking opportunities and popped into town. Emerging from the car park my eyes were met with Cartier and Louis Vuitton (I wasn't so far from home!) and after a short walk to check out Saint Peter's Cathedral; tall, old, great views, massive bells (if you know what I mean!) we hired some bikes. Geneva has a fantastic tourist attraction - free stuff!!! Our bikes were absolutely free, they were giving them away! Well you couldn't take then home but you needn't pay for their daily use.

So we ambled, peddled rather, along Lake Geneva and it was lovely. For a 30 degree odd day the breeze was a 'cool' welcome! I dipped my feet in the water and it was beautifully refreshing and lowered my body temperature for the ride back.

After returning our bikes we headed to pick up Mish, Andy's sister. Trusty Nav girl guided the way. It was great to see Mish and the twins reunited (they're twins, obviously!). We left our car with Lela and Dan and moseyed into town after a freshen up.

Earlier in the day Andy had spotted a Thai restaurant he fancied for dinner and low and behold his twin must have been reading his mind! As this had been the only restaurant we had spotted in a big old town we were no longer skeptical of twin intuition! The Thai was great but with a table of tired, yawning faces we called it a night after we'd eaten.

Day one in Geneva over.