After spending the first half of our trip traveling throughout Switzerland, we decided to slow things down and do day trips from Geneva. Wednesday was the most beautiful day. We had a terrific time visiting the International Olympic Museum and Chateau de Chillon.

Diane at the Olympic museum

Montreux

Chateau de Chillon

My lovely wife

Gotta have a pic in front of the Chateau

Thursday, we lingered around Geneva, played some checkers in the park and then hit up the European UN headquarters and International Red Cross Museum. I loved the UN and Diane preferred the museum. To top of the night, we made a Thanksgiving dinner at home: Geneva style! We ate ham, mashed potatoes, freshly cut tomatoes on fresh mozzarella; all with a little bubbly. Oh yeah, don’t forget the freshly baked bread!

Checkers in the Park

European UN Headquarters

Thanksgiving Dinner

Monday wasn’t the best day on our trip…we spent 5 hours on the train and the towns we visited were…well, a little disappointing. Interlaken, a fabulous summer resort, was pretty dead. A few shops were open, but that’s about it. We then proceeded up the mountain to Murren, a little ski town–which unfortunately was even more dead than Interlaken.

Fortunately, we ended the night with a pleasant surprise: Luzern! After a day of seeing nobody, we were so thrilled to see lots of buildings, lights, and people! We spent the night at the Magic Hotel and got “upgraded” to an Egyptian resort.

On Tuesday, we created our own little walking tour where we visited the castle walls, saw the Glacier museum, and checked out the boutiques. We then headed over to Zurich and spent the afternoon checking out the high-end malls and shops–all out of our price range, of course.

Lastly, we thought it would be “fun” if we ran the last mile back to train station. OK, so it was totally not fun. We were hot, sweaty, and we totally missed the train by ONE MINUTE! Diane was quite upset at me (for good reason).

Hanging out at the train station

Lots of snow, but that’s about it…

Tram ride to Murren

Murren (Ski Town)

Luzern = Happiness!

Magic Hotel

Egyptian “upgrade”

Luzern by day

Lion statue at Glacier Museum

We left this past weekend and arrived midmorning on Saturday in Geneva. We flew on British Airways and it turned out to be just OK–nothing terribly noteworthy. For some stupid reason, I decided to book us a window and a middle seat rather than an aisle and a window seat. So there was this little college boy who ended up swiping the aisle seat that I should have had, but was too dumb to reserve. Another thing…the economy seats in BA are so small! I could barely fit in one and for the first time ever had my knees almost hit the seat in front of me. I was worried that I was going to have a miserable flight–fortunately, things did work out in the end. BA has a great in-flight entertainment system and I took a sleeping pill after dinner, which allowed me to sleep for about 6 hours straight. Before I knew it, we were landing at Heathrow and on our way to Geneva. Or so I thought. The transit line for people connecting in Heathrow turned out to be dreadfully long. We had to go through security again and the whole process took 90 minutes. Luckily, our connecting plane was delayed by snow in Amsterdam; otherwise, we would have missed our flight to Geneva.

We landed in Geneva and I was extremely impressed by the customs line. There was no line at all! It took us <5 minutes to pick up our bags and meet Gloria outside the customs area. They basically looked at our passports and said “Welcome to Switzerland.”

Since we were left with a few hours of daylight, we headed back to the apartment where we dropped our bags and proceeded to hit the town. We strolled through Old Town and visited lots of little shops. We had some fantastic hot chocolate (made with real Swiss chocolate and not the powder type) and headed back to the apartment around 6pm. While Gloria ran to the grocery store, Diane and I just crashed on the couch and bed. After a good 30-minute power nap, we were both ready to go. Since most things in Switzerland shut down around 5pm and lots of restaurants don’t open until after 6:30pm, we patiently waited until this Italian joint down the street opened up. We both ordered pizzas, devoured them, and then hung out at home until 10:30pm when we finally crashed.

By Lake Geneva

Flower Clock at the English Gardens

Overlooking Geneva

Gloria and Fernando at the local cathedral

Swiss chocolate!