Easter Sunday In Geneva

Because yesterday was mainly just a travel/work day, we headed out to do a bunch of sightseeing today and have decided that, for the most part, Geneva could have been a one day trip as well!  However, from what we’ve seen, Switzerland is so scenic and nice that it would be a shame to just have a really short stop here and the other two towns we will visit (Bern and Lucerne) are even smaller than Geneva so it made sense for us to spend a few days here.

We’re staying at the City Hostel Geneva, a dorm-like hostel right near city center which I found on the City of Geneva’s tourism website.  Hotels here are really expensive and this was the most reasonably priced accommodations I could find at 73 francs/night for a private room for two with a bunk bed!  It’s actually a pretty decent hostel (clean and safe), except for the fact that their Wi-Fi is broken at the moment.  The nice thing is they give you a transit pass to use for the duration of your stay so you have access to the trams and buses (Geneva is too small to have a metro system). 

We used  this pass to go see the United Nations building (which is completely closed off on Sundays so we couldn’t see much of it), the Red Cross building/museum (which is exceptionally closed at the moment for some unkown reason), and get back to old town, right in the city center.  From there, we walked around to find Bastions Park, home of the University of Geneva and the Reformation Wall (an international monument to the protestant reformation).  I was determined to find this park because I saw the words “Giant Chess Game” on the north side of the park on the map the hostel gave us and thought it meant a chess board with pieces as big as me, but it was actually just a large area of park with big boards and plastic pieces around the height of my knee.  All the boards were being used so we didn’t try playing chess, but it was amusing to watch all the people deep in thought over their next move.  It seems like playing chess from this perspective is difficult!

After the park, we trammed over to the well-known flower clock (which was also smaller than I expected) and then walked to the famous jet d’eau, a neat water fountain in the lake that propels 500 litres of water per second to a height of 140 meters at a speed of 200km/hr.  We walked out to the fountain on a kind of hazardous stone path (I was so afraid I would slip off and fall into Lake Geneva), but turned around and walked back pretty quickly when we started to get wet from the spray of the fountain! 

For the most part, the sights and attractions of Geneva were not as grand and exciting as we had expected, but it is a very nice city and people here are pretty friendly.  In a way it actually reminds me of Vancouver because there’s lots of multi-culturalism and a big-city feeling with lots of mountains and lakes nearby to retreat to.  I could live here if it weren’t for the outrageous prices of everything!