The Swiss Tour Begins

Monday 6^th September 2010 St Andre, FR to Geneva, CH. 

We decide that the morning to make a move. One of the Pilot’s friends needs to get a flight back to England and we offer to take him to Geneva. That way, we go to Switzerland and notch up another country.

The countryside is the same and as we pass through towns we can see the contrast. We cross the border from France to Switzerland almost unnoticed as its through the middle of a busy town. It is then that we realise we don’t have any Swiss Francs.  Just assumed that they would have the Euro too - wrong!

We try and find a parking space in Geneva, which with the 3m long Snail is almost impossible. We pass from street to street and try and park in a bay which says ‘No Macarons’, not understanding what this means, we just leave and try our luck near Lac Leman, also known as Lake Geneva. We find a great spot and I am keen to look around. I am pleased when the Pilot agrees. It turns out to be a really wonderful afternoon because he has decided to spend some time together. Things have not always been easy over the past 4 weeks and I’m glad to spend some time together. I hope it will iron out the creases we have collected so far.

We walk a few paces and see a book left on a bench. It’s in English! We look around to see if it belongs to anyone, and it looks all alone, and so we take it to give it a new home, with the hope of leaving it on another bench somewhere so that someone else can read it.

We wonder off along the path arm in arm, and it’s the happiest I have been for a long time. Just holding hands and sharing moments like this is a real treasure to me. I don’t need expensive museums or things like that, I want the things which money can’t buy. Time is one of them.

We walk and see a horse sculpture which head looks like a ‘P….’ and I say it out loud without realising it. The Pilot agrees that it does look like one, and so now we are calling it the ‘P…Horse’ and we both take turns climbing onto it.

There are various other sculptures along the park, which we don’t climb on, but continue to take photos of. Then we see a chipmunk which the Pilot is calling a squirrel, there is not persuading him, even though I know I’m right.

We then get to the sculptures of the globes. They are all decorated in different colours and they are an exhibition to show how to recycle and respect our planet. They all look much the same, until I arrived at a beautifully decorated blue and turquoise one. It’s by my favourite and I put my arms around it. This reminds me of being in Devon in 1988 where my sister and I were taking it in turns to sit and hug Humpty Dumpty. Mine wasn’t too flattening at the age of 14, but neither was the one of my sister, I can’t say too much, she may be reading this!

On our way back to the Snail, we find some cool ‘science looking things’. Obviously the Pilot knows what they all are being a boy and I just stand there looking all girly as he explains what they are to me. One is a huge dish where by the power of I can’t remember what you can hear someone speak to you. So we tried it out, and it worked. Amazing!

When we had got back to the Snail, we found out we had WiFi access from the bar across the path, so we decided to use it to its full potential!

We then had to say a goodbye to the Pilots friend who had been travelling with another friend since we were in Slovenia. We said our goodbyes at the airport and went back to the same place to get some more WiFi. We had found a car park nearby where we would stay the night, so all in all it was looking to be a good night. We plan a tour around Lake Geneva and look at some places to stay along the way, this way we can fly for a bit in Annecy (Pilots dream) before going on to the Coup Icare festival the following weekend.

Only we had a phone call about 2 hours later, the Pilot’s friend was still at the airport and his flight had not only been cancelled, but there was a strike tomorrow, so he probably wouldn’t be going anywhere until Wednesday at earliest. Snail to the rescue! We picked him up and took him with us back to the car park. Thank goodness we hadn’t decided to go anywhere that night. It made me feel good that we were there for someone in need.

When we get to the car park, we find out that there are toilets with toilet paper in them, at 11pm at night. Wow, Im impressed! We go to use them and apart from a rude word scrawled on the back of the door of the ladies, they are ok. Not really clean, but ok. Public toilets - another fear being conquered as we speak.