Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Across the French Alps and into Geneva

July 7th, 2007 at 03:48pm James

Our next port of call was Geneva, where Viv was due to catch a plane back to England. Rather than take the most direct route though, we thought it’d be nice to go via the French Alps to take in the Alpine scenery.

When we set out from Burgundy the Sun was shining and so we optimistically donned our summer gear, pleased that the rain of the previous couple of days had passed. However when we stopped for a photo half way up to the Alpine town of Chamonix, the dramatic drop in temperature soon had us reaching for our jumpers and hoodies.

We thought it was cold in the town itself, so much so that we all changed into the warmest clothes we could find once we were parked in Chamonix. The snow on the mountains would tell of things to come however…

We caught the little train that wound it’s way up a steep track to the foot of the Mer de Glace, (Sea of Ice) glacier, the second largest in the alps.

As we walked over to see the glacier itself a light snow began to fall, which was nice. Then the snow grew a little heavier and before long it was absolutely bucketing down, much to our delight! Snow in the middle of Summer was a first for all of us.

We managed to snap a few shots of the glacier’s lower tip during breaks in the weather.

Then we escaped back into the warmth of the train which took us back to the town for some fortifying ham, cheese and tomato crepes. Then it was on to Geneva…

The campsite we stayed at was a little damp after some torrential rain, but we managed to find a relatively dry spot and set up camp for the night. We braved the continued bad weather and got up bright and early to explore the city.

We spent the day wandering around and taking in the historic city. We started at the statue of famous Genevan philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau and then did a short tour of the house in which he grew up.

We took a look inside the cathedral and then went below it to explore the ancient ruins that had been found underneath. Apparently the site has been used as a place of worhship since around 300AD, where it was the revered burial place of a chieftain. They’ve even found his skeleton and left it in its original resting place, though you can see the hole where the over-zealous worshippers dug up his skull.

Some of the ruins were amazingly well preserved, including the tesselated floors that dated back to Roman times.

After all of the excitement we took a seat by the cathedral for coffee and yet more crepes, this time with various delicious fillings – chocolate, rum, banana, ice cream and Gran Marnier. Outstanding.

One of our last places to visit was the U.N. Headquarters. We drove out to the site but after walking all the way around the massive grounds to the side entrance we were told that the building was off-limits to the public due to a conference! Rubbish! We had to make do with a few photos from the front – the Aussie flag is in there on the left somewhere, just behind the US one…

And so it was back to the campground to celebrate Viv’s last night traveling with us. We cracked open a bottle of the Burgundy we’d bought previously and drank it on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Apparently there’s some law that makes the installation of a Petanque playing area mandatory at all French, (and Swiss-French) campgrounds. The game is massively popular in France and so in keeping with the local spirit we had a few quick games.

Finally it was off to dinner at a local restaurant to finally try the Swiss national delicacy – Cheese Fondue! For the uninitiated, this basically involves dipping bread and potatoes into a vat of melted cheese, which is every bit as delicious as it sounds.

We polished off the pot of cheesy goodness as well as some very tasty prawns and a little more wine. Our waiter Hassan didn’t speak much English and so earlier he’d sent out chef Mustafa, a Moroccan-born Frenchman to help us translate a few things on the menu.  After dinner Mustafa knocked off work and had a couple of drinks with us – it was great to talk to him about Morocco as well as life in Switzerland. He tried to persuade us to come out into town with him but with an early start to get Viv to the airport the following day we had to reluctantly decline. A great night was had by all though and it was quite late when we finally made our way back to camp.

We managed to get up bright and early the next morning and drove to the airport. We said our farewells to Viv and went back to the campground to pack -  thankfully Viv took the bad weather back with her to London and by the time we got to our tent the Sun was shining. We celebrated with a quick dip in the rather chilly lake before saying farewell to Geneva.

There’s some more photos of the French Alps here and of our visit to Geneva here.

Entry Filed under: Europe