Without saying anything, we both had one thing on our mind: food. After checking into an Air bnb, we went to the only open restaurant on Tuesdays after 11:30 PM, McDonald's. Here, we received our wake up call that Geneva was flipping expensive. Our meal cost over $25, more than triple the prices in America and Spain. This realization became the norm and we immediately became conscious of what we were spending. Although we tried, it didn't help too much seeing as everything had unified prices. We tried not to let this get to us, however, we had a budget and we couldn't drain it all in our first city. In order to do this, we chose to do more walking.
Our first full day in Geneva, we walked the old district. It was a great test for Emma's new FitBit as we were walking up and downhill all day. The old town is also in between the center and where we were living so we went up and down several staircases. We saw the first big church of Geneva which had reached the level of cathedral. We passed through the gates and noticed it's massive size for such a small town. After, we entered the oldest house in Geneva called Maison Tavel. This turned out to be a perfect start to our trip as it gave us the entire history of Geneva starting from the Ice Age to current day Geneva. Up to now all of this was free and we were learning a lot. Then we went to the archaeological museum to see the remnants of the first church upon which the cathedral was built.
We also saw two very famous monuments of Genva: the flower clock and the Jet d'Eau. The former is the second largest flower clock in the world. A flower clock is exactly like it sounds except that the hands aren't made of flowers. It makes sense that they once had the largest in the world since Switzerland is known for its impeccable watches. While looking a little above the flower clock, you see a never ending stream of water. This is the latter monument: the Jet d'Eau. Originally, a method of releasing the water pressure within Lake Geneva, it is now a principal symbol of Geneva. It's incredible seeing this jet of water tower over everything and it even became a reference point for when we got lost.
Finally, we went to the Clock Museum. This museum is dedicated to Patek and Phillipe, two famous watchmakers of Geneva. They showed us a great collection of watches that were hundreds of years old and later showed us some of the most impressive watches that this famous pair made. Finally, they told us about the most complicated watch in the world and how it works. A lot of that went right over my head, but when I was watching the video, I thought I could reproduce the watch in my very own workshop. And that's how we concluded our first day. It turns out that outside of food, you don't really need to spend a lot of money in Geneva. However, the second day, we did spend a little bit more.
One of the few things that we did know about Geneva was the United Nations. So we chose our second day to go to the Palais du Nations, the European center of the UN. This didn't cost us money to get to as wee walked the long trek to the palace, however, we we did pay the cover charge for the guided tour, which was totally worth it. The Palace of Nations is such a beautiful building, and this branch of the UN deals with many humanitarian issues and peace efforts. The tour was really informative and we enjoyed every minute. On the way back to the apartment, we followed the river and then stopped to have lunch. We took a break and watched the gorgeous aquamarine waters that reminded us so much of Lake Winnepesaukee.
The next two days we took really slow getting to know the beautiful city of Geneva. Although not very touristy, it did have it's special nooks and crannies like the parks next to the river Rhone or the Mediterannean style Carouge. We saw the sights less travelled and made living in Geneva affordable. Our second stop was Prague!
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