Genève

So, its almost two weeks after the fact, and I swear I wrote my Genève post, but its gone so I'm rewriting -- hopefully I remember enough!

I headed to Genève on a Thursday. Its a 3 hour train ride, so I got up pretty early to have enough time in the city. Just outside of the train station is Basillique Notre-Dame. It was pretty!

Then, I headed towards Rade de Genève (Lake Geneva). Sadly, it was too cloudy to make a boat ride worth the time, but I did get to see the fountain, Jet d'Eau. Its one of the largest in the world! The clouds made it hard to see the top!

I took a look at Monument Brunswick on the lake. I'm not sure who Brunswick was but I am pretty sure his body is in the  box about halfway up. 

Then, I crossed the river on the Pont Des Bergues with a stop at Île Rousseau in the middle of the Rhone. Its dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau who was from Genève. 

Then, I headed to the Jardin Anglais. It supposed to be this amazing park on the banks of Lake Genève. However, they were setting up for some kind of fair so the whole park was a construction zone and lost a lot of its appeal. 

Then, I headed into the old town. I passed the Temple. 

Then headed into the Archeological Site at Saint Pierre Cathdrale. Apparently, this church has been rebuilt something like five times throughout the thousands of years (!) its been used as a worship location. Underneath the church, archeologists have excavated the remains so and turned it into a museum. Its pretty neat to see so much history but it is pretty hard to picture what it would have looked like in its prime. 

After the museum, I went into the actual church. Again, very pretty, but the outside didn't look much like a church.

After wandering a bit more around old town, which seemed pretty deserted for an old town in such a big, important city. I headed over to the park that abuts the old town (but is like two stories+ below). One side of the park is the Monument de la Reformation, honoring the leaders of the Reformation of the Church. The other side is a University. Not sure what University. 

I was able to find take away around the corner from the University, of course, and came back to eat my lunch in the park. Then, I headed to the Patek Phillippe Museum. According to Trip Advisor, its a amazing watch museum. Now, it was pretty cool-- but not nearly as cool as the trip advisor comments made it sound. It was much more of a "watch gallery" than a "watch museum". It was cool in the beginning (top of 3 floors), with the really old watches, but by the second floor, it was just what I would call "regular" watches and was not that interesting. 

At that point, the weather was starting to turn and there really wasn't a whole lot left to do in the city so I headed back to the train station and headed home. I won't say Genève was overrated, but it is definitely more of a working city than most of the places I've been. I wasn't a huge fan.