What Zoë learned during a day in Geneva

A few weekends ago I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, with a group of friends. We took a train that left Grenoble at 5 am and arrived in Geneva around 7:30 am. It’s amazing that you can just hop on a train here and go to another country for the day! It was quite an adventurous day and I learned a lot. The first thing I learned was to consider what time things open when you go someplace. We got into Geneva at 7:30 and that was great, but we didn’t have anything to do because nothing was open yet! So we just went to a café and got some coffee and croissants. 

That is where I learned my second lesson, which is to research the country you are going to. It turns out that Switzerland uses Swiss Francs, but we didn’t know that when we first got there and they wouldn’t let us pay with Euros, luckily I had my credit card that I could use. Then we decided to go the tourism office to find out what we could get a map and plan our day! We ended up doing a lot of just walking around, but it was such a pretty city I had no issues with that! We did end up at the natural history museum, and that was really cool and it was free! My favorite thing there was a two headed turtle. We also saw the jet d’eau which is a water fountain in a lake which sprays water almost 500 feet in the air, it was really neat! 

After that, we got soft pretzels because that’s what they are known for, and it was delicious. Auntie Annes will never be the same! The last thing we did was decide to go on what we thought was a boat tour, but it wasn’t. That’s the third lesson I learned: read the signs! This so called “boat thing” was really cheap so we figured why not, and then we discovered that it was really a water taxi and not a boat tour! Not what we were expecting, but it makes a funny story. After that we decided to head home because it had been a long day and we left at 5am! 

--Zoë