This is Really Happening: Switzerland!

I made it! Switzerland is beautiful! I suppose I never expected it not to be beautiful, but whatever expectations I had have been totally exceeded. It helps that the weather for our first day was sublime: 70 fahrenheit and only slightly cloudy.

We arrived in Geneva, Switzerland at 7:30am on Saturday, September 3, even though it still felt like Sept. 2 to all of us (the benadryl I took on the plane didn't knock me out as thouroughly as I'd hoped). We promptly loaded a bus for our day bus/walking tour of Geneva with Ariel, our longwinded, Michael Caine (with shoulder-length white hair) doppelgänger, Swiss tour guide.

With the ease of a smart-car, our extremely skilled bus driver guided our behemoth of a bus around corners I'm not sure my little Honda prelude would easily navigate as we glided first through downtown Geneva, past all the IGO headquarters (Red Cross, UN, Int'l Telecom, UNHCR, etc), around the Bay of Geneva (complete with skyrocketing fountain), and through the bright green Genevese countryside where we were surrounded by vineyards overlooking the city.

Our bus breezing through the glorious Genevese wine-country

Roses and sailboats along the Bay of Geneva

In the middle of all that, Ariel guided our band of hungry and sleep-deprived zombies through the old city on a walking tour that highlighted various historical eras of importance for the city: as the Roman "door to the north", the Swiss Reformation, and as the peace-driven capitol of the world. I got really excited about photographing the very quintessential buildings and winding streets:

The group sitting on the longest wooden bench in the world (Old City)

After lunch in the countryside, we stopped in Carouge, Ariel's hometown, which was celebrating 225 years, even though they have records of the town dating back to the Romans. The festival was the classier, swiss/french-version of a county fair, complete with performing acts, jazz band, hundreds of artisan booths, and lots of families running about.

As lovely and fun as it was, we were all very ready to head to our hotel by 4pm, so our bus driver expertly guided us back across town to the John Knox Center (named for one of the area's Reformers). We ate dinner, had a group meeting, planned our next day's adventures, and took a short walk to get our bearings before heading to bed.

Author (green jacket) with new friends (L-R) Lindsay, Julie, Stacy, Arielle, and Sarah Beth on a drizzly evening walk

The view out our window at the John Knox Center

It was a full day of group bonding (what great people!), sight-seeing, and surviving exhaustion. I've only been here for 24 hours and I can already tell that 4 days in Geneva will not be enough... and I'm starting to realize that 5 months is pretty short too!

--jet lagged jaunter