Geneva Geneva... Nice is nice

(Disclaimer - yes yes it's terribly late, we suck :) )

Off to Geneva! Train ride was lovely and uneventful, which was pleasant. It was awesome riding along between big mountain ranges, popping through quaint little towns with house up on the hills and church steeples poking out. As we saw the snow we realised how foolishly we had dressed that morning - Rome had been delicious and warm, but Geneva being near alps and significanly more north would not be so tasty.

Got off the train and walked to our hotel, which was super close and took us about 5 minutes, checked in and got settled. Geneva is pretty darn expensive, even if you pick the cheapest place on the comparison sites (as we did), but at least you get a good room. Place was very comfortable and offered an awesome french breakfast of croissants and fresh bread, yoghurt, hot chocolates etc, which was a great start to the day :)

The first night we just went for a walk and found a neat chicken place for dinner, half a roast chicken with salad and provencale potatos (which were pretty much just awesome wedges) - super delicious! Everything was pretty closed so we just walked a long way back past the lake and back to the room.

The next day we jumped on the terribly efficient tram and bus system and headed off to the border to visit CERN - yay geeks! We were on the waiting list for the free guided tour, and figured if we didn't get in we'd just check out the museum. The powers that be however decided that we needed to geek out more, and 2 people didn't show for the tour. Which meant we were in! Joe can write more about the fun of that, it was good fun :) Took lots of pictures, listened to a german or swiss fellow say 'So what we are trying to find here, is what is the matter?' which was terribly cute, I had mental pictures of scientists counselling particles saying 'how do you feel about your mother' .. anyways!

Headed back to town, did some shopping (Joe needed new jeans as his old ones had grown a number of holes in the seat and it was inappropriate when walking up stairs!) and then had dinner at a Tex Mex place which was very good. I had a frozen margarita that I'm sure had way way more alchohol in it that one drink should - half way through I was speaking tooo loudly and giggling tooo much. Joe offered to finish it for me, but hell no! I love my salty margaritas :)

Day 2 we headed to the UN to check it out, took some photos but didn't go in. I think there was a tour but instead we went to the Red Cross/Crescent Museum which was really cool. It explained the origins of the organisation and described some of the horrible situations before people gave a crap about injured soldiers and the like. Some sad displays about land mines and their victims, and a room with hundreds of photos of children who were orphaned after the Rwanda genocide. Very sobering. I took some photos but I'm not sure I was supposed to...

We also walked around the lake a bit, which was lovely, and saw the huuuge fountain that is pretty much just a functional valve that people decided they liked :) For dinner I made Joe come with me to a place where I could proper fondue! I had a cheese and mushroom one with a biiig bowl of bread, it was pretty neat. Not as tasty as I'd hoped but it was pretty fun stabbing bread, dipping and eating. Joe's risotto was probably the best I've ever tasted, which was impressive.

Next morning we had to get up quite early, we failed to book our tickets to Nice sufficiently in advance to get tickets at a good time, but managed to get on the train and off towards France. Rode to Marseilles and then had MacDo for lunch (that's french slang for mc d's), another brief stop like Milan. Got to Nice at a still sunny time of day, checked in and found we were in a gorgeously sunny room with a fridge and microwave (yay, we were able to buy supermarket stuff and keep it in the room).

For dinner we headed towards the water and found a lovely restaurant that look sufficiently french, and featured a fantastic waiter who more than deserved the excessive tip we left - he was friendly, flamboyant and very helpful in translating the menu for us naff travellers.

Good night's sleep, and then we headed down to test out the Mediterranean! It was such beautiful weather and we walked down through town and onto the beach. Very rocky but all smooth round rocks so not painful or difficult to walk on. There were some people sunbathing but not many swimmers, save a gang of young American tourists who went for a dip, lead by a pair in rather small speedos. Many a shriek was heard, apparently it was a bit nippy...

After we hung out at the beach for a bit, we walked a little bit inland to a lovely market full of fruit and vege, olive oils, meats and cheese, and bread. We picked up some strawberries, a baguette, a wee cheese and some olives and set off up the hill to have a picnic at the park at the top. The hill used to feature a big old castle, but it's since gone and Nice has made the best use of old castle bits I've seen in our whole trip, turning it into a massive park with great stone paths, broken fence bits between garden bits, and an awesome waterfall that is made of the old castle facade. I think. That's what it looked like anyway, you can see the waterfall from the streets, it's massive.

Anyways, picnic'd up top with many families having picnics and playing football and swinging on the swings. Delicious :) Then we walked around the park, which was quite good, and then tried to walk down the opposite side to where we'd come up. It almost worked except that the street we wanted to go down to get to the part of town we were aiming for was all blocked up due to landslide danger. Which meant we had to back track a bunch to find a road that met up with the actual city again. Fun but looong walk.

We found a big square after a while which was full of artists painting and selling their art, which was very good but a wee bit out of our price range so we didn't look too hard. On the other side of the square was the Museum of Contemporary Art, which sounded neat so we headed on in. Lots of very interesting pictures and sculptures, all very modern and some of it oh-so-edgy. But interesting, and free, so definitely worth the trip.

Since we had a microwave readily available to us, we went to a supermarket and picked up some 2 minute meals. Zapped them, ate, and had a super early night which really was quite good.

Next day, we had planned to pop out and do a bit of shopping, since Joe's shoes were in a similar state to his jeans, and I had planned to replace my disintegrating handbag... However this intricate plan was quickly put to rest when we realised that in Nice, on Sunday, everything is CLOSED. Well almost everything, there were a couple of trinket stores with touristy stuff open, but not much else! We browsed for a while, and I picked up some neat postcards (Bridget, you lucky thing you will love the one I got you) and then we just walked around the old part of town, with the narrow and cobbled streets.

Had some lunch and browsed some more stores, hit the beach again, and then back to the hostel to dump our stuff and prepare our luggage for the next days train trip to Paris. For dinner we found this cool and cheap place in the old town where we weren't entirely sure what we were ordering but recognised about 2 words on the menu and went with that - ended up with a tasty calamari stew with rice, and a salad and deep fried veges thing. Yum!

Nice was overall pretty darn nice. It's hard to find a better word for it, let alone a more punny one.. Although is it a pun if it's the same word? Anyways, we then headed off to Paris, and this is where I will take a break and get Joe to work on the Paris episode :) He may also provide updates on Geneva/Nice but I want to get this up NOW and he is kinda asleep...