Geneva, The Peace Capital

Today started at the dark and early time of 3am. Rebecca, Hannah, and I had to catch a train at quarter after 4am to Lugano Airport to catch our flight at 7am. The airport was the smallest I had ever seen. It was almost a joke. The flight time was only 35 minutes to get to Geneva, the second largest city in Switzerland. The flight was great though as we flew over the Swiss Alps. They were breathtaking and I actually had chills the entire flight because of how beautiful they were. Once we got to Geneva though we hit the ground running.

Swiss Alps

Once we got to our Airbnb and dropped our stuff off we headed towards the waterfront in search of breakfast. We got some sorely needed coffee and pastries while drawing up the gameplan for the day. We first attempted to go the Grand Theatre of Geneva but it was completely covered in scaffolding so we crossed the street to the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève which is the oldest music school in Switzerland and one of the oldest in Europe. From there, just around the corner at Plainpalais was a weekly flea market. It was cool to walk through and see what the locals had to offer. The park was also playing host to Luna Park, a traveling carnival, so we marked it down to come back when it opened and went on.

Conservatoire de Musique de Genève

The next stop was the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire or Library of Geneva. This library dates back to 1559 and is one of the oldest university libraries of Switzerland. The library was nice and showed its age but we mainly used to it to get out of the cold and for the free Wifi. We made the trek up the hill to St. Pierre Cathedral. This church is actually home to the Protestant Church of Geneva and used to be a Roman Catholic church. It is also a hodgepodge of architectural styles and it started in the Romanesque in 1160 before being completed in the Gothic and then having a Neo-Classical facade added much later. The church was pretty bare inside as most of the symbolism used by Catholicism had been rejected. It made the church nicer on the interior. You could also go up into the towers and cupola so we took advantage of the that. There were some gorgeous views of the city, the lake, and both the French and Swiss Alps.

St. Pierre Cathedral

We got a short lunch after the church and went off in search of Immeuble Clarté which is an apartment building completed by Le Corbusier in 1932. It was interesting to see this building as it was the one that led him developing Unité d'habitation (one of which I saw in Marseille). It didn't seem to have the typical Corbu points but it was nice to see all the same. We couldn't go inside so we set off back to the waterfront.

Immeuble Clarté

We walked up and down the waterfront of Lake Geneva for awhile just admiring its beauty. We noticed the world famous Jet d'Eau, a water fountain that expels water up to 459 feet into the air, was not running. We found out that it was closed due to construction work occurring on the walkway out to it. It was so disappointing. We saw the L'horloge fleurie which is the second largest flower in the world. The waterfront is beautiful area to just wander around.

L'horloge fleurie

We were exhausted since we had been going nonstop for about 16 hours so we went to the apartment to nap before dinner. We found this reasonably priced chicken place that ended up being delicious. To end the night we walked around Luna Park for bit before heading off to bed.