Day Trips with Kelsey

This weekend my good friend Kelsey Riggs came to visit! I have known Kelsey since elementary school and we have grown to be best friends. She's studying abroad in Italy this summer and she was able to take the trip to Geneva and stay with me at CERN. We had some awesome adventures.

On Friday, I met Kelsey at the train station in Geneva. We went straight into the city to see the best of Geneva. We walked toward Lake Geneva and saw the Jet, St. Peter's Cathedral, and the Junction before heading back to CERN. We made an awesome dinner of salmon, potatoes, broccoli, and baguettes before getting ready for bed.

Reunited in the cathedral tower

The Junction: where the Rhone River and the Arve River meet 

The next day was the first of our day trips: Annecy, France. Annecy is south of Geneva, and is described as the "Venice of Savoie," the river Rhone/Alps region of France. It sits on a lake and the canals from the lake make Annecy very similar to Venice.  We wanted to explore Annecy as much as possible, so we found a ride using an rideshare website that left early in the morning and didn't come back until late evening. We woke up before the sun and met our ride in downtown Geneva. We drove for about an hour through the twisting roads through the foothills of the Alps. As soon as we got to Annecy, we walked to the lake and saw this:

Lake Annecy in the morning

  We knew it was going to be a good day.

First on our agenda was, of course coffee, so we walked into the Old Town of the city and stopped at a restaurant that served breakfast. We soon found out we picked a restaurant right next to a famous landmark called Palais de l'Ile (more on that later). It was cool to drink coffee and eat chocolate croissants and Nutella waffles at a place pictured on most postcards.

Palace de l'Ile

Yum. And this was before our Nutella waffle. 

After we finished breakfast, we walked around the streets of Old Town Annecy. There were street vendors setting up for the monthly antique market, which to me looked like a thrift store yard sale but apparently sold pretty great stuff.

 We walked to the Château d'Annecy for great aerial views of the city. They had some museums inside but Kelsey and I had more fun modeling in the windows.

My favorite picture from the trip.

Love this girl.

After the Château, we walked back to Palais de l'Ile, which translates to the Palace on the Island. This palace has housed lords, courts, prison inmates, and a mint over its lifetime since the 12th Century. Now it's a museum and you can walk through and see the rooms of residents, justice, and the prison dungeon.

Our next stop was the Church of St. Francis de Sales and the Notre Dame de Liesse, a French Catholic church.

Church of St. Francis of Sales

Notre Dame de Liesse

Next, it was (finally) lunchtime and we sat by the lake canal and ate the lunch we had packed. Our next stop was the tourism office to see if we could buy bus tickets to a nearby gorge, but we were without luck. We went shopping instead. After we were finished shopping, we walked back to the lake and sat there talking before dinner.

Picnic place

For dinner, we walked back into Old Town and found a restaurat that our rideshare driver recommended called Le Pitchet. We had yummy fondue (Swiss cheese, of course), fried fish, fries, and creme caramel for dessert. Yum!

We had a few more hours to kill before our ride left for Geneva, so we walked around some more, stopping at various churches, including the St. Peter's Cathedral of Annecy. (Two St. Peter's in a weekend!)

Finally, it was time to go home. We walked to the lake one last time, where we started, and said au revoir to Annecy.

Lake Annecy at sunset

The next morning, we caught up on rest and caffeine after the long day in Annecy. Our plan for the day was to hike along the top of a mountain near Geneva called Mont Salève. We took a tram and a bus to the French-Swiss border, and crossed into France to catch a cable car to the top of Mont Salève. Once at the top, we hiked along a path that took us through forests, meadows, and cow pastures. The hike gave us views of the mountains surrounding Geneva, the Jura and the Alps. Once we got to the highest point of Mont Salève, we turned around and headed back to CERN.

Mont Saleve from the cable car

Geneva from above

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It was an amazing weekend to spend time with Kelsey and see such cool sights! We did a lot in a little bit of time, and are exhausted as a result, but I wouldn't have traded these experiences for the world.