I'm posting this from Florence, even though it's about Geneva. The hotel where I stayed in Geneva was supposed to have free internet, but it wasn't working properly. Internet here is working, but it's too slow for me to upload photos just yet.
My flight landed in Geneva around 5pm. The Geneva airport has a very nice system where you can get a free voucher for public transportation that's valid for 80 minutes, so the train ride from the airport into the city didn't cost me anything. From the main train station, I walked to the hotel. I had reserved a room at a 1-star hotel (they actually have those in Europe), but when I got there, they told me there had been a problem with my room and they were sending me to their other hotel, which was a 3-star hotel, for the same price. Talk about a nice surprise.
Most things were closed that evening, but I did go out and walk down to the lake for a while after I'd gotten settled in. There's a massive fountain there called the Jet d'Eau which is one of the largest fountains in the world - Wikipedia says it's 229 feet high. I walked partway out onto the jetty where it's built, but the wind was blowing spray in that direction, and I decided that I would rather not get too wet. It was hard to get good photos because it was growing dark, but I did my best, and hopefully some of them will come out well.
The next morning, I went to the Cathedral St. Pierre de Geneve, or the Cathedral of St. Peter in Geneva. I find it a bit ironic that the Vatican cathedral is also St. Peter's, especially considering that John Calvin dubbed Geneva the "Protestant Rome." (St. Pierre's is where Calvin preached his sermons.) The two cathedrals are very different. I visited the Vatican when I went to Rome back in January, and found it strangely oppressive, whereas St. Pierre is mostly just dignified. It's interesting to me how old buildings seem to have moods of a sort - I think the architecture contributes to it somewhat, and probably a lot of it is just my subjective impressions. Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of history...
I spent most of the morning at St. Pierre's, because there's a lot to see nearby. The church itself wasn't open to visitors in the morning, so first I visited the excavations under the church. There has been some sort of Christian building on the site dating back to at least the year 350 AD, although that building was an oratory rather than a church. The first church was built in 380 AD. Since then, it has been a process of adding, demolishing, and rebuilding to reach the present church, which was built gradually between the 12th and 16th centuries. Many of the ruins under the present building have been carefully excavated, and the archaeological site has been turned into a museum open to the public. The excavations in some places have reached the first layer with indications of human habitation, several centuries before the birth of Christ. In one place, archaeologists found the grave of a Merovingian chieftain, and nearby the partial skeleton of an adult horse.
I spent just about an hour in there, which is not bad for me. That left me with about 45 minutes until the cathedral itself opened, though, so I spent some time in the International Museum of the Reformation, which is housed in a building next door to the church. Most of the exhibits were only in French, and the audio guide wasn't working very well, so I felt like I didn't get as much out of it as I could have. Still, it was very interesting. They had one room with replicas of early printing press equipment showing how the process would have worked, and a lot of old books. Most were (again) in French, but there was one that was a catechism printed in Greek and Latin, so I could actually understand that. Admittedly, all I could see was the title page.
There isn't a whole lot to see within the cathedral itself, although it was lovely. The style in the main cathedral is much simpler than a lot of the cathedrals I saw in Rome, but I prefer that to the heavily adorned churches, especially those done in the Baroque style. Interestingly, though, there was a small chapel on one side which was decorated much more ornately, in a Neo-Gothic style. It's called the Chapel of the Maccabees, and it was initially built as a crypt for a private family. It now has pews and a pulpit and its own organ, separate from the one in the main cathedral.
The last thing I did was to climb one of the two towers. The cathedral has a north tower, a south tower, and a steeple in between them which houses the bells. It's quite a climb up a very steep and narrow spiral staircase to reach the top of the north tower, which is the one I chose. That tower overlooks the lake and most of the city, although the south tower apparently gives you a good view of the cathedral bells. Before I started up that staircase, I thought I might climb both of them, but the climb up to the north tower changed my mind. The view was fantastic, though.
It's funny, but no one ever talks about it being difficult to climb down a spiral staircase. Going up is tiring, but going down is actually a lot more intimidating if it's steep enough. Add to that the need to carefully control each step, as well. It may not be as physically difficult as climbing up, but it's a lot more difficult psychologically. And the spiral staircase up to the north tower is so narrow that they've actually installed a red light/green light system to let people know whether or not they can start, because it's literally only wide enough for one person at a time. Each step was probably about 10" high, and not more than 10" deep at the very outer edge. In the center it narrowed to about 2" deep, and it narrowed so quickly that you basically had to put your feet as close to the outside of the staircase as possible, one in front of the other. It was enough to make me a little bit dizzy, and I'm not usually too bothered by things like that.
After that, I looked for someplace where I could buy Swiss chocolate. Unfortunately, it seems like all the stores in Geneva are ferme a dimanche - closed on Sunday. That's one French phrase that I think I'll be able to remember, after seeing it so many times... I finally found a little stand that was selling a lot of touristy junk and some Swiss chocolate. It was probably a ripoff, but the chocolate is excellent, so I don't really care. I got one bar that was milk chocolate and one that was milk chocolate with hazelnuts, and I'm eating it very slowly. Well, comparatively slowly. With luck, it'll last until I get back to Oxford... The hazelnut chocolate is probably the best chocolate I've ever tasted, so the fact that I've only eaten three of the ten little squares counts as positively miserly. Right?
After that, I picked up my backpack from the hotel and went to the train station. It's a good thing that I left extra time to pick up my ticket (I'd made a reservation online), because Cornavin Station is in the middle of extensive construction, and the regular ticketing office was all boarded up. I don't know why, but no one thought it worthwhile to put up any signs to point hapless tourists in the right direction...so I wandered around the station for almost 45 minutes, asking people if they knew where it was. Most of them didn't. One sent me back to the main area, saying that surely there would be signs there (there weren't - and I did check again). No one appeared to obviously be a railway employee, and the signs for police took me down a dead end. In the end, though, I got on the train with nearly 20 minutes to spare. At least the trains were easy to find.
In all that hurry, though, I forgot to get lunch. Once I was settled on the train, I didn't really want to go off and buy food, so I had two squares of chocolate and the water left in my water bottle for lunch. Chocolate may not be the healthiest meal, but this chocolate at least was comparatively filling. It held me over until I reached the station in Milan, where I had to change trains. I got...something...for dinner there. I sort of just pointed at a thing that looked good and paid for it. It had some sort of meat and cheese in it, I know that much. Whatever it was, it tasted good.
As one final and slightly random side note, whoever came up with the idea of charging for restrooms ought to be dumped in a strange country with no change after six hours on a train...a euro to use the restroom is outrageous. Or at least I think so. There was at least one Tube station in London where they charged for the restrooms, but it was more like 30 pence, which isn't quite as bad.
I got to Florence without further incident, and the hostel where I'm staying is just a few minutes' walk from the train station. It was dark by the time I got in, so I didn't see much of anything on the way and my sightseeing in Florence didn't really start until this morning. But that's a subject for another post.
My flight landed in Geneva around 5pm. The Geneva airport has a very nice system where you can get a free voucher for public transportation that's valid for 80 minutes, so the train ride from the airport into the city didn't cost me anything. From the main train station, I walked to the hotel. I had reserved a room at a 1-star hotel (they actually have those in Europe), but when I got there, they told me there had been a problem with my room and they were sending me to their other hotel, which was a 3-star hotel, for the same price. Talk about a nice surprise.
Most things were closed that evening, but I did go out and walk down to the lake for a while after I'd gotten settled in. There's a massive fountain there called the Jet d'Eau which is one of the largest fountains in the world - Wikipedia says it's 229 feet high. I walked partway out onto the jetty where it's built, but the wind was blowing spray in that direction, and I decided that I would rather not get too wet. It was hard to get good photos because it was growing dark, but I did my best, and hopefully some of them will come out well.
The next morning, I went to the Cathedral St. Pierre de Geneve, or the Cathedral of St. Peter in Geneva. I find it a bit ironic that the Vatican cathedral is also St. Peter's, especially considering that John Calvin dubbed Geneva the "Protestant Rome." (St. Pierre's is where Calvin preached his sermons.) The two cathedrals are very different. I visited the Vatican when I went to Rome back in January, and found it strangely oppressive, whereas St. Pierre is mostly just dignified. It's interesting to me how old buildings seem to have moods of a sort - I think the architecture contributes to it somewhat, and probably a lot of it is just my subjective impressions. Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of history...
I spent most of the morning at St. Pierre's, because there's a lot to see nearby. The church itself wasn't open to visitors in the morning, so first I visited the excavations under the church. There has been some sort of Christian building on the site dating back to at least the year 350 AD, although that building was an oratory rather than a church. The first church was built in 380 AD. Since then, it has been a process of adding, demolishing, and rebuilding to reach the present church, which was built gradually between the 12th and 16th centuries. Many of the ruins under the present building have been carefully excavated, and the archaeological site has been turned into a museum open to the public. The excavations in some places have reached the first layer with indications of human habitation, several centuries before the birth of Christ. In one place, archaeologists found the grave of a Merovingian chieftain, and nearby the partial skeleton of an adult horse.
I spent just about an hour in there, which is not bad for me. That left me with about 45 minutes until the cathedral itself opened, though, so I spent some time in the International Museum of the Reformation, which is housed in a building next door to the church. Most of the exhibits were only in French, and the audio guide wasn't working very well, so I felt like I didn't get as much out of it as I could have. Still, it was very interesting. They had one room with replicas of early printing press equipment showing how the process would have worked, and a lot of old books. Most were (again) in French, but there was one that was a catechism printed in Greek and Latin, so I could actually understand that. Admittedly, all I could see was the title page.
There isn't a whole lot to see within the cathedral itself, although it was lovely. The style in the main cathedral is much simpler than a lot of the cathedrals I saw in Rome, but I prefer that to the heavily adorned churches, especially those done in the Baroque style. Interestingly, though, there was a small chapel on one side which was decorated much more ornately, in a Neo-Gothic style. It's called the Chapel of the Maccabees, and it was initially built as a crypt for a private family. It now has pews and a pulpit and its own organ, separate from the one in the main cathedral.
The last thing I did was to climb one of the two towers. The cathedral has a north tower, a south tower, and a steeple in between them which houses the bells. It's quite a climb up a very steep and narrow spiral staircase to reach the top of the north tower, which is the one I chose. That tower overlooks the lake and most of the city, although the south tower apparently gives you a good view of the cathedral bells. Before I started up that staircase, I thought I might climb both of them, but the climb up to the north tower changed my mind. The view was fantastic, though.
It's funny, but no one ever talks about it being difficult to climb down a spiral staircase. Going up is tiring, but going down is actually a lot more intimidating if it's steep enough. Add to that the need to carefully control each step, as well. It may not be as physically difficult as climbing up, but it's a lot more difficult psychologically. And the spiral staircase up to the north tower is so narrow that they've actually installed a red light/green light system to let people know whether or not they can start, because it's literally only wide enough for one person at a time. Each step was probably about 10" high, and not more than 10" deep at the very outer edge. In the center it narrowed to about 2" deep, and it narrowed so quickly that you basically had to put your feet as close to the outside of the staircase as possible, one in front of the other. It was enough to make me a little bit dizzy, and I'm not usually too bothered by things like that.
After that, I looked for someplace where I could buy Swiss chocolate. Unfortunately, it seems like all the stores in Geneva are ferme a dimanche - closed on Sunday. That's one French phrase that I think I'll be able to remember, after seeing it so many times... I finally found a little stand that was selling a lot of touristy junk and some Swiss chocolate. It was probably a ripoff, but the chocolate is excellent, so I don't really care. I got one bar that was milk chocolate and one that was milk chocolate with hazelnuts, and I'm eating it very slowly. Well, comparatively slowly. With luck, it'll last until I get back to Oxford... The hazelnut chocolate is probably the best chocolate I've ever tasted, so the fact that I've only eaten three of the ten little squares counts as positively miserly. Right?
After that, I picked up my backpack from the hotel and went to the train station. It's a good thing that I left extra time to pick up my ticket (I'd made a reservation online), because Cornavin Station is in the middle of extensive construction, and the regular ticketing office was all boarded up. I don't know why, but no one thought it worthwhile to put up any signs to point hapless tourists in the right direction...so I wandered around the station for almost 45 minutes, asking people if they knew where it was. Most of them didn't. One sent me back to the main area, saying that surely there would be signs there (there weren't - and I did check again). No one appeared to obviously be a railway employee, and the signs for police took me down a dead end. In the end, though, I got on the train with nearly 20 minutes to spare. At least the trains were easy to find.
In all that hurry, though, I forgot to get lunch. Once I was settled on the train, I didn't really want to go off and buy food, so I had two squares of chocolate and the water left in my water bottle for lunch. Chocolate may not be the healthiest meal, but this chocolate at least was comparatively filling. It held me over until I reached the station in Milan, where I had to change trains. I got...something...for dinner there. I sort of just pointed at a thing that looked good and paid for it. It had some sort of meat and cheese in it, I know that much. Whatever it was, it tasted good.
As one final and slightly random side note, whoever came up with the idea of charging for restrooms ought to be dumped in a strange country with no change after six hours on a train...a euro to use the restroom is outrageous. Or at least I think so. There was at least one Tube station in London where they charged for the restrooms, but it was more like 30 pence, which isn't quite as bad.
I got to Florence without further incident, and the hostel where I'm staying is just a few minutes' walk from the train station. It was dark by the time I got in, so I didn't see much of anything on the way and my sightseeing in Florence didn't really start until this morning. But that's a subject for another post.
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