Downtown Geneva

  Geneva, Switzerland
Saturday, July 12, 2008

Got to take a better look at Geneva today... Took the bus downtown and walked around/window shopped for a few hours. Basically downtown is streets and streets of old buildings that are mostly shops and restaurants- most of the stores are shops like fendi, chanel, louis vuitton... etc, and of course rolex, swatch and other (tons of) watch places and swiss army knife stores.

shops

some of downtown

Downtown is many blocks- so I didn't really get to see a lot, but we're probably going to go back again. (It's right by lake Geneva, which is huge. And the pretty part of the lake, i hear, is further away than where I went). Oh, and no one speaks English. At all.

Lake Geneva

Le Jet D'eau

monument brunswick

hi from geneva

oh, and some of the cheese here is just too much. Kind of gagged when i walked by one of the cheese/meat stores. and they have cheese as a main staple at breakfast at the hotel. and i accidently bit into cream cheese because the label wasn't english. No pic of that though :)

and i was lucky enough to witness a bizarre swiss parade... apparently it was a DJ parade for a local radio station... hundreds of people were lining up down both sides of one of the main streets downtown, so i stuck around to see what was up (i had no idea what was going on at the time). Pretty soon these buses/trucks started coming down the road- basically there was a parade of party buses (decorated like floats with open tops) filled with drunk and dancing people and strange french music blasting from each one. People were in the streets with their beers dancing too and people like myself were filming and taking photos and looking kind of confused... I took a video but it doesnt really capture the weirdness- just couldn't get it all.

DJ parade, Geneva

croquette (french toast w/ham, cheese, egg)

Lab in Geneva

Swiss Panini- eating lunch downtown with my lab

The conference went really well- our lab had several talks and posters that people seemed to be really interested in. We ended up going downtown again a few times for lunch with other 'sciency' people and actually managed to get some sun near the end of the week. Never had time to go to the alps though :( Maybe next time!
(there are more photos than the ones i've weaved into the entry.. fyi)