Last week in Geneva

It's been raining all morning..torrential tropical rain. A bit weird for this area, but it's a great time to catch up on my blog and upload a few pictures from this past week.

The day after our interesting motorcycle ride up the mountain trail, I played hooky from French classes. It was a Wednesday, so I rationalized I would only be missing 2 hours of classes instead of 6 hours on any other day. R had an appt in Geneva, so I went with him and played tourist!

Here are some photos I took recently:

"Broken Chair" - is a huge wooden sculpture of a chair with only 3 legs. It stands defiantly in front of the Palais de Nations (the headquarters of the UN and General Assembly) as a reminder to visitors about the dangers and effects of landmines and cluster bombs (which are bombs dropped from the air that release smaller "bomblets" over a wide area and are costly to locate and remove): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Chair


After R dropped me off, I decided to take a ferry ride on Lac Leman (which is what most people call Lake Geneva). With my TPG abonnement mensual, or monthly public transport pass, I can take any tram, bus, or ferry within the canton of Geneva. So, I went on my first ride on the lake, taking in beautiful views of the lake and surrounding mountains. I boarded a yellow ferry near the UN and 20 minutes later, I arrived near Baby Plage (Baby beach which is named so because it is tiny..not because there are tons of little ones sunning themselves there!). There was no one at the Beach because it started to rain hard with crazy winds. I took refuge under one of the giant white umbrellas set up for the Fete de Geneve that takes place in July and August. After the rains, I walked over to the Jet d'eau and watched people feeding the swans and birds. I guess they are used to people because they were incredibly friendly and curious, swimming very close to the boardwalk. It was so cool to see so many swans (20 or so) all together and so close too!





During class on Friday, we talked about our favorite foods, cooking, bio/organic foods, and the locavore movement in Geneva. We have 3 Koreans in my class, and quite a few people who love Korean BBQ, so we discussed it for a while. And of course, by the end of the day, I was craving some good Korean food. So like a good locavore, I picked a zucchini straight from my garden and decided to make one of my favorite Korean dishes...bim bim bap. It was YUMMY - especially with a glass of bubbly Cerdon wine we picked up a few weeks ago in Cerdon.