Au Revoir Monnaz!

We'll be on the 7:30am plane from Geneva to Amsterdam tomorrow morning and from there connecting to a plane to Seattle - arriving in Seattle a bit before noon.

We've had a great visit and thanks Ahriel, Nicole, and Teo for sharing your home and family with us!

Let's Talk Money

Here in Switzerland the smallest paper bill is 10 francs.  Remember that a franc is basically the same as a U.S. dollar.  So it would be the same as if we had no paper $1 or $5 in the United States.

Here's a look at the various monetary options that we have here:

From left to right - 1/2 franc, 1 franc, 2 franc, 5 franc, and then the paper money in a variety of colors and sizes.  There are also 5, 10, and 20 cent coins that sometimes show up in change.  There are no "pennies" - the 5 cent coin is the smallest.

The obvious advantage of this is that the coins last practically forever compared to paper money and are more convenient for machines of all sorts (for instance, at the grocery store you deposit 2 francs into a locking gizmo on the shopping cart and it releases for you to shop - when you're done and re-lock the cart to the one next to it, you get your 2 francs back...).  

I like using these coins instead of paper money.

Another Day, Another Medieval City...

We headed to Nyon (a city that actually is pronounced pretty much as you'd expect) today.  It's a town on the lake on the way to Geneva.  I've seen the exits to it as we've driven back and forth (it's just past the exit to "Gland" on the way to Geneva...) and today we stopped there.

They were having a local festival of some sort.  There was wine tasting up in the castle in the upper town and down on the waterfront there was a brass band, boats, open air restaurants, and displays of all sorts.  As tourists we did the expected thing and wandered around looking at stuff.  It was fun.

A highlight was when Paula and I stopped for a knockwurst (one of those white sausages) and a beer at one of the open air restaurants that was temporarily set up on the waterside.  Delicious!  I think my "tourist method" could best be described as "sitting on city park benches eating an ice cream bar" or "sitting at outside cafes eating a sausage" or maybe, "loitering in cathedrals or ancient ruins imagining the past".  Of the three, I like sausage time the best...

We wandered around the city a bit and the waterfront as the cloudy skies spit down some Seattle-style rain (enough to notice, but just short of get-out-the-umbrella).

Teo enjoyed a toy train ride.

The rest of us enjoyed watching people (especially with interesting hairstyles)...

And for my pirate friends that play Eve Online with me I found this "Bar des Pirates"...

And this nicely named street...

Yarr!

Estavayer-le-Lac

It's Saturday and the sun's out!  After several days of rain we decided to head out on an expedition.  After some discussion of possible destinations Ahriel, Nicole, Paula, Teo, and I all piled into the Volvo and headed to Estavayer-le-Lac (and yes, it's pronounced as you would expect).

Estavayer-le-Lac is an old town on the banks of Lake Neuchatel.  As one description has it, "Settled in prehistoric times, colonised by the Romans, plundered by barbarians, coveted by barons: thrilling traces of the civilisations which have shaped this region can be found..."

It was about a 45 minute drive (if it hadn't been for the stalled-car-traffic-jam-in-Lausanne) up highway 1 (which is the equivalent of the interstate highways in the USA) and then a ten minute side trip to the town.

In Estavayer-le-Lac we found the typical narrow streets (they never planned for two way car traffic when "designing" their roads in the 1300s...).  We wandered around checking out the sites and imagining what life must have been like 500 years ago when it was a bustling center of activity (today there are a few locals and a few tourists and a lot of quiet).

We wandered around the local castle...

And then we went looking for lunch.  We found a cafe with a "Menu du Jour" - a three course lunch for a fixed price of 17 Francs.  These lunches change every day and usually offer a relatively good deal.  This restaurant also made pizzas, so it looked like a winner.  It was.

Paula and I had the Menu du Jour and Ahriel and Nicole each ordered a pizza.  Teo was happy to graze on whatever was offered to him.

The old restaurant had some uprights holding up the roof that looked like they might have been there since the 1300s...

The first course of the Menu du Jour was a barley soup.

Then a tossed salad.

And finally the pork chop (with a mushroom and bacon sauce), rosti (fried potatoes), spinach, and a baked tomato.

Everything was excellent (though the reasoning behind baking whole tomatoes has always escaped me - it seems like something that someone should have tried once and then said, "No, let's make the rest into pizza sauce.").

In the end we wandered out of the restaurant and back into the Medieval streets of Estavayer-le-Lac...

Some wandering around curling streets looking for our car gave us a chance for more tourist activities (no, we were not lost!) and then back.

Lausanne, Switzerland

Paula, Nicole, Teo and I headed out for a train ride on Friday.  Teo loves trains and the chance to ride one is always a popular option with him.  We chose a destination of Lausanne - the large city just east of Morges along the coast of Lake Geneva.  Teo was checking out the scenery as we rode along.

When we arrived at the bustling train station in Lausanne, we parted ways - Nicole and Teo heading back to Morges and Monnaz (another train ride!  HURRAY!) and Paula and I striking out towards the city center.  In Lausanne this involved a steady uphill hike on walking streets for probably a mile.  Very steep.  But we had a lot of company - lots of people out shopping or walking up or downhill.

Eventually we arrived in the old part of town and after stopping for a bottle of fizzy mineral water headed for the relatively famous cathedral.  It was nice to sit for a while in it's cool quiet and recover from the climb...

 Paula and I then started to walk back down through the city.  A Swiss Army Knife store caught my attention, but having a half dozen of them already in my camping box at home, I managed to not purchase more...

Some typical European street scenes (the cow is a replica...)

A spot with both a McDonalds and a Starbucks in view...

And eventually we came across a COOP department store.  These have become a favorite of ours since they have excellent cafeterias where ordering and eating is relatively painless for non-French speakers.  We had the medium wok plates (load them up with as much as you want - fried rice, Thai fish curry, Thai chicken curry, spring rolls, and other items fresh out of the wok).

With a view of the city from the rooftop garden (with a friendly sparrow keeping an eye on us) we had a fine lunch.  The bill for the two of us came to 36.45 Francs (about the same in American dollars).  Switzerland is not cheap.

After geting lost on our way downhill to the train station (it must be down here somewhere...) we eventually found it and from there hopped on a subway train to the waterfront on Lake Geneva.

Some ice cream cones for dessert as we sat and watched the boats leaving for destinations in Switzerland and across the lake in France finished off an excellent meal.  It was also popular with some sparrows that picked up the crumbs next to Paula.  And eventually one of them grabbed the small bit of cone that was left in her hand and flew off with it!

After a relaxing time on the waterfront, we headed back - subway, train, bus - to Monnaz.

Rain, rain, rain...

Rain outside the windows - what's a tourist to do?  Head to a museum of course!  Every tourist knows that!

Paula, Nicole, Teo and I drove the 30 minutes to Geneva to the Museum of Natural History today.  It's a great museum with the usual dioramas of birds, reptiles, geology, etc.

The Geneva Mycological Society is celebrating their 100th anniversary and had some nice mushroom displays...

And there was even some ash from the Mt. St. Helens eruption!

I'm not sure that you can see from this photo, but the parking garages here have signs that let you know how many stalls are open on any given floor (here you can see the sign says 6).  There are also red and green lights above each parking spot to show whether it's occupied or available - here you might be able to see the small red lights along the ceiling.  It makes for relatively easy parking.

Here's a random street scene in Geneva...

Lunch in the museum cafeteria was a feast!  And we headed home for our, errrr... I mean Teo's nap.

Literature Class

Nicole and Teo work through the intricacies of The Cat in The Hat...