We woke up early the next morning and headed to the train station in Zurich and hopped on a local train to Geneva. The train takes around three and a half hours and stopped 7-10 times along the way. The regional train stops quite a bit more than other trains so if you want a shorter journey, look for a route with less stops. Fair warning though, it is likely to be much more expensive. Our tickets were only around 45 Francs per person. When purchasing go directly to the Swiss Rail website because they often have discounted tickets that you won't find on other sites, like Rail Europe.
Once we arrived in Geneva we headed to the tourist office which is on Rue Du Mont-Blanc about two blocks from the station. There you can pick up maps and book tickets to sites if needed.
One of the greatest things about being a tourist in Geneva is if you are staying at a hotel, hostel or campsite you are eligible to receive a
Geneva Transport Card which gives you free transit for your time in Geneva. Only bad part about this is you won't get the benefits right away unless you go directly to the hotel in a taxi or pick up an 80-minute free transit card at the airport. Since we arrived on the train we had to pay for a single-ride on the bus to our hotel,
The Intercontinental Geneva.
The hotel is accessible from the number 5 bus. If you are coming from the train station it is toward the Airport and if you are coming from the airport it is toward
Thônex-Vallard.
The hotel is an average looking building on the outside, but you can tell when you get up close it has the elegance of a high end hotel and really lives up what you would expect an Intercontinental to look like. The hotel is located just up the road from the United Nations building and once inside the many many languages on signs indicates that their clients must often be Diplomats here for work.
We were staying one night at the hotel using 40,000 points that Kelsey received when she signed up for the Priority Club Select Visa card and received 80,000 points after spending 1,000 dollars in the first three months. As a product of the card she was given Platinum Elite status in Priority Club, their highest status.
We were warmly greeted by the staff at the door and escorted to the check-in area. The woman behind the desk gave us a weird look almost as if we were at the wrong hotel and no one this young could possibly be staying at an Intercontinental. But when Kelsey's name came up she became a little warmer to us and slowly slowly checked us in. She indicated after about five minutes of waiting that we had been upgraded to a Junior Suite with a great view. At this point her colleague, who was checking someone else in, interjected and started speaking in rapid French. She then asked us if either of us spoke French and when we indicated no began chatting with him again. At this point we had a suspicion that something wasn't quite right, but I was still sick and just wanted to go up and take a nap. So after another five minutes or so she finally handed us our keys and we headed to the elevator. We quickly realized when we opened the room that this was no Junior Suite....and not even an upgraded room. We had been placed in a regular king room on one of the middle floors. Our "great view" was of the Canadian Embassy and if you took care to tilt your head just right, you could see a couple of mountains and a light sparkle of Lake Geneva in the distance.
At this point I was completely sick and wanted nothing but to sleep and get rid of my migrane and head cold that was keeping me in a fog and since we were leaving at 4:45 am the next morning tide with our less than welcome reception we didn't feel like raising too much of a stink so we didn't complain.
Don't get me wrong, the room was nice, it had a comfy bed and an interesting sitting area in the living room. But the sitting area was overtaken by a table and lamp that encroached on one side of the bed making it hard to get in and out on that side. The bathroom was high class, but tiny. The room was just average...something you could find at any hotel, nothing remarkable. The worst part was the fact that the windows had absolutely no insulation so it was cold and you could hear every car go by on the highway outside of the window.
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| King Bed |
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| Slight View |
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| Shower |
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| Bathroom |
The bad part of the hotel is that it's not even located anywhere near any of the tourist areas of Geneva. It was on the outskirts of the city and halfway to the airport. On the way back at around 9:30 pm we noticed that only about five rooms in the whole hotel had lights on and since we never saw another guest staying at the hotel during our whole stay we think we very easily could have been upgraded, but something fishy was up.
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| Empty Lobby |
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| Empty Lobby 2 |
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| Hello? |
After a quick nap I struggled to get up and we headed down into Geneva and walked around for a couple of hours to visit the famous flower clock,
Jet d' Eau (Water Jet) and the
St. Pierre Cathedral. When you are in the Cathedral make sure you take the climb up the steps to the top of the steeples for a few Francs. The climb is tough and it's hard to find the door to actually start the climb, but just follow the crowd for some amazing views of Geneva.
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| Flower Clock |
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| Jet D' Eau |
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| St. Pierre |
We headed to grab dinner at a crepe place that Kelsey found online called
La Creperie des Paquis . The restaurant is small and intimate and has just a great loung vibe to it. The coolest thing is a candelabra on one of the main tables that has wax from all of the previous candles dried all over it. It was so cool to look at and see all of the different colors and how the wax dried.
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| Creperie |
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| Awesome Candleabra |
The food was absolutely amazing, we both got a savory crepe and meant to share, but they ended up being too good to share ;). We also had an amazing cider called "Cidre doux Rhuys" which was served in a coffee cup. The meal was so good and I wish I would have saved room to eat another crepe!
By this time I was completely zonked and my sickness was taking control so we headed back to the hotel so I could get some sleep before our 6:00 am EasyJet flight to London.
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