Geneva

We're blogging a little early tonight since we paid for internet for 24 hours.

We slept in this morning until about 9am and got breakfast just around the corner in a little cafe. The first thing we wanted to do was go to the U.N. In Geneva is one of the two headquarters for the United Nations (the other is in New York City). When we got there, we had to go through security and they even took Daniel's picture and printed out a security badge right there! Then we walked through the building to the area where the tour starts. We got there just in time for the English tour. There were about 30 people on our tour, and only one other group was from the US! There were people from Russia, Finland, Peru, Canada, India, and more. Our guide was fantastic. He knew so much about the U.N. and the Palais des Nations. We got to see the conference rooms where big important people discuss things like world hunger and human rights. He explained that New York is in charge of world security and disarmament and stuff like that. Geneva deals more with human rights. The tour was about 1 1/2 hours and Daniel and I both learned so much.

Daniel in one of the many conference rooms. The walls were painted by a Spanish artist in 1930.

All the flags outside the U.N.

After the tour, we crossed the street to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent museum. They had a lovely cafe where we had lunch. We learned all about how the Red Cross was started and how it was expanded. I didn't know that it actually started to help specifically with injured soldiers on the battlefield. Then when WWI ended, the organization figured they should expand into something else since there was no big war to help with. So that's when they started helping with natural disaster relief. In WWII, they discovered that they couldn't help people in concentration camps because their bylaws state that they only help military people, not civilians. So after WWII they fixed that and now they have helped establish rules that protect prisoners of war, civilians, and refugees. We also learned that Muslim nations take offense to the "Red Cross" emblem, so they use the Red Crescent instead.

We took the bus across town to the Old Town. We wandered through the English Gardens which are currently a big carnival. It took us a while, but eventually we found the flower clock.

We headed towards the big cathedral in town. Along the way, we came across a cute little chocolate shop. Of course we had to buy some real swiss chocolate. We saw in the back where they make all the chocolate right there.

At the cathedral, we were surprised to see a neoclassical structure. In the 19th century, the facade of the cathedral was redone in a neoclassical style. We climbed up what seemed like a million steps to get to the top of the tower and got a magnificent view of Geneva. It is such a beautiful city.

We walked through Old Town a little more and got to a small park. Inside the park is the "Reformation Wall." There are sculptures of lots of famous Reformationists built into the wall. There were even some English words inscribed into the wall. Some of them were about the Puritans taking the Mayflower over to the new world. And the Lord's Prayer was inscribed there too. We took the bus, and then a boat across the lake back to our hostel. It's so cool that there are boats here that function just like the busses.

Now we are trying to find a place to eat. It seems so difficult to find a reasonably priced restaurant. Maybe because we are still confused about the conversion rate to Swiss Francs. Everything here seems so much more expensive until we realize that 50 CHF is only 30 euros (which is 40 dollars). How confusing!

Tomorrow morning we check out at 10am and take the train to Bern. We will arrive there about 1:30pm.