Geneva — M&J

Geneva is the French speaking host to many international organizations including the World Trade Organization, is the headquarters for the United Nations and the Red Cross, the location where the Geneva Conventions were signed, home to CERN, centuries of watchmaking, financial institutions and luxury window shopping. It is impossible to walk more than a few feet and not encounter a watch store.

With only two nights in this city, we stayed downtown next to the waterfront and historic Old Town at the Hotel Bristol. Spending a full day traveling from Grindelwald meant making important decisions on what to see with only one day left. Consensus fell on visiting CERN and the Large Hadron Collider first (see Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory) and then spending the remainder of the day walking through the Old Town- crossing the Mont Blanc Bridge with macarons from Laudrée to visit the Swiss Army store and pick up chocolates at Laderach, and ending our evening with a typical cheese fondue at Les Armures (the Clintons ate here is 1994), then walking off the Swiss wine and seeing the L'ancien arsenal (aka wicked old cannons), the Flower Clock (the second hand is the largest in the world), and the Jet d'Eau (130 gallons of water/second are jetted up 460 feet). The next trip will include visiting the Patek Philippe Watch Museum and buying gold bars.