Geneva & Annecy

We had a fantastic weekend away! Friday night we boarded a plane to Geneva, Switzerland, and found ourselves in the land of chocolate! The Swiss have seriously created the best chocolate known to man. Lindt and Toblerone are the most popular, but they have hundreds of other kinds. We somehow made our way out of the tempting airport, reminding ourselves we had all weekend to buy chocolate. We then found our way to our couch surfers place. His name is Hamdi, he is from Turkey, 30 years old and getting his PHD in Geneva. He was SO accommodating, he had a cute one bedroom place, and Sel and I slept on his futon. We were starving so Hamdi took us to this cute little restaurant in the Old Town. He said it was the cheapest restaurant he knew of, and our dinner still cost 20 Francs. We heard Switzerland was expensive, but come on. Then we spent the rest of the night exploring Geneva. Instead of telling you about it, take a look for yourself.

The next morning we woke up and took a greyhound bus to Annecy, France! You may wonder how we discovered such an unknown little gem. Well, let me fill you in. I spent a few months in Brazil while working with YWAM, and met this great guy named Marcel who went to the church we were working with in Curitiba. Thanks to the social networking of Facebook, we still keep in touch and realized we were both in Europe. I didn't think anything of it, until Selena noticed that Annecy was a mere 50km away from Geneva! A plan we had already booked back in July. We knew a day would be more than enough in both places (as we are power tourists), so we decided to do both this past weekend.
We got on the bus to Annecy and got to see some beautiful landscape on the hour and a half ride. When we got there it was cloudy, cold and rainy, but that didn't stop us! Luckily there was a festival going on in the city, so there were markets set up in the Old Town everywhere. There was so much wonderful looking food! Cheese, fondu, raclette sandwiches, fresh bread, meat, wine, you name it they had it. We spent the afternoon walking through Old Town and exploring the city with Marcel.

At around 5pm, we headed back to Geneva. We were tired from our day of travel and walking around, so we just stayed in at Hamdi's place and watched Gossip Girl and ate these fantastic kebabs we bought across the street. It was a perfect night.

The next day Hamdi took us to the cutest place for Brunch with his friend from Greece. Then we spent the rest of the day seeing Geneva, including the United Nations building and the Reformation Wall. It is such a beautiful city, and they told us that every 1/16 people are millionaires. Well they better be, because snack wraps at McDonald's cost 11 Francs. We also saw this amazing car show filled with Ferrari's, Porsche's, Aston Martin's and other cars I didn't even recognize. There is definitely a lot of money in that city.

We came back to Amsterdam on Sunday night, and spent the next few days with Keith, Charlene and Otto, Selena's cousins who are living in London. We had a great time with them! Otto turned two while he was here, so we celebrated with balloons and an Amsterdam brownie, like every good 2 year old should.

They left our place this morning, but we will see them again in two days in London! We have two weeks off for our fall break coming up, so stay tuned for our upcoming trips to London and Austria!

We miss home and all of you, our wonderful friends :). Happy Thanksgiving!!