SPRING BREAK: Geneva

I've been on Spring Break for the past two weeks, and it has been great. I did a little bit of traveling, but decided to forego a big Eurotrip in favor of a couple smaller trips staying with friends and relatives (which ended up being a great idea since not only did it save me a lot of money, but the volcano probably would have foiled any other plans). My first stop was Geneva for the weekend to see my friend Mo from high school.

Here's a rundown of some of the stuff we did. Geneva isn't a huge or particularly busy city, but the weather was beautiful it was and fun to just explore and meet some of Mo's friends.

• The first night, after walking around a bit and meeting up with a few of his friends, we went to some random party with a bunch of French Canadians. Mo knew some of them, but probably 2/3 were people that nobody seemed to know. Still, a fun party, and got to speak some French -- although it was Québecois, which can sound like a completely different language depending on the word.

• We walked around a lot on Saturday and Sunday, and saw the lake from many angles, stopped at a water exhibit downtown (promoting drinking tap water), and visited the diverse farmers' market. We also saw the world's longest bench.

Jet d'Eau in the middle of the lake

Water exhibit

Longest bench

• On Saturday, we also stopped at one of Geneva's old churches and then at the Art and History Museum. At the museum, there was some bizarre modern theater performance going on, where the actors used the museum and the art as the set and interacted with it as part of the act. It was weird, but hard to not watch.

• On Sunday, after a nice brunch with Mo's housemates, we walked over to the Botanical Gardens, and then past the UN building.

• Finally, although I don't have pictures of it, we had some great meals, including a barbeque on Saturday night with a bunch of Mo's friends. Mo grilled sausages, we made a good salad (I added apples to it, which gave it a nice extra touch), and everyone just sat around, ate, drank, and talked.

To summarize: Geneva was a great start to my break, and nice introduction to Switzerland before heading to Basel for the better part of the two weeks.