Geneva Giant Marionettes Parade

At the beginning of October Alessio and I along with my friend Arlene visited Geneva to see the Giant marionettes parade. I had never heard of this before and only read about it online and thought it would be interesting to visit. Lucky for us we were able to get tickets for only 45 francs, as it would have been quite costly to go to Geneva.

Once we arrived we wondered around the city as the second half of the parade did not begin until around 4pm. Once it started there was lots of music and loud sounds it took ages for the giant puppets to get to our place. There was only two giant puppets, one was a 8m 83yrs old grandmother and the other her 6m tall grand-daughter. Both were really huge and were transported on a huge bed, for most of the time.

On the whole event it was something interesting to see once but would not go to see again, but it is always nice to see Geneva though and it was a nice day too.

This weekend we will go to see the movie Justice League and then visit the Christmas market at Bellevue for some dinner. Alessio has to have his favorite food which is a Luma burger and of course hot orange punch!

Have a great weekend!

Weekend in Geneva

The weekend we had in Geneva was back in September and it was the ill fated trip where I tripped and torn my ligaments in my right foot. At least it happened right at the end of our weekend if it had to happen at all!

My parents and I took the train from Zurich and in around 3 hours were in Geneva, our hotel was not too far from the station. Once settled in we walked into the city centre and of course saw the famous water jet. I already did a post on this a few months back.

We visited and saw all the usual tourist sites and enjoyed a few glasses of wine in between too! Later in the afternoon we went to Carouge with the tram, which is a city just next to Geneva. It has lots of restaurants, cafes, bars and boutique shops. We could not find a restaurant open so we only stopped for some wine instead. Afterwards we headed back to into Geneva, had dinner and back to the hotel. My father and I had a wonder around the city centre later on in the evening and saw the jet d`eau, which in the evening is lighted up.

The next day we visited the small town of Hermonice, which I will do a short post on soon and had a glimpse of the Villa Diodacti which Lord Byron rented for a few months in the summer of 1816.

We were then going to see the United Nations buildings, but then I tripped walking down a ramp and the rest is history as they say!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Villa Diodati

Back to my weekend in Geneva two weeks ago, my parents and I went to look at the Villa Diodati just outside the city in Cologny. What is Villa Diodati and why did you go to see it? I hear you ask!

Well this was one of the reasons I wanted to come to Geneva, sadly you cannot visit the Villa and I had to make do to trying to see bits of it! It was not easy I can tell you, trees and bushes everywhere but I snapped these photos anyway.

This villa was rented by Lord Byron in the summer of 1816, here he stayed with,  John Polidori his personal physician. During the summer the villa was frequented by his new found friend Percy Shelley, Mary Goodwin (soon to be Shelley) and Claire Clairmont (with whom Byron had had an affair), they had rented a place near to the lake.

That was summer was to be know as "the year without a summer" because Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted throwing ash and dust across the northern hemisphere, causing lots of bad weather.
Due to this weather front the group were forced to stayed indoors and to help pass the time Byron suggested each guest to write ghost/horror stories. It is said that Mary Shelley got the idea for Frankenstein during these times cooped up in the villa.

Like I mentioned already it you cannot visit the villa, but now I have just discovered that there was an exhibition nearby about Frankenstein that we could have visited! Oh well never mind now!

Wishing you a great week ahead!

Geneva Jet d`Eau

The weekend we had in Geneva seems ages ago, when in fact it was only the weekend before the last. Probably because I have been at home all last week and will continue to be this week also due to my small accident with my foot, everything goes slow!

Anyway we had a great time in Geneva and of all the sights to see in the city the water jet (Jet d`Eau) remains my favorite one. It was installed in 1886 a bit more downstream from it present location, then in 1891 it was moved to where it is now. Since 2003 is operates during the day all year, except in frost and very windy weather.

In the evening my father and I went out for walk and we went to see the jet. It was illuminated red and looked pretty cool! We went right up to it as did many other people and took some photos!

Have a great week folks!

W is for Water

The next letter is W and water seemed like a good word to choose, I have lots of photos with water in them, from lakes, rivers, waterfalls, streams to seas.

The first photo is from Zurich, then we are off to the Isle of Skye, then it is the famous water jet in Geneva, then Lake Brienz and finally Lake Lugano.