Do you like traveling? I do love traveling. When it comes to planning a trip I would rather book it in advance, I think it’s more convenient and cheaper.
Three years ago – in December-I had the opportunity to visit Switzerland with three friends: Inma, Maribel and Jero, and my cousin Carol. We visited Geneva, Berne and Chamonix in France. So I’m going to explain a little about our trip and show you some pictures.
As you probably know, Switzerland is the “country of money”, isn’t it? But, also, it’s the country of “chocolate, watches (clocks) and Swiss knifes…” and I think these clichés are real. You can find all these goods everywhere, but everything is very expensive, unaffordable for people like me!
It is very striking that in Switzerland there are several different official languages, in Geneva they speak French, in other parts of the country –like Berne- people speak German and in other parts they speak a German dialect, and in the South they speak Italian. And…we had to get by with our English, which wasn’t an easy feat.
We flew to Switzerland on December 6th, we set off for Geneva from Madrid and we landed in Geneva in the evening. In Switzerland every store closes very early in winter, more or less at seven p.m., so we could only buy some bread, look for our hotel, have dinner in our rooms and go to sleep early because we were very tired.
The first day, on December 7th we could wander around Geneva and see the most significant landmarks like the Leman Lake which is the biggest lake in Western Europe. Here we could see the Jet d’eau, which is a large jet of water in the lake; it can reach a height of a hundred and forty meters. We saw the flower clock, the cathedral, the university “stone chess board”, etc... We got around the old city on foot without problems because the weather was fine the whole day. In the afternoon we took a guided tour to the United Nations headquarters, we chose a tour in English and it was a very interesting visit.
The second day we decided to go to The French Alps to see The Mount Blanc, so we took a coach to Chamonix, in France. We had a guide who spoke in English and when we arrived to Chamonix I could see an amount of snow like I had never seen before. It was stunning but very uncomfortable too. Here we took a train to get up to see the glacier, but we had bad luck because on the top there was blizzard, and in fact we couldn’t see anything. On the other hand, we had the opportunity to meet an English boy (from London) so we could speak in English with him, and we felt satisfied because we were able to communicate with him.
The next day we went to Berne, which is the Capital of Switzerland, we arrived in Rosengarten (Rose Garden in English), which is at the top of a hill so from there we could see breathtaking views of the city. Everything was covered on snow and we had a bit bad luck again with the weather, because it started to snow and it was freezing cold. We went down to the old city and we saw the most significant landmarks, such as the famous clocks, the parliament, the river, the Christmas market… Berne is a medieval city, so it worth walking along the streets calmly (when the weather is fine!).
We decided to go back to Geneva early because of the cold, and we have an anecdote; we went to Berne by train, and in our return journey we got in a first class carriage without knowing, so when the inspector saw our tickets and he realized that we had tickets for second class…it was very embarrassing and we had to change the carriage, but it was very funny and we laughed a lot!!
Last day was a day for shopping. I have to say that in Switzerland people have a high standards of living, so everything is very expensive. We bought some bars of chocolate and souvenirs for family and friends. Once again, the weather was terrible, snowing and raining, so we took a bus to take a glance around the lake in the morning. In the afternoon we went straight to the airport, but our flight was 1 hour delayed so we landed in Madrid at night.
I have to say that I don’t like the snow, and I had to put up with it almost every time in that trip, but I don’t regret it because the best thing of every trip is always the people you travel with, and I think I had the best travel mates I could have. In fact, when we finished that trip we started to think about the next one…
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