MAR-GOES

Now that I’ve fully recovered from a ~traumatic~ weekend.. I can look back on, and appreciate, the beauty of Switzerland. Like I said, Switzerland was #1 on my “places to visit” list ever since I found out I was studying in Europe. We all know what happened during this trip, so I’m going to completely leave out those “series of unfortunate events”.. no need to relive them.

When we started discussing where to go in Switzerland we had a decent amount of options. Almost every single person abroad who visits Switzerland goes to Interlaken. As beautiful and adventure filled as Interlaken looks, we wanted something different. We brought our list down to Zermatt, Zurich, and Geneva. We ultimately chose Geneva because of the abundance of things to do in a major city, Lake Geneva, and its proximity to a ski town. We arrived at night, so we could not see much then but it was nice seeing all that the city would have to offer during the day. We had all day on Saturday to explore all of Geneva. We walked out of our wonderful Air Bnb and went to find some breakfast. We struggled to find a nice cafe with good breakfast options so we somehow ended up at a Mexican restaurant at 11 am.. I had no problem with this though. I love me some Mexican food. I’m just going to let everyone know that from what I’ve seen and exhaustively tried, Europe CANNOT produce good Mexican food. Either I am going to the completely wrong places or I have some amazing Mexican at home (which I know I do), but nothing is very good and I often crave some good enchiladas. Even in Spain I couldn’t find good Mexican. YES, I know just because they share a language doesn’t mean Mexico and Spain even have a remotely similar culture.. but a girl can dream that a language could bring this miraculous food together. Okay, Mexican food rant over. We then walked towards the center of town. I’m not sure if you are familiar with Geneva, but I knew there was a famous water jet that comes from the lake. We were walking towards town and I look up and immediately saw water flying up in the air. I knew we were still a decent distance away from the lake, so I was impressed. I thought, “wow, how did I miss that last night?”. Of course I missed it.. it was 11 o’clock at night. Anyways, we followed the water jet and came to the docks by the lake. I was finally in much needed sunny and 65 degree weather. This part of Geneva was awesome because there were people everywhere enjoying the beautiful day by the water. There was one section by the water that had places for everyone to sit and relax. We laid here in the sun for a while, appreciating the absolute beauty around us.

After enjoying some fresh air we crossed the water and headed over to the other part of town. You may have heard that Switzerland (especially Geneva) is expensive and for wealthy people… this is so so true. Give me a list of every high end fashion brand you can think of and I can guarantee you that they all have stores in this one section of Geneva we went to. As I passed person after person with shopping bags from Louis, Hermès, and Chanel draped over their arms, I internally sobbed at the current state of my account balance. (If you want an idea of the balance, one time my bank called me saying that someone stole my card info and tried to use it to buy a brunch for a family at a Dennys in Florida. They got notified that my card was being used because of insufficient funds. Gotta love that.. my low bank balance comes in handy when it comes to theft!!!) In order to feel better about myself, we walked to one of the well known chocolatiers in the city. Switzerland is known for its chocolate, and since I legitimately get withdraw symptoms when I go without chocolate for too long, this is what I was most looking forward to. Because 1 small truffle at this shop was $5, Greg and I got two and decided to come up with a better plan to stock up on Swiss chocolate. (The truffles were DELICIOUS by the way.) We got out of the fancy area and I promised myself I’d be back once I’m a successful, wealthy, and fashionable business woman… #goals #dreams. We were told previously to go to the grocery store for chocolate, and although at first that made me cringe a little, we decided to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised by the abundant section of chocolate and the reasonable prices. I got as much as I could to the point where I didn’t hate myself about it. I did get a lot with my mom in mind, given she’s the one I inherited my chocolate obsession from.

From what I’ve eaten so far, I am proud of my choices. It is a good thing my parents are coming in less than two weeks or else I’m not sure my mom would have chocolate from Switzerland to enjoy.

Another food necessity in Switzerland we were told about was fondue. I looked up fondue options that weren’t going to break our banks and we decided on a place. I originally thought we would get a 3 course meal of cheese, meat, and chocolate but I was mistaken… it was only cheese. It was $30 a person for bread and melted cheese. Although the bread and cheese were very good… it was my dinner… and it was $30. I wasn’t the happiest camper, but hey, I got to eat fondue in Switzerland. Because this didn’t fill us up 100%, we went back to our place and made more cheese and bread… frozen pizza.

That night we went to a bar called The Black Sheep. This place was AMAZING. It is a very small bar, but the bartenders were extremely entertaining and good at what they do. You can tell when a bar is legitimate and this place screamed “we know what we are doing”. I got a Sex on the Beach and Greg and Claire got a drink each too. The lady handed Greg the receipt.. $46 for three drinks. Yup, we only had 1 drink each that night.

On Sunday, Greg and I left for our surprise trip to Bern, the capital city of Switzerland. We said bye to Claire, who headed home, and we were on our way. The 2 hour train ride there was beautiful. I’m almost certain that if you need to take a train through any country in the world, Switzerland is the place to do it. Bern had a similar feel to Geneva. We had wonderful weather in Bern as well. Bern was neat because it had multiple open squares and parks to sit, relax, and eat in. We spent the second half of Sunday checking Bern out. We found a cool terrace, got some drinks and pastries and people watched. There was a sand box filled with the cutest kids so we observed for a little. (I don’t know how creepy that sounds but it’s universally agreed that kids and dogs are the cutest things. Also, it’s fascinating to watch kids interact with other kids that they don’t know.)

We made plans to eat at an Irish pub for dinner since we were craving fish and chips. When we got there, we got beers from the bar and waited 45+ minutes to even be talked to about ordering.. there was no one to ask and the bartender was not having any of it from us. I won’t sit here and talk bad about this place on here… that is a job for me on Tripadvisor for another day. (Which by the way, I am going to try and start writing reviews for places. I have come across some very lovely places who deserve good public reviews, and also vice versa. I have an ongoing list on my phone of places.) We got up and walked to an “American” restaurant.. our typical safe bet. We got burgers, duh. I may sound like I’ve become the biggest burger fan, BUT, I can’t escape them because clearly when Europe wants “American food” at their restaurants they serve burgers and burgers only. I actually get kind of grossed out when I think about burgers too much, but that’s also a rant for a another day and not on here. We had an early night knowing Monday was going to be a long day. 11 hours on a bus that night and we arrived back in Prague at 5 am on Tuesday, just in time for class.

This week of school was not bad, it actually went by pretty fast. We had plans to go to Budapest this weekend but they fell through. I was not mad about this, a weekend in Prague sounded nice. Also, unfortunately, I have midterms coming this week so it made sense to stay here. My tests don’t sound like they will be too bad so fingers crossed.

Think of me this week and how I’ll be taking 4 tests in a row on Wednesday…

Hoping the weather at home warms up since I’m finally in the 60 degrees here in Prague.

P.S!!!! Everyone check out Greg’s media website! He uploads amazing videos and pictures from our trips.. gregbresnan.com

Here’s his most recent video from our trip to Copenhagen: Copenhagen Trip

Have a great rest of the weekend my lovely people.

xx