It turns out that Switzerland is quite an expensive country – I guess they have high wages, so the cost of everything is higher here – food is OMG expensive! So we decided to make the most of our $40 hotel breakfasts, and ate as much as we could before setting off for the day.

First stop, the Relay shop for a power adapter, and then Starbucks where they were happy for us to plug in for a while…

Today we decided to take a walking tour of the old city of Geneva – you can download an app that has city walking tours and this one was really good. We took in the sights of the old city, including a very interesting history relating to the reformation.

As a sociologist, the Protestant Reformation is something I studied and then taught at university, so it was very cool to be in the city where it was so important. There is a huge monument in the city garden that commemorates the 400th anniversary of the movement in Geneva.

The city tour had us meander through the old city, giving us great information about the buildings along the way. We took in the second longest seat in the world (the first longest is in Britain).

We stopped the tour when we got to St Peter’s Cathedral. This church was originally Catholic (built from 1160 to 1252), and was made into a protestant church during the reformation – John Calvin preached here! We were planning on having a look through the museum and archaeological site (underneath the church) but decided to have a wander down to the lake and find a bus home instead. After a while, museums can be somewhat samey, even when they are interesting.

I hadn’t really noticed before, but all of the shops were closed in the main shopping area by the lake – it’s the law that they be closed on Sunday. Only small cafes and main tourist venues are allowed to be open. Good job too, at least everyone gets a day off! So we jumped on a bus with our free ticket (complimentary from the hotel, gives us free travel on buses, trains, trams and boats) and went back to the hotel to recharge.

Our recharge eventually turned into staying in for the evening. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and then passed a very pleasant (slightly tense) hour-and-a-half at the bar watching the ABs beat the Pumas with some Australians and French. I think the French guys were cheering for the Pumas, but not very loudly!

We weren’t catching the train until 12.25pm today, so we luxuriated in our hotel room until about 11.30am, then went across to the train station for a snack before we boarded the train.

The first class carriage was rather nice on this Swiss train (the Italian first class carriage was a bit average). We journeyed in style and comfort from Milan to Geneva. The border crossing was very uneventful – not even a passport check!

It was quite nice having some time just to stare out the window at the countryside, and interesting to see it change from flat farmland to hilly then mountainous.

We arrived in Geneva about 4pm, and didn’t get to the hotel from the train station until about 6pm – it should have been a 15 minute journey. It was an adventure! First of all, it started POURING with rain just as we pulled into the Geneva station. Rather than taking the sensible option of going straight to the hotel, we opted to stick to Plan A: Do Laundry, and got very wet in the process. After getting to the laundromat and realising that we didn’t have any local currency, we aborted Plan A, and went with Plan B: WTF Are We Doing.

Somehow it escaped our attention that the Swiss have not adopted the Euro, so we had to get some Swiss Francs. We could not find an ATM anywhere in the train station (there are dozens of them, we just couldn’t find one!) so we abandoned Plan B and went with Plan C: Eat Pasta Until We Feel Better. That worked a treat, and so slightly less wet and a lot poorer ($80 for two plates of pasta, OMG!) we found an ATM, got some money, purchased a train ticket for the Airport (where our hotel is) and found our way to our home for the next three nights.

The hotel is lovely – super comfy room, fast internet, a great restaurant, and it’s a quick walk to the airport where the train takes us to town.

We still needed to do laundry, so after a brief regroup, we headed back into town to the laundromat. While sitting waiting for our washing to dry, it dawned on me that the girls sitting outside the laundromat were not in fact waiting for their washing to finish. There were about 10 working girls lined up on the street outside the laundromat, and we watched them come and go from the building beside us. Awesome, we found a laundromat in the red light district.

We eventually made it back to the hotel about 10pm, only to discover that the Swiss have different power plugs from the rest of Western Europe! First stop tomorrow will be the Relay store at the airport to buy a new adapter…

We had a lazy morning this morning, and headed off to the Duomo at about 9am. It was getting warm even then, and eventually got to 28C! Such a lovely day for sightseeing.

The Milan Duomo is magnificent. It is massive, with something to look at everywhere you look. It’s bristling with decorations and statues and finery.

It took us about three hours to see everything, including climbing the stairs to the tippy top for a grand view of the city.

After this we stopped for lunch in the Piazza del Duomo, and then did a quick tour of the Duomo Museum. They have a LOT of expensive looking religious art in there. It’s a bit overwhelming…

For something different, we decided to spend the afternoon at the National Science Museum. It has some very cool displays – food science, space, telecommunications, computing, transport (including an actual submarine!), and a fabulous collection of Da Vinci models, constructed based on his drawings. Very cool.

It was so hot and we were so tired, we stopped at the supermarket on the way back to the hotel for snacks, and had a snacky dinner in our hotel room and an early night.