Wakeup to Geneva, the city of dreamers
GENEVA is a curious city: a glittering, cosmopolitan playground for aristocracy, megamoneyed financiers and UN workers, scattered with 16th Century monuments to its no-frills Protestant Reformation past.
Not that most visitors notice, as they hurtle through to the Alpine ski resorts nearby. But with a compact city centre of winning restaurants, museums and shops, and a new Eurostar service shaving an hour off travelling times, Geneva seems ripe for discovery.
We start on the water. Geneva sits astride Lake Geneva – at 45 miles long, it’s Europe’s largest Alpine lake – with lovely Belle Epoch buildings and parks hugging its banks.
Jumping on one of the yellow mouettes (taxi boats) that crisscross the lake every ten minutes, we dodge spray from the Jet d’Eau fountain, which rockets a single plume of water 450ft into the air at 150mph. With the pretty city before us and the magnificent snowy peaks of Mont Blanc behind, it’s easy to see why Geneva attracted dreamers including Byron, Shelley, Dostoyevsky and Rousseau.
In no time we disembark on the Left Bank, from where it’s a short walk to the elegant 19th Century English Garden. Although we don’t spot Pippa Middleton (apparently a regular), we do see the Monument National – buxom bronzes that mark Geneva’s escape from France (just a couple of miles away) in 1815, to join the Swiss Confederation.
The city’s famous watch-making industry dates back to the 16th Century and is celebrated in the garden’s huge, frankly wacky Flower Clock (made from 6,500 plants), and in the astonishing number of shops on the upscale Rue du Rhone opposite – now even more expensive after the Swiss franc soared in value. Time stands still as my husband stares transfixed at glittering windows of Cartier, Bulgari and, Rolex. At the Patek Philippe museum, we marvel at the chronographic confection of intricate timepieces.
In the heart of the old town and close to the pretty 19th Century Russian Church, 12th Century St Peter’s Cathedral rises up from the city’s highest point. Protestant Reformer John Calvin preached here during the 1540s.
Key Reformers such Calvin, Knox and Cromwell appear as austere 15ft statues in the Reformation Wall in Parc des Bastions. I’m sure none of them would have approved of Chez Henri, a bohemian seafood speakeasy down an alley, where we spent an evening drinking local wine, eating oysters and listening to jazz.
Geneva can be explored on foot but has fine public transport. Over the next couple of days we hop on and off trams and buses as we visit MEG, the sleek new ethnology museum; take lunch at the utterly deli- cious La Cantine des Commercants bistro; and explore hip shops on Rue Prevost-Martin.
The highlight, however, has to be CERN, the centre for the exploration of particle physics and home of the Large Hadron Collider. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t follow everything that physicists Mike Lamont and Steve Goldfarb told us, but the sense of excitement was infectious. As was the knowledge that Geneva still attracts remarkable dreamers.