Grooms Globe Trek . com

Our first travel challenges awaited us on our circuitous route to Geneva. The flight connections were horrible to begin with: Dublin-London-Dusseldorf-Geneva. Whatever, we accepted that and were ready. It wasn’t meant to be.

Our flight to London was fine. We even had free WiFi access at Dublin airport so we got caught up on a few items. However, in London a young girl got sick all over the inside of our airplane as it was arriving in London, and prior to our embarking. So the plane was delayed for an hour and a half. Considering that we only had forty minutes to catch our flight in Dusseldorf, we knew our day just got interesting. The agent in London said, “…go to Dusseldorf, it will be their problem.” Gee, thanks. So off to Dusseldorf we went.

Expecting to be met in Dusseldorf by the agent, we were met by nobody. After finally deciding to go through passport control and entering Germany, which we had to convince the border agent to let us do, we did find an agent. Fortunately, she knew who we were and had us rebooked to Zurich now. Thereafter, we were to connect to Geneva. Which in the end all did happen. The problem was it took us over twelve hours to fly what should have been a two hour flight. It took us twice as long to get to Geneva from Dublin as it did for us to fly from Philadelphia to Dublin. So those of you who are wondering why we didn’t plan on any more cities in Europe you know why. In one day we got to see Ireland, England, Germany and Switzerland!

On our arrival our great friend Darcy was waiting so all was forgotten.

Geneva is wonderful. The weather for us this week has been perfection. As you can see from the blue skies in the pictures. Stephen and Darcy have a great home in the countryside and we have enjoyed relaxing a little prior to our big push into Africa. Stephen grew up in Geneva and he has given us a great tour of the area. His French sure is helpful too! Lucky for us Stephen’s mom and dad were in town as well and his mom gave us a great tour of the city. Marvelous.

Our second night arrived with our much anticipated adults night out to the Paleo 2005 concert. A concert that has gone on here in a large field (Woodstockish) for over thirty years. The head-liner was Lenny Kravitz, and to true Swiss custom, he came on stage exactly at 2315. What concert have you ever been to that the head-liner comes out on time? There must have been almost 40,000 people there and over 30,000 were present in front of the stage when Lenny opened up with his song Minister of Rock and Roll. The sea of humanity was amazing. We scoped out seats in some grand stands set up behind the huge mosh pit and were treated to a perfect view of the entire scene.

Of the many memories we will take from this concert, the one that truly stands out is watching Lenny Kravitz jam through one great song after another as the stomach churning smell of burnt fondue (from nearby food stalls) wafted through the air. Not sure I will ever experience that again! How Swiss.

We got home and to bed by 0200 and got to sleep in to 1000. Stephens’ mom watch all the kids, and they all behaved, so all was well.

Today, our last in Geneva, has been spend doing laundry, checking on e-mail, doing expense reports, updating our website, paying bills online and taking care of the pictures we have shot to date. We want to head to Africa with all of our house keeping chores in order so we can focus on the coming days, not on what we haven’t yet done along the way.

We have enjoyed spending time with Stephen, Darcy and their two beautiful girls Gabrielle and Elizabeth. We are very lucky to have such great friends such as them. We will enjoy our memories with them from Geneva and I am sure we will speak of them often as we experience the coming weeks and months of this trip.

Now we are off to Africa. Not sure when another update will come. Stay tuned as our intrepid travelers head south into the next chapter of their journey.

Tags: Concert, Fondue, Geneva, Rock, Switzerland, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Geneva, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.