Geneva; Thursday, 19 December, 2019

I had a half days leave, so was heading down to Gatwick shortly after lunch. I had a quick journey through checkin and security and onto the flight. A slightly bumpy and delayed flight later – due to a strike by French Air Traffic Controllers we had to fly the long route through Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany before approaching Geneva along the lake, so as to stay in Swiss Air Space – we arrived in Geneva.

I grabbed my luggage and a free travel pass from the machine in the baggage reclaim hall, headed for the station and less than 15 minutes later was disembarking in the centre of Geneva, from where I walked the short distance to my hotel.

I checked in, dropped off my stuff and headed out to do a bit of sightseeing – though that turned out to be harder than I expected as fog started to roll in from the alps behind the city – pretty soon the clear skies that I’d had leaving the hotel had been replaced with a thick fog that had less than 100m visibility.

I started off by heading down to the end of the lake, where it goes back into being the Rhône river, and then wandered up through the small lanes of the old town to the cathedral at the top of the hill. Here the slight increase in height made the fog even worse with the top of the cathedrals spire and towers disappearing into the murk.

After having a wander around the old town I headed back down the hill and into Bastion Park, located to the south of the old city walls, and home to the wall of the reformers – a giant statue showing several of the key figures in the reformation.

The park is also home to the largest of the Geneva Christmas Markets and I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the stalls looking for gifts, and also having a very snacky dinner – trying a couple of different things from all the food stalls in the market.

By the time I’d explored the whole of the market they were starting to close down for the night so I took that as a hint to head back to the hotel and turn in for the night