Packed up and headed to the train station! Well, first to just leave my bags in a locker and do a little more sightseeing, as the train wouldn’t be leaving until the afternoon. After dropping off the load, I wandered around the city center a bit, took a mouette across the lake again (to get from point A to point B, really!), saw an interesting outdoor exhibition about world poverty along the lake, and made my way to the science museum.
Geneva’s science museum is actually a museum of the history of science, which of course is even more fascinating, especially for an adult — that’s me! As with several other attractions in Geneva, it’s housed in a former mansion overlooking the lake. Inside are all manner of crazy awesome displays, from a collection of glass eyeballs to the actual contraption, in the flesh, that Charles Coulomb used to determine the laws of electrostatic attraction and repulsion over 200 years ago. On the second floor balcony, there’s a camera obscura set up (you can make it out in this photo) that is aimed at Mont Blanc 70 miles away, so you can see the mountain dimly projected on the rear surface of the contraption.
Relaxed for a while on the lawn in front of the science museum, and then headed to the train station for my departure. Happily, there was a train that went direct from Geneva to Montpelier (France), which is where my uncle Andreas would be picking me up. I had booked all of the trains on this trip ahead of time, except for this one, because I originally wasn’t sure of when I’d get access to CERN and wanted to be flexible. So once the CERN situation was set up, I booked this train and was relieved that there was a direct connection and that there was space on it!
The TGV trains (French bullet trains) typically run at up to 200 miles per hour, but not this one. Geneva is nestled in the western Alps and we needed to get through those mountains before getting to open land. So the train twisted through narrow mountain valleys. Spotted a hanglider and some generally gorgeous scenery.
After we cleared the mountains, the trained stopped in Lyon, then sped up for the long leg to Montpelier. Montpelier is the TGV city nearest to Port Camargue and is where my uncle picked me up.
A short drive in the little convertible VW Beetle and we were at the dockside apartment and the boat! Met cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nora, enjoyed a nice dinner on the dock, and settled down to my last night of sleep before .. who knows what.
Europe trip, phase 2, coming up!
