Well, I'm on the train now, heading to Florence, just having pulled out of Bologna, and the hills are just starting to hide the sunset. It's getting really quiet and pretty outside. Not too bright. It was almost ferocious today: I'm pretty burned across the face.
Our first evening in Geneva was spent down by the shore of Lake Geneva, where much of the city comes out to socialize and enjoy the air and light. Erik and I had left the World Health Organization by around 6pm and took the bus into the city. Obviously, everything looked different than the mere shapes of the streets I'd become accustomed to on my guidebook map of the city, and so I was pretty thoroughly lost. We got off at the main train station and walked some five or six blocks to Erik's place. As it turned out, Erik had taken a room in the middle of Geneva's red light district, in the neighbourhood called Les Pâquis. It wasn't particularly poor or seedy-looking, but Erik indicated sadly where the prostitutes were already staking out street corners. For a few blocks around the place he lived, it seemed that everything was either a falafel/kebob place or a strip club. I was very grateful to be able to shower after now nearly two days, and we set out to initiate Mike into the local business life. Of the falafel, that is. It was somehow something that I'd never gotten around to trying, and I was a bit nervous as to how my digestive system would react to it, given its moodiness. We headed down to the lakeshore to eat and to look at the city.
We grabbed a water taxi first thing, laughing at the competent irritation of a young blonde woman working there who seemed pretty fed up with the idiot questions of Americans, and we went the length of the Grand Canal, past San Marco to the next landing at San Zaccaria. We were taking photographs the whole way and just soaking in the sheer presence of the place. Everywhere we were under the eye of some version of the winged Gospel Lion of San Marco: reliefs, statues, paintings and the still-present flag of the Republic of Venice, a country now two centuries vanished. I was marking places in my head to come back to see, virtually all of which we failed to do, not coming anywhere near the places as we were wandering. Just entirely too much to see, too much to do. It ended up being somewhere where we were content to not do a whole lot. Erik called it "sampling," just scouting the place out for when we could really come and visit. "Sampling" was a good term.
Then it was afternoon and time for more adventures!
Go to: Venice: Part Two