A perfect weekend - bikes, boats and, umm, trams

05/06 - I had neglected to shut the blinds when we got in last night, and the sun was far too bright at 0535 when it rose. We ended up getting up at about nine, far too early considering when we got in. It was an incredibly hot and beautiful day, so we hurried out and got a free city bike from a place down the road. We cycled down to the lake and booked a boat for 5 o'clock at a place near the Jet, then headed up towards Geneve-plage. It looked nice, but packed in there, so we decided to keep going up the bank a bit in case we found another spot where we could have a sunbathe and a swim. We ended up going all the way up to Vésenaz, a really nice little place atop a hill, where all the residents seemed much more beautiful than average. We grabbed some food from a little Manor they had up there, and walked downhill until we found somewhere where we could be by the lake - it was the campsite at Pointe de la Bise, supposedly only for campers but noone seemed to mind.

Looking back towards La Baby-plage and the city

We rang up and changed our boat booking for 6 o'clock, figuring that we probably didn't want to rush our picnic. I got in the lake for a few seconds, about up to my thighs, but that was it because it was absolutely freezing - I had naïvely assumed that the warm weather would warm the lake, but this was not the case. Kelly managed to get fully submerged, but only for a couple of seconds. On our way back Kelly realised that she had lost the keys for her bike, so she had to go back down to the shore and search for them. Luckily some kids had found them and handed them in, however it took some time to figure this out as Kelly does not speak French. We headed back into town, eventually arriving at the boat place at 1830, an hour and a half after our original conservative estimate. We could only get the boat for half an hour as it was booked up, but it was really awesome - a little four-seater petrol engined boat, with just enough speed to make hitting little waves fun. We took a couple of beers aboard and made it as far as the other side of the lake, near the UN, before we had to return it. We also found what seemed to be a bridal bouquet floating in the water, which is now in a vase in my flat.

On the boat on Lac Leman - clearly overjoyed

We dropped the city bike off four hours late (a quick google showed me that we cucled about 16km today), and it only cost us CHF 8. We had intended to quickly get changed then go out, but we collapsed for a while and eventually managed to make it out of the door with a can of Prosecco we had got at Manor - all class. We ended up going to La Malombre for dinner, a restaurant about 200 metres from my front door. I had not been there before as it had seemed pricey, but in fact it was really good - we had some great smoked salmon roulade things, then scallops with asparagus and an entrecôte with morilles sauce, which was amazing. Two glasses of wine each and it came to a total of CHF 100 (£30 each)- which seemed fine considering that lunch had been a bargain picnic.

06/06 - We were up less early today, as I remembered to shut the blinds last night, but we were still out of the house at a reasonable time. It was another incredible day, blue skies and at least 28º. We did a little shopping for dinner at the market at Planpalais, which we ended up carrying about for the next seven hours. We got the tram down to Carouge, which was really beautiful. It is unlike the rest of Geneva, the buildings are much quainter and smaller and older. We had lunch at a pizzeria, accompanied by some average ice cold rosé, then I went to Gelatomania for dessert - one of my choices was a pineapple and basil sorbet, which turned out to be amazing, really refreshing.

Kelly has a massive salad at a pizzeria

After a wander through the (mostly rubbish) market, we got the tourist tram back, which was pleasant enough, and as we were feeling pretty sapped by the heat we went to the cinema to see Robin Hood. It was OK, not too taxing, but nothing incredible - Kelly was very annoyed by his accent, a wierd kind of Scottish Australian which changed thought the film. We went home and I cooked a chicken Panaeng which worked really well, accompanied by a bottle of Chasselas from on of the vineyards we visited the other week. After dinner we caught an episode of Jonathan Dimbleby's Africa, which was really interesting, and had some more wine as we knew that for once we didn't have to be up at 0500 for Kelly's flight.

This is a photo of Le Tram Touristique, not that lady in the middle

07/06 - Instead of the usual 0700 flight, Kelly was booked on the 1050, which meant we could leave together and I could take her to the airport on the way to CERN. It was probably the nicest Monday morning we've had in ages, as neither of us was in a desperate rush. Even so, we arrived a good 70 minutes before her flight, which was then delayed by 45 minutes anyway, so she had 2 hours in the airport - a compromise. Due to the timing I got a non-optimum bus which took ages and involved a walk at the end (during which James went by in another bus and waved) and I got in for about 1040. I did not manage to get much of my report done, mainly because I was not too sure where to start. I left at about 6, so that I could make it to the supermarket on my way home, intending to do a load of washing/washing up/general tidying when I got in. Instead I awoke to hear my phone ringing at 2255, having passed out on my bed, surrounded by shopping, three hours earlier.