Our last day in Switzerland, we got up relatively early (I don't remember the time now), broke camp, and headed for the train station. Since we had seen basically everything there was to see in Geneva, Saturday we took the train back up to Basel. On the way to Basel, we had the opportunity to actually see the Swiss countryside. When we were headed south the first day, we couldn't see anything because it was already dark. The return trip treated us to some gorgeous views. We passed through many quaint little country towns, went through gorgeous forests with flaming trees in their fall glory, and zipped past the shores of Lake Lucern. Unfortunately the pictures aren't that great because of the train windows, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was beautiful.
While on the train, the cutest little boy kept looking over at us from across the aisle and eventually Rolf broke through his shyness to come talk with us. This conversation was only possible because the cute little boy spoke English. And French. And German. AND Spanish. His Mom was Swiss and his dad was South American and he had been born in Virginia. Quite the traveler. At the end of the journey, when he, his mom, grandmother, and sister were debarking, we were all treated to kisses on our hands from Rolf, the little gentleman. This experience only served to reinforce my conviction that Americans need to get their ostrichy heads out of the sand and realize that English is NOT the only language out there. We should be teaching foreign languages to our children from a young age and teaching them that there are cultures beyond the borders of the States. I still believe that all Americans should be fluent in English and all immigrants to our country should be able to speak it, but there should be a higher concentration of foreign languages in our schools beyond just one or two, frequently badly taught, years in high school.
Moving on from my little rant, once we arrived in Basel, we decided to go see the sights, including the local cathedral and the Rhine River. En route however, Kimmy and Erin decided they were too tired to walk all over, especially while carrying their backpacks. So we parted ways, with Caroline and I continuing on and Kimmy and Erin returning to the train station to wait.The cathedral was like most other European cathedrals, amazing. It also had a couple really cool clocks on the outside.
What was interesting about this one though was that outside a carnival was taking place. Quite the contrast to see an amusement ride set up on the cobbled streets in front of an impressive 14th century building. Caroline and I decided that the carnival must be the end of Oktoberfest since the border to Germany was just a few minutes away and it was the first weekend in November.
After the cathedral, we went on to the nearby Mittlere Rhinebrücke. This bridge is apparently the oldest bridge in Europe that spans the Rhine River.
We took pictures, crossed over, and then went down to the shore so that I could say that I had touched the Rhine River (now's the time when you "ooo" and "ahhh" :P).
We enjoyed the twilight and then made our way back to the train station to meet back up with Kimmy and Erin. On the way, we saw this apparently "famous" statue of a man hammering. I think it's supposed to represent Basel's continuous industrial nature. The man constantly moves his hammer up and down.
Once back at the train station, we sat and sat and sat and sat some more. Kind of like the little girl in the potty training book. And around 9pm when the station was really cold and questionable people were starting to move in that appeared like they too were going to spend the night there, we decided to switch locations. So we took the city bus out to the airport and set up camp there. Thankfully we were able to spend the night there without being kicked out. But let me tell you, it's a little odd spending the night in a deserted airport. The last arrival had come in at 11:30pm and the first departure in the morning wasn't till 6am. For those curious, our flight out the next morning didn't leave till 9am (check-in at 7am) and we spent the night in the airport because we're both cheap and because we hadn't arranged beforehand for a hostel and didn't want to go through the trouble later.Anyways, back to the deserted airport. There was a security guard who walked around and the cleaning ladies were there around midnight-1am, but other than that it was deserted except for us and another group over in a different check-in area who were doing the same thing as us and sleeping there for the night.
Spending the night in an airport is not something I would recommend for anyone to do of their own volition. The chairs aren't comfortable, it's a *tad* too cold, and if you're unlucky enough, there are little kid choo-choo trains that every minute and 20 seconds begin to make noises and blink lights. Yes, we timed the possessed train; we had nothing better to do.
But we survived the night, we saved money, and we weren't late for our flight back to Valencia the next morning. And we got to mess around with stuff, such as weighing ourselves on Ryanair's luggage scales.
And thus ended the excursion to Switzerland. For those interested in traveling to Switzerland, I highly recommend it. However, keep in mind that although the dollar is more powerful than the franc (or at least it used to be), things are still expensive; you should eat regular meals; and try to find yourself a Columbian if at all possible.That's all folks!
On our way there, we passed by the Geneva opera house, the Grand Theatre, and a park with chess sets and a cool swinging thing that I played on after all the school kids left. 
Then we went to the Old Arsenal (which had cannons),
Town Hall (where Caroline scared Erin),
the 
St. Peter's Cathedral (which we thought was a Catholic church but apparently is Protestant and has "Calvin's chair"),
the English gardens (with a cool, year-round botanical clock),
the Jet 
the Red Cross Museum
(I went in there while Erin and Juan toured the United Nations and Kimmy and Caroline went into the Ariana Museum [ceramics]),
and then back to our campsite. Quite the day, eh?
When you're at the Jet 
Thankfully we had good luck and were able to make it out and back fairly dry. On the way Juan told us the following story: Apparently a man decided that he wanted to go out with a bang. So one morning before the Jet 
After the fountain, we had our little PMS incident. All of us were really hungry but we couldn't decide what to eat and everything just kept looking really expensive. Finally Kimmy had to tell Erin to chill out and then told Juan that we were stopping at the next sandwich place we saw. This plan had an upside and a downside. The good part was it served really good panini. The bad part was that I ended up paying 8 francs for a sandwich and 3 francs for a bottle of water that was bottled just on the other side of the lake (for those that don't know, Evian water is bottled on Lake Geneva). After that I left the group for a little while to go on a yarn store hunt. Fortunately, I found the address that I had written down from my web search. Unfortunately, the web does NOT know all, and it wasn't a yarn store like it said. So instead I spent my pennies on chocolate bonbons in an attempt to consol myself (since it was really good and I was able to buy yarn at a different store, my efforts worked).
The Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum was pretty cool. Small, but interesting. One aspect that I liked was it had all the files of the WWII 
Another aspect I really liked, but hadn't thought about much was the emphasis the Red Cross puts on the work to eliminate land mine use. Here's one of the posters they had displayed that I thought packed a punch, to borrow the 
After the Red Cross Museum, we had a little "situation." We were all supposed to meet up again on a particular street corner after our different expeditions to different places. Side note for those wondering: I didn't go into the UN because it cost a little too much for me and I figured a picture out front was good enough. Anywho, I came out of the Red Cross Museum and met up with Kimmy and Caroline who were waiting where they were supposed to be. Since Juan and Erin hadn't shown up yet, I told them I was going to go browse through the ceramics museum really quick since it was a free museum. While I was in there I found a monkey for Jacque.
After I came out, Erin and Juan still weren't there so I joined Kimmy and Caroline on the bench and we proceeded to wait. Ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by and no Erin and no Juan. At first we were just frustrated but then as time continued to pass, we began to get nervous. Had something happened? Was Juan really the nice guy we thought he was? Had they gone somewhere else and not told us? We ended up waiting an hour before we went back down to the tram stop to look for them. Once there, we waited for ten minutes before returning to the original meeting place. We decided we would wait another 45 minutes before returning to Juan's house and seeing if his dad was there and if he could call Juan's cell and find out what was going on. If his dad wasn't there, we were going to wait till he came home and then if calling Juan didn't work, we would call the police and REALLY start to worry. Thankfully none of this came to pass. Ten minutes before we would have left, they showed up. What had happened was they joined the last tour of the day and then other tourists kept not following directions or asking stupid questions and the tour went a LOT longer than it was supposed to. But it all turned out okay in the end and since it wasn't their fault they were late, we forgave Juan and Erin. Then we made our merry little way back to the campsite where we parted ways and Erin and Kimmy spent the night in the bathroom as Caroline and I "snuggled" in the tent in our sleeping bags.
None of the refreshments on board are free, you have to pay for EVERYTHING, a little disappointing I must say. Also, they’ll sell you lottery tickets on board. Definitely a new experience. Thankfully it wasn’t cloudy while we were flying and that allowed us to view the amazing European alps from the air.
So gorgeous!! The pictures don’t do them justice.
And although the airline seems a little sketchy, cheap as it is and all, we had a safe departure, flight, and landing into Basel, Switzerland.
Depending on which door you exit through, you can go to France, Germany, or Switzerland. Obviously since we were headed to Geneva, we took the option for Switzerland. We took the bus into the train station and there we encountered our first problem.
We found a bank and proceeded to withdraw money in Swiss francs (luckily for us, Switzerland is actually a country whose money is LESS powerful than the US: 80 cents USD = 1 franc CHF). However, when it came Carolyn’s turn, she could remember which password was for her bank card. After several wrong tries, the ATM spit out her card, locking it, of course. Thus she had no way to buy a train ticket. We tried calling her bank back in the US through COLLECT but it didn’t work. Finally I loaned her one lump sum of money for the weekend and we continued on our way. We bought bread and cheese at a grocery store and then proceeded to wait for our train.
We made it safely onto the correct train and settled down for a three-hour trip. A couple panic situations occurred as we wondered alternatively whether we were on the right train after all, or whether we needed to switch trains. Thankfully no further action was required on our part and we arrived safely in Geneva. In the train station we located a bus route map and then successfully made it to the stop. Now in Switzerland, you buy your bus tickets on the street at whatever stop you’re getting on and the amount you pay depends on how far you’re riding the bus or how long you want a pass for (a couple hours, all-day, etc). Since we had no clue where exactly the campground was, or how many zones we would be traveling through, we stood like idiots in front of the board trying to decide. Finally a nice black gentleman who spoke English was able to help us a little and we bought tickets to get on the bus.
We went by the town hall where we all saw our first normal-looking door that was actually was an automatic door.
It scared us when it first opened and then after we realized what it was and want to get a video of it opening, it wouldn’t open. Argg. Pero no pasa nada. We walked through a park surrounding town hall and I found a perfect pile of leaves to jump in.
That was one of the great things about this trip. It was fall and all the leaves were changing colors and it was gorgeous and there were piles everywhere for me to jump in.
Then we took the tram up to the European headquarters for the United Nations. We saw and took pictures of the Broken Chair (a monument to land-mine victims)
and took pictures in front of the entrance (I'm pointing to the approximate location of Idaho),
and then walked down to the free Botanical Gardens of Geneva. Which happened to be right across from the World Meteorological Organization, which is housed in a really cool building with lots of windows that looks like a submarine. So we took more pictures of that.
The botanical gardens were really pretty, even though it was fall, and we took lots of pics. Even got someone to take a picture of all five of us (remember to cheer for Juan!).
Then we managed to find another pile of leaves for me to jump in. This time Erin joined me and we got some cool action shots.
Oh and the Botanical Gardens also had one of the first bathrooms I've been in (outside of arcade places like Boondocks) that had blacklights in the bathroom. Or maybe they were just blue lights. Either way I took a picture of course.
Then we wandered our way back into the main part of Geneva in search of food. On the way, we saw a really cool, modernized Catholic church with a spherical-shaped sanctuary.
We ended up in a super-department store called Manor (Jacque, it was a lot like El Corte Ingles). They had a restaurant/cafeteria up on the top floor and we ate pizza for supper. Then we took the bus back to our campground and crashed for the night.
Since we really hadn’t eaten much during the day, I don’t think our bodies really had enough energy to keep up warm during the night. We all slept horribly till about 3am when we all realized that yes, we were all awake, and yes, we were all hungry, and why not have a little snack? So we did and after that we seemed to sleep a little better. The third night, Kimmy and Erin decided that they weren’t going to deal with the cold for another night and they took their sleeping bags to the campground’s heated bathrooms and slept there. I opted to stay in the tent since my sleeping bag was actually a decent one and I really wasn’t that cold at night. Yes, my hips (where I had the most pressure and contact with the ground) and my toes were a little chilly, but nothing a Giem can’t handle. There’s been worse I know. The next morning we had frost but we’re still all alive and kicking.
The iodine's the main reason that my eye looks so pretty in these pics. And yes Spain is still addicted to iodine for just about every injury. They haven't quite gotten to the antibiotic cream yet.
And a week or so later, my eye looked like this.
Currently you can't see the scar unless you look for it, but it still hurts just a teeny, tiny bit if you press on it. No complaints from this side of town.