Dinner at La Broche - bad food, good company

On Tuesday evening we went to La Broche on Rue Stand with a group of my colleagues, 10 of us in all. As the venue was chosen by my Genevoise colleagues I was excited by my expectation of finding a hit. Unfortunately, at the moment Rue Stand is full of road works, so finding it is not strictly easy and when you've done that finding the entrance behind the holes and the fences is tricky too. Nonetheless, when we got to the terrace, we were sat outside a very pretty stone building, called the Arquebuse (though not a gun in sight). The terrace was just the right place to be on a warm July evening.

A day trip to Montreux

Lived in Montreux

"If you want your soul to find peace, go to Montreux", so says the Rough Guide. For those who don't believe in a soul, they are a little more helpful when they expand to say Montreux can also be "a snooty place, ...and not particularly exciting."  Ironically then we visited the place a week ago on Ascension day, which is Thursday a bank holiday here in Switz. Not a great day you'd think to go visiting a place that is known for not being exciting! Still, it's the place where this man lived so it can't be all that bad.   We had to stand in line to get a picture of the statue of the man. Well, we would have, if everyone else had.

Cafe de Paris on Rue Mont Blanc

Last night we walked out the house leaving the nanny to put the kids to bed. Our conversion to Genevoisie is progressing well it seems. The sun was still out, it was warm and the whole experience felt really quite civilised. We had a movie to see at 8.15, which turned out to be one of those terrible "an idea I got reading A Brief History of Time" SciFi stories. Still it was entertaining enough, and we happened to pick the right restaurant to get a bite to eat from before hand.

Health insurance - depends what your plan is

The bill from last weekends sirens and flashing lights came in on Friday. Just about all I can say is the excess for both of us for the year is now covered. We can get busy visiting doctors like a hypochondriac with webMD on twitter feed.

To Annecy from Geneva

Good name for a restaurant

We made a trip to Annecy yesterday, ostensibly to get some shoes for the little one. Considering they were half the price of the last pair we bought her in Switz, it was a 40 minute car journey well spent.
The town isn't all that big, about 50,000. The old town is quite a decent size, and stacked with restaurants, cafes and boulangeries.
The shoe shopping was amazingly straight forward.

Geneva buses and trams - controlled!

TPG's yellow card - you're booked sonny

Schadenfreude over load! This morning I was on Rue Servette looking for a suitable cutlery tray to fit in the odd sized drawers in our Edwardian kitchen cupboard, when I saw a young woman getting fined by the TPG (Transport Publiques Genevoise) for having no ticket.
It's a pretty hefty fine for the want of a 3CHF single, it comes in at 80CHF or 120CHF if you can't pay it on the spot.

Oh the shock on the person's face.

Little one goes to Gymboree Geneva

The little one got a trip out to a Gymboree play and music class with the nanny yesterday. All reports state she had a wild time.  Of course she also happened to be the only one there without her mummy. So I'm kind of glad I didn't go, otherwise I'd have been the only Dad! My life, what scandal in a city like  Geneva for a father to attend a play group with his children, and during the daytime!

Shopping en France

We crossed the border this weekend to go shopping in a Carrefour, it wasn't the best supermarket in the world, it was in a little town in the department of Ain, right on the border with Switzerland, just outside Cern. I'm sure we could find a better equipped store, but still it felt like going home to Sainsbury's because of the value for money. A simple equation would be that we spent what we usually do in Geneva and got 20% more stuff, based on bags carried. A very pleasing result. We will of course be crossing the border again to go shopping, most particularly for our turkey, assuming they have those in France. Although the time to get there is slightly extended because the Swiss are digging up a road between here and the border, I wonder whether that's a permanent thing just to keep up the tax revenue?
We also bought out tree in France, we have a useful insider living over the border who gives us handy tips on where to find better value for money than we would otherwise get in Geneva. All in all when the road works clear and we become a little more adept at jumping in the car and driving for 20 minutes or so to get somewhere I think we might become more comfortable with shopping over there. We aren't habitually very car focused people having lived in the centre of Oxford for the past five years, where for anything other than commuting to work outside the town, a car is more of a hinderance than a help. I think before long we will be seasoned raiders of Ain