We left Lyon early and headed for Geneva in the car. It is only a two hour drive between the two cities so we were glad that it was going to be a much easier day on the road than the day before. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have left our passports at St Felix and I had asked Naomi to email me a picture of the the photocopies I had left with her before leaving Australia. Then we headed for Geneva with our fingers crossed.

Soon the country side around us changed from rolling green hills, to massive mountains and steep valleys covered in pine trees. We shot over bridges 1km above the valleys and villages below and sped through tunnels driving through massive mountains. The scenery was so magnificent and we felt so small beside it. The excitement of seeing a new country began to build.

As we approached the border Chris and I started to feel a bit nervous about our lack of passports. To our dismay, (and some apprehension), we were not waved through by the security guards as we had hoped, but pulled over and asked to stop. There was some nail biting as we wondered how to explain that we had forgotten the passports in French. But then, to our surprise, they just wanted us to pay a toll for entering Switzerland…and there began a very expensive day!

Geneva is a beautiful city that shares similar architecture to Paris and has a gorgeous lake on its door step. The city is obviously a prosperous one full of lovely boutiques, Ferraris, expensive watches and lovely cafés. The little brasserie we stopped at for lunch gave us our first indication that we were about to blow the budget, massively. As we read through the menu we struggled to find any dishes costing less than 30 Swiss francs (around $40) – we ended up buying the cheapest things we could find on the menu and a bowl of chips for Michael. Surely, we thought, that was just a remarkably expensive cafe? Apparently not! As we hunted through the city for a cafe with wifi so that we could organise accommodation for the night, we became aware that we weren’t in France, paying ridiculously cheap French prices any more!

After securing some accommodation online, we wandered around the city until the kids found a floating pontoon swimming pool in the middle of the river in the city. They spent a wonderful hour in the sun swimming with the other children while Chris and I relaxed in the sun watching.

Afterwards we retired to our hotel, where they did ask for passports(!!!!) but luckily were happy to accept the electronic copies we had instead. Being a Sunday, nearly everything was closed so we walked across the road to a shopping centre for dinner. In the friendly Mexican restaurant next to the cinemas, we read the menu with dismay – around $45 for a hamburger and $35 for a burrito. We left and decided to dine at McDonalds instead. We paid $88 for our meal and considered it a (relative) bargain!!