Somehow this post was lost, but luckily the content was stored elsewhere! So it really did jump time somehow.

So I haven't yet described the lake district walks but I'll come back to those later and describe activities in Switzerland first.

We arrived in Switizerland on Tuesday lunchtime after a early morning start in Glasgow. Gene, Ken's friend met us at the airport, apparently it was some kind of public holiday for the international types in Geneva - might have been an American or Islamic holiday not sure.

He took us for a drive all over Geneva and finally back to his place. His wife, Katie is posted in Geneva, so they are in a lovely leafy area near to the airport. So close we were able to walk with our bags to the train station at the airport on Friday.

Friday afternoon Ken and Gene caught up, they went into France to do a little shopping. We all had a fairly early night.

Geneva itself always fails to impress me, I don't know why it is set in a beautiful location but the buildings and people who are by far the most multinational, but it just seems cold. Not physically cold but like there is some element missing. Glasgow with its massive migration of people through sauchiehall and bath street and its old sandstone buildings feels much more alive and vibrant.

Wednesday the day was grey but not cold or wet so we set out to explore the city. We wandered from Genes to the local mall and grabbed a coffee, trying not to feel to conspicuous as strangers then followed the tram line into the city itself. Reaching the city we went to the train station and brought our 1/2 cards, These essentially gave us half fare travel where ever we wanted to go. I did some research about swiss passes and 1/2 cards etc etc and figured the 1/2 card would be the best option. (they have since paid for themselves!)

We wandered around the town, through the old town and up to the church not really a cathedral, - we visited this last time we were in Geneva as it has a pretty cool archaeological dig underneath it, we considered going under again but decided how much could it have changed. :) not like they were going to dig up anything really new or exciting its all old stuff.. (joke) We ate lunch sitting on ile Rousseau which is a little island on a foot bridge crossing the Rhone, watching people feeding the ducks, geese and pigeons.

We then decided to use our new passes and go visit the CERN visitor center right near the french boarder. So we jumped on a ticket machine - they are everywhere- brought our tickets and jumped on the tram and off we rolled back up the way we had walked that morning towards CERN. The ticket inspectors were everywhere, we saw them booking a teenager, she just looked disinterested. But they have nice uniform - not as nice as the train crew on the Bernese Oberland trains!

CERN has opened the Globe of Science and Innovation - Particle Universe thing which is a giant wooden round building near its site which is open to the public - inside there is a rather cool show about the universe and what CERN is looking for and a series of interactive displays. I think the best bit was sitting in an egg chair, listening to the commentary on Bosun Higgs and what they are meant to be when Ken, his face lit up with his big smile, excitedly called me over .... "look its the worlds first web server!". complete with do not switch off hand written stickers stuck to it! Seriously it was pretty cool.

Anyway we still had some time left in the day so went back into town on the tram caught a second tram to the botanic gardens and wandered around there. oddly this botanic garden have a animal section where they keep goats, deer, ducks, peacocks, and chickens.. yes chickens. It was rather smelly and the deer enclosure made me a bit sad but people were feeding the deer acorns and the deer didn't seem to be minding, their stinky enclosure - it was rocky underfoot, but I guess that was meant to be like that as the other pens were grassy.

The botanic gardens also has a very strange merry go round with was steam punk, It had two levels, with a stair case in the middle to access the upper level, the whole contraption went around. But it was the cars that were really odd - an upside down lion hung from his paws on the upper level, a bulls head with horns and a wire body, a strange Kangaroo least i think it was a kangaroo! words do not do it justice so you will have to wait for images.

By now it was getting late - the cactus house was closed so we caught yet another tram through peak hour traffic back to Gene's for dinner and a another nights nap.