Not fasting in Geneva

After an 8-hour drive (not counting stops, every 2 hours, for espresso and some very fine pasta with potatoes, string beans and excellent pesto) we made it to Geneva. I drove some of the same stretch with John Fiorillo 35 years ago (yow!), and the engineering of the stretch of autostrada along the Mediterranean coast still impresses. For miles and miles (or maybe kilometers), you are on either a bridge spanning a valley or in a tunnel cutting thru a mountain. It seems like the only thing on unaltered ground are the entrances and exits of the tunnels where they transition to bridges. It must have taken 10 times as long to drive that route (if indeed it was even possible) before the autostrada was constructed. One of the things that seems really odd is that as you pass into a tunnel, you often see a farmer hand tilling his field just above on the hillside. It seems like having the autostrada right next to your family farm is terrible, until you realize that if it had been constructed on the surface, most of those farms would have been destroyed to build the road. The toll, which covered about 6 hours of driving, was 41 Euros, which is a lot, but not when you think about how much it must have cost to construct the road.
Then we wound up a beautiful valley with spectacular views of the alps until we came the Mt. Blanc tunnel. See previous comments about that. After nearly 8 hours of driving, it was even harder to maintain the concentration needed to keep the speed between the upper and lower bounds and to keep a distance of two blue lights between us and the car in front of us. Especially when a police car or some other official car pulled out of one of the frequent niches where a disabled car can pull over. I had to eke out my 2 lights' distance again without causing the car behind me to get too close. And once you are out of the tunnel, the excitement is not over. The road twists steeply downward into France with lots of traffic. On the way up it wasn't so exciting because gravity was helping reduce the speeds, but going down was something else. Like the Grapevine on the way to LA, the left and right sides of the road are switched (opposing traffic is on your right), as the engineers took advantage of the best slopes for uphill and downhill traffic.
Our handy GPS got us right to Vincent and Naomi's house, which we went slightly past, then stopped on the curve considering our options for unloading. A loud bellow of "DAVID" from the heavens caught our attention, and Vincent (up on their balcony) directed us to back up to an open space we had not seen. Right in front. How lucky is that? By the time we had unloaded, it was 6:00, and one can park for 1 hour, with parking restrictions going away at 7:00. The next day we got up early and got rid of the car. Can't say I was sorry to see it go.
Since our last visit, Naomi and Vincent have emptied their country house (it's being remodeled) and moved back into their city apartment. It's very nice, with a great view of the hills that is particularly nice at sunset. They even have a water view (if you look closely through the trees, you can see a little sliver of the Rhone river). We've walked through the Bastion (nice park in the center of Geneva near the old town), the old town, and two adjacent parks donated by the landowners whose land they had been. Really nice. The second day, we took the bikes apart (this I'm starting to really hate -- how is it that it gets harder with repetition?). Then we took a really good tour of the UN. We even saw one of the few peacocks that remain after last winter's depradations by foxes. When that land was donated to Geneva, there was a stipulation that the owners acquire and keep peacocks. This has continued through the ownership by the League of Nations, and now the UN. Walked along the lake to meet Naomi and Vincent for dinner at a really great restaurant in the old town.
Today we walked over to Carrouge, a nice old town between Vincent and Naomi's city apartment and their country house. It was market day, the highlight of which was a sort of organ grinder with an enormous cat who walked slowly up and down between the stalls attracting children to buy his lollipops. Next to a great photography exhibit of photographs of New York in the 40s and 50s by Weegee, then lunch, and past the synagogue. It slowly dawned on us that today is Yom Kippur -- and we had just eaten a huge (and very expensive) lunch. Geneva, or perhaps Switzerland in general, is amazingly expensive. Finally, we took the tram to the museum of the Red Cross. Tonight we'll have fondue or raclette, in honor of Switzerland. Tomorrow: Paris.