We flew into Geneva at about 10pm local time and went off looking for the bus to take us to the hotel as it wasn’t far. It took us a wee while to find the bus stop, then we were confronted with the problem of local currency. Switzerland is not part of the European Union and as such, doesn’t operate with the Euro. Instead they have Swiss Francs. Now, I know what you’re thinking, you should have gone to the bank David and Samantha to get to Swiss Francs….well, we did. The thing we didn’t get was coins…in fact, you can’t get coins from UK banks for overseas currencies. So, we needed coins to buy bus tickets, as notes were not accepted…
who’d have known this? Sure, we could have gotten a taxi, but we were on a bit of a budget and besides, why do something the easy way, when you can do it a more difficult way…so we persevered and got talking to first an Australian guy who was in the same predicament as ourselves and then, shortly before the bus arrived, an English guy who lived in Geneva. He was kind enough to buy our tickets and we paid him back, plus we also paid for the Aussie guy…he was looking downcast and we had to help a fellow good guy! 
Anyways, we had our ticket and off we went….not too many problems finding the hotel but then the fun started! The Hotel was at the top of an apartment block and you had to press a buzzer to gain entry. We did this for several minutes and we were getting a tad worried (Tad worried, we were stressing it big time….Samantha) as it was now about 11.15pm local time. We had the phone number but the area code was strange and difficult to work out from the provided number. In the end, despite the area being rather deserted, I used my basic French and asked a local lady the area code to use. This sorted the situation out and we gained access after a while of concern about whether we would get into the hotel or not!
Geneva is famous for Rolex watches, Swiss Army knives and Banking.
We thought, being the home of banking, we’d have no problems finding a bank to cash our traveller’s cheques. No, unfortunately not that easy. Yes, we could transfer to Swiss Francs but we had enough of these, but we wanted Euros. We could have paid a large fee…perhaps this is why the Swiss are famous for their banking…making serious money by charging fees….anyways, we didn’t worry and decided to get cash in Italy later on.
Geneva has a massive man made geyser in the middle of the lake which was kinda cool, but we thought the best part of Geneva was the old town. With winding streets, old style buildings and shops all well displayed with a range of goods, this is the area that we spent most of our time wandering.
The weather was quite warm and overall, we had an enjoyable time in Geneva….a nice place to relax into our trip rather than hitting the faster paced cities like Rome. 
Two nights were spent in Geneva and on the 14th September, we caught an 8.50am train to Rome, via Milan and Firenze (Florence).
