Geneva

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This morning I woke up in Montreux at the extreme east end of Lake Geneva (see photo). The mountains that you can see in the picture are in France on the south side of the lake. After breakfast, I drove along the north shore all the way to the extreme west end of the lake. It took less than two hours to get to the city of Geneva. My first stop was CERN, the international scientific society and the site of the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator. There are two permanent exhibits at CERN and I went to both. The first exhibit is about the LHC and how it works. I took a picture of their picture (see photo). That was a close as I came to it because they don't allow tourists to see the actual LHC. Next I visited the Universe of Particles which is housed in a huge spherical structure (see photo). This exhibit (see photo) can be described as "futuristic" and had information about the Big Bang, matter and antimatter, subatomic particles, and the universe. It covered a lot of territory! Before leaving Geneva, I drove downtown and walked along the waterfront. I particularly wanted to see the Jet d'Eau, the famous fountain of Geneva (see photo). It is located near where Lake Geneva flows out to form the source of the Rhone River. I remember the jet from 1975 when I was last here, but I must admit that it is the only thing about Geneva that seemed familiar after all this time. I left Geneva and Switzerland and returned to France, specifically to Lyon. This is the fifth time I've entered France on this trip. The first two times were at airports and there was the standard passport control and security there. The other three times I have driven across the border. I was not stopped nor did I have to show my passport, but each time there was a deviation of traffic to slow everyone to a crawl while armed military personnel closely observed each vehicle. Trucks got more scrutiny than cars, but I'm sure my license plate got run through a computer while I was passing by. The other countries I've driven in this trip have not had that same level of border security. I guess France is being extra cautious because they've had more terrorist problems recently than Spain, Italy, or Switzerland.

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