Geneva, Switzerland and Mont Blanc

Things are starting to all blend together as I am trying to catch up on my blog. Buildings are starting to look the same and the gold paint is blending in with each new city we go to. Geneva, a very wealthy city, was no exception. We stayed at some sort of dormitory with one toilet and shower per floor of about 20 people. Not sure exactly how we figured out showers besides the threats and bartering about when we were going to wake up the next morning.

Fortunately, the views and scenery just keep getting better and better the deeper we get into the Alps. We took a few mountain excursions away from our awful hotel to get us out into the fresh air. We also made a stop at Nestle headquarters. Their corporate headquarters were right next to a lake town, which was full of sun the day we were there. Nestle was a very unique organization. The company is so large, you could eat three meals a day with snacks in between and not even know that everything you had was made by Nestle. They have an amazing corporate responsibility strategy as well. They actually invest money in their farms and 3^rd world suppliers to provide fresh water and better farming techniques. This allows the farmers to prosper and Nestle is supplied with more higher quality products.

One day while staying in Geneva we took a day out to Mont Blanc, which is close by in France. At the base of the mountain is a small tourist town called Chamonix and we took a cable car all the way to the top of the mountain. The first cable stop was only about 1500 meters up and the view was amazing, but the next stop was 3800 meters! We weren’t exactly on the tip of Mont Blanc but you could see it just to the side of the observation deck once we took an elevator to the tip. Words cannot describe the feel of the air and the look of the scenery. Pictures don’t do it justice either, but it’s the best I’ve got.

I also ran out of space on Google Picasa web albums so here they are on facebook!