Today’s highlight was a drive to a small medieval village on the banks of Lake Geneva just across the border in France. We took a short walk through the gate of the village and down flowery lanes crowded with tourists to a restaurant we visited 5 years ago, Les Jardins du Leman, for our lunch today.

A vignette of scenes around Yvoire, and the delicious food at the restaurant.

A silver domed spire of the local church dominates the skyline, while the small harbor has lots of pleasure boats.

We got up early this morning and used our new Geneva bus passes to ride into the city with the commuters.While most bus riders walked off to work, we walked to the waterfront to see this gentleman unlock the little box in the wall to push the button at 9am sharp to start the Jet d’Eau, the water jet that is the symbol of Geneva!

Watching it start up and shoot into the sky never gets old!

We then caught a tram to the Uni-Bastion, the park surrounding the University of Geneva main building where I spent 3 months in 2019 trying to learn french.

Scenes from around the University. The building is closed and swathed in scaffolding undergoing a much needed renovation! Once it’s remodeled I might come back and try french lessons again!

We caught the tram and the bus back to Vandoeuvres for a wonderful dinner prepared by Raymonde.

Even the “Basset” hound joined in!

Another evening walk with a great view. Mt. Blanc is somewhere out there!

Raymonde arranged a luncheon with friends today. We started with appetizers in the garden.

As the guests arrived Michel tried to help, but Raymonde had everything prepared! We enjoyed meeting new friends (to us) and getting reacquainted with friends from 5 years ago.

We moved inside to the elegantly laid dining table for the salad. Meanwhile John continued grilling in the garden. He grilled the variety of sausage we had with appetizers and the main meal includes bison, beef and lamb!

A wonderful meal with great company!

An evening walk, with Mt. Saleve in the background.

We caught an earlier train than we planned and arrived at the Geneva train station 15 minutes early. We didn’t have a planned meet up point with Raymonde and Michel and walked out to the main entrance. We turned back into the station and Robert spotted them riding the escalator up. We quickly jogged up behind them and said “Bonjour”! It was a great reunion with our friends! We had an errand before we left the area, we had to pick up a new phone Robert ordered since his phone died about 2 weeks ago. Luckily Raymonde & Michel knew the street where the Digitec store is, right outside the station! We had a leisurely walk to the store, picked up the new phone and walked back to the station’s garage to get the car. As we drove out of the garage it started raining, thankfully it held off during our walk!

The beautiful home of our friends Michel & Raymonde! They say it has been raining a lot this summer.

“Our apartment”, we stayed here for 3 months in 2019. It felt like coming home!

The backyard garden, very green thanks to the rain.

Our first meal together at a local restaurant. I had perch from Lac Leman and frites. Delicious!

We’re on our way to Switzerland today. An early cab ride into Domodossola to catch our train! We did enough walking on that road! A delightful train ride, very scenic as we rode through the mountains and along the valley of the Rhone river.

Mountains flanking the valley of the Rhone river in Switzerland.

The Rhone river forms Lake Geneva, flowing into the east end of the lake and flowing out at the west tip of the lake in the city of Geneva.

Swiss vineyards along the valley of the Rhone!

Lac Leman, or Lake Geneva.

We stopped short of arriving in Geneva. We want to arrive tomorrow morning to have a full day beginning our time visiting one of our favorite cities!