Geneva

For our pre-graduation trip, we made a trip to Venice, Geneva, Athens and Santorini. The Geneva trip followed shortly after our trip to Venice. We flew with Swiss Air from London City Airport to Athens. Twas my 7th time flying with Swiss Airlines. We transited in Geneva. Flying via budget airlines was more expensive than a full fare airline. That's why I don't really like flying with budget airlines and often flew with full fare ones. It was a 7.5 hours transit, so we explored the city. 5 hours in the bustling city is sufficient, should you plan for a day trip in Geneva. The weather was very hot. It was 23 degrees, hot and humid. Reminded me of Malaysia.

 Geneva airport

 Me and Jon

 Elwin and Sara

 Tammie

 Upon reaching the central station

 Very clean and pleasant streets

 The city of Geneva :)

Here are some photos as we walked:

 

 We settled down at Ristorante le Lacustre for lunch.

 The menu

Jon and our bottle of Pallegrino

 Egg and clear chicken broth soup. Not bad, it's very tasty.

My marinara spaghetti. The seafood was very, very fresh. Pasta was tasty. Delicious!

 Elwin's omelet and clear chicken broth soup

 Jon's pizza

After lunch we walked walked around the quay:

 Hi there!

 The quay

Being very ethnic, this is my first time seeing this type of tree that reminds me of the army uniforms.

 Cathedral

  

Here are some photos of us:

 

And finally, along the river: 

Climbing up the Duomo in Florence

In summer while in Florence, I visited the Duomo a few times. At first it was just the exterior view, then I went in along with my family members, and finally I went up the Dome solo. I guess the idea of climbing up hundreds of flights of did not appeal to mom, dad and my aunts. In fact, it scared them off. Haha.

While I was queueing up to for the tickets and entrance to climb up the Dome, I was like, it should be a piece of cake! I just had a great breakfast at the hotel and I feel so energetic! After paying €8 for the ticket, I went in and started climbing up the stairs.

There were 463 steps -.-"

I had to pause a few times along with the other visitors to catch my breath and to drink water. The smarty pants me brought a big bottle of water cause I anticipated I would be very much dehydrated and needed to drink like a hippopotamus! True enough :) It was an amazing workout. I have never sweated so much no matter how many exercises I've done, which was basically none. It took me 30 minutes to be up on top of Florence.

The interior of the duomo. It's Giorgio Vascari's Last Judgement.

Whilst on the last flight of stairs up, I thought to myself, this better be worth all the climb! 

IT WAS, INDEED.

Here's photos of the spectacular and breathtaking views:

 I spent a good 1 hour on top of the dome - to chill, enjoy the spectacular views and to recharge.

 Ciao!