Month: July 2014

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What a Beautiful Place to Ride Your Bike!

My hometown of Minneapolis/St. Paul is regarded as one of the top cities for biking in America, (the Twin Cities and Portland,Oregon seemingly always take top honors) but they’ve got nothing on Geneva.  Yes, there are more cars than bikes in this city (I think) but the transportation infrastructure has clearly been designed and constructed with the cyclist as well as the motorist in mind.

Chris and I set out for a ride recently from our apartment in Geneva to a town called Hermance, which is about 20 kilometers up the south shoreline of Lake Geneva, or Lac Genève in French. Continue reading →

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In Geneva, There are New York Yankee Fans Everywhere

One of the things an American notices walking around town is that the streets, trains, buses and malls are full of American baseball fans. This didn’t strike me as particularly odd at first, until I noticed that every last one of them is a Yankee fan. I thought this might make something of a whimsical blog post, so I ran the idea of taking some pictures of the Yankee fans we encountered that day to Chris, my son, traveling companion, and blog editor. He advised me that taking pictures of random people without their permission is a good way to get one’s butt kicked, but I was determined, so I told him I would try to be discreet. Continue reading →

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Rowing in Lucerne: Now THERE’S a great transportation mode!

When I was telling my friend Ed (who is also a two-time Olympic rower, including a silver medalist at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles) about all the cool things were planning to do upon our arrival in Switzerland, he said, “You should definitely go check out some rowing in Lucerne!” Nancy and I met through rowing and had successful rowing careers (not like Ed’s, but successful nonetheless) and so we both jumped at the chance to attend a world class rowing event at one of the most beautiful and famous rowing venues in the entire world, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Continue reading →

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First trip into Italy! Genoa on the Mediterranean Coast

When we visited France in 2002, we were discussing the beautiful sites we had seen in France with a French waiter. After listening to us for a little while, he responded, “yes, France is beautiful, but the most beautiful sites in Europe are found in Italy”. I have always remembered those words, and have looked forward to one day visiting Italy. Continue reading →

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Geneva – the ultimate in “multimodalism”‘

Lots of places claim to be have multimodal transportation networks. Much of the time, the truth is that cars still dominate the system, but some accommodations are made for other modes of transportation. One of the first things that strikes you as you travel around the city of Geneva is that the system has developed to accommodate the transportation needs of all types of people. Continue reading →