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Massive Photo Update, part 3: CERN, Geneva, and Gruyères

This is the last batch of photos from the last several weeks:

http://www.permanent-expatriate.com/cern-geneva-gruyeres2010/

In the interest of finally getting them online, I haven’t commented on the photo pages themselves. Please let my terse descriptions below suffice:

  • The CERN photos are of the testing facility we toured, where new sections of the LHC are tested and conditioned prior to installation in the collider itself. The big blue chunks of pipe you see in the pics are sections of the LHC.
  • We only spent 3 hours in Geneva proper, and most of that time was spent wishing we were somewhere else. Geneva has the worst traffic I’ve ever seen, and we were there during the evening rush hour. On top of that, a huge river/lakeside festival was going on that week. The few photos I have of Geneva are from when we stopped so that we could get some quick dinner and relax before we made our way out of town.
  • Gruyères is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, edging out Haleakalā National Park on Maui. (What can I say? I’m a sucker for castles, I guess.) The tourist-trap quality of the castle’s immediate surroundings (imagine a medieval Swiss version of Niagara-on-the-lake) only detracts slightly from the experience. Sadly, no photography is allowed in the Giger Museum, so my pics of that are confined to the exterior and the bar adjacent. The castle pics speak for themselves. After figuring out that we can bicycle to Gruyères from here in just 3 hours, I’ve already got vacation camping plans for there next year.