Connors in Doha: Geneva

Ramadan is over and Eid holiday was here. It was a great opportunity to escape Doha and enjoy some nice weather and scenery. We chose Geneva because it was a direct flight, and we had a lake and beautiful mountains right out our back door.

Jaydon immediately discovered the fun of feeding, but mostly chasing, all the bird life around the lake.

He also got excited when he saw some other kids playing in the park. They were all speaking french but he did his best to tag along for as long as he could and they didn't seem to mind.

We found a swan that was interested in what Jaydon had to feed the ducks with so it came right up to him.

Jaydon decided that is was a mingo (as in flamingo) and the rest of the trip called all the swans mingo. This one got a little close for comfort and actually hissed at us so we were sure to keep our distance from these magnificent birds in the future.

The first morning we got up and headed out to find some pastries and enjoy the cool crisp morning air. We had a very difficult time finding anything open and after walking around for about an hour realized that most shops were still closed long after they're advertised opening times. We were baffled and pretty sure that Geneva wasn't shut-down for Eid. Turns out it was a bank holiday so we walked around the quite city and enjoy the twilight zone experience of being in a closed city and found some old cannons to play with.

That afternoon we visited the Natural History Museum which was a perfect place for Jaydon. He had just as much fun looking at the bird life outside of the Museum as he did in it.

He also got to show off how smart he is with knowing all his animals and the place was full of kids his age.

He loved the big elephant and thought the penguins were very neat. I think this is the first time he realized just how big most of these animals are. He's used to seeing them as pictures in story books or in the National Geographic.

The next day we went to some of the parks and nice flower gardens, always taking time to smell (and sometime eat) the roses. We also got tickets for a short tour around the lake.

Jaydon is pretty good at smiling if you ask him to show you his teeth. I'll have to work on some other technique to get daddy to look at the camera. We found most of Geneva's restaurants to be pretty high class and not particular kid friendly. Because of that we ate a lot of meals at our hotel where we were guaranteed to have a high chair or had dinner picnic style out by the lake.

Jaydon immediately took a liking to hotdogs, the bread was a bit much for him but was great to keep around for bird feeding.

This ended up being a pretty funny incident for Steve and I but not so much for Jaydon. The statute man was flirting with Jaydon and winking at him which he thought was neat. Then Steve dropped some francs in his cup and the statue reached out to shake Steve's hand, Jaydon's eyes got humongous not sure what to think about it...but when the statue reached out to pinch Jaydon check, that's when he decided that he did not like statues reaching out to get him. He started screaming, Steve and I started laughing and the poor statue man lost all his composure trying to apologize for making Jaydon cry. Everyone around turned to stare but probably put 2 and 2 together pretty quick... moving statue + crying baby hmmm.