The Traveling Twosome: 44 - 6/13/2015

June 13-2015 (Day 44)

Today, out of Germany and through Switzerland to spend the late afternoon and night in Chamonix, France at the foot of Mont Blanc. It's one of the oldest ski resorts in France and hosted the 1924 Olympics. If you ski, climb or yodel you'll love this place. The scenery, with Alps ever present, can't be beat.

Prior to that we stopped in Geneva to visit the Patek Phillippe Museum. Antoni Patek and Adrien Phillipe joined their watchmaking expertise in 1839 (Rolex was only founded in 1905). The museum's first and second floors contain examples of all of the firm's production through 1990. The collection is so exhaustive because the firm is very active in the auction market to add to the museum. The most expensive auction sale of a watch on record was for a circa 1933 PP watch for $24 million last November. The third floor of the museum contains watches made by others from the 1500's until the founding of the firm. The exhibition areas are very refined, impeccably fitted and all around better than First Class. The time pieces, particularly from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries are breathtaking. These were made for society's upper crust, royalty and for appreciative buyers as far away as the Chinese Imperial Court. In the later case, the watches were designed specifically for that culture's tastes. Sadly, as at the Faberge museum, all bags - even Pam's purse - had to be checked and docents were everywhere to make certain all visitors behaved respectfully and hadn't managed to sneak in any spy cameras. The most Pam managed was a lobby shot.

Norm proudly showing off his $10.95 travel watch - he has yet to be mugged for it.

We also drove to the exhibit hall for the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator on the outskirts of Geneva. We parked in a large lot half filled with new Fiats apparently intended for dealerships. That's a bit strange, we thought. Also, no one was around although there were some other "regular" cars in the lot also. At the pedestrian entrance gate a small sign begged our understanding, but the hall and interactive displays are closed from May, 2015 until 2016 for their once every 10 year cleaning. Go figure the timing.

Exhibit hall of the LHC. It apparently glows with an ethereal light at night.

And to top it off, traffic in Geneva was for the birds. After over an hour delay getting through the city, we were thankful to be on the motorway once more. But Geneva's lake waterfront is quite attractive and it looked like a festival was going on with lots of colorful tents and swarms of people....or it may have been a typical Saturday. No matter, one of the main streets was barricaded for pedestrians only which caused havoc with our SatNav and therefore us.

For our dog-lovin' friends, this life-size bronze statue was at the corner in front of the Patek Phillipe museum.