Day 3 – Geneva
Our flight from Amsterdam to Geneva is pretty early, so we got to Geneva before noon. Neither of us has ever been here, so we are playing it by ear. Our hotel, the Ritz Carlton Hotel de la Paix is part of the Marriott network, so we were able to use points for this portion of our stay.
Pro tip: When you are using points, be sure that the trade in value is better than $0.01 per point. For example, a $500 per night hotel shouldn’t be more than 50,000 points. In our case, we were able to use 60,000 points per night and the hotel retails for over $1,000 per night, so we got a great value!
The Ritz is very centrally located, adjacent to the Pont du Mont Blanc, which is sort of the city center, right along the shore of Lake Geneva, so everything is walkable. After a light breakfast, we headed over to the shopping and watch district, mostly to window shop. Geneva is home to many of the top watch companies in the world: Rolex, Piaget, Hublot, Patek Philippe and many others. Complementing these top brands are flagship stores from the likes of Hermes, Louis Vitton, Gucci and the like. Makes for great browsing, but be careful not to break the bank!
We walked around for most of the late morning and early afternoon and ended up eating lunch at Gusto, which is part of the Swisshotel Metropole Geneva. The real highlight of this hotel is the MET Rooftop Bar – definitely worth a drink, just to check out the views. From there, we headed back to our hotel to rest up a bit. Dinner was back across the Pont du Mont Blanc, toward the top of the hill near the St. Pierre Cathedral. The restaurant was the Restaurant Les Armures, which is known for traditional cheese dishes and has served the likes of Bill & Hillary Clinton, so you know we had to go! The menu of raclette, salad with melon, tortellini with mushrooms and of course, cheese fondue was the perfect end to the evening!