Day 29: Geneva

Day 29 · Geneva

As I suspected, I felt much better after a night just being still. Other than getting my bearings in the city today, I only had one plan: a tattoo appointment I made a few weeks ago to get a piece to commemorate my trip at 12:30.

I had a leisurely in-room breakfast and coffee, and then walked around the area surrounding my hotel, sort of making my way in the direction of the tattoo shop. Geneva is a big, busy city! Buses and trams were full of people, sidewalks were bustling, cafes were full of people on laptops with cute dogs. Every block has bicycles, scooters and motorbikes clustering around parking spaces.

Since the shop I picked out was a bit of a journey from my hotel, I also got to familiarize myself with said light rail system. In Geneva, all hotel rooms come with a free transit pass as part of the city tax they charge, so it makes it really easy and low-stress to just hop on and get where you’re going.

I had looked up a traditional-style tattoo shop a few weeks ago when I decided a tattoo would be a nice way to end my trip in Geneva, and made an appointment with Gui at Nuit Noire – a really cool little shop with lots of great artists. When I arrived Gui had a couple of options for me from what we chatted about when I set the appointment, and we finalized the design and got started.

He also gave me a few recommendations to check out around town, one of which was directions to the historical center. He said it would only be about an hour or so of a walk around, but he neglected to mention it was up on top of a big hill! For some reason the historical center was the emptiest part of the city – possibly because I was there around 4:30pm so most of the tourists were tired out from getting there early?

He also told me about something already on my radar – a big flea market that is held not far from my hotel every Wednesday. That is obviously on my agenda for tomorrow.

For dinner I headed to a place with great reviews about a block from my hotel that ended up being run by hearing impaired folks. The food was good, and affordable. It was odd that they had no music playing, but I guess why would they?