Honeymoon ~ 4th June - 11th June 2019
First of all, you should know that we planned our wedding in less than a year and that also includes the honeymoon with it. As a lot of people surely know is that this means a lot of money, although we had a small wedding. We got married on the 14th April 2019 and decided to go on our honeymoon in June so as the weather would be better. My Husband has been to Geneva when he was a kid as his sister used to live there, thus - we decided to go for a visit.
P.s. If visiting Switzerland, especially Geneva, prepare yourself as it is very expensive, but we will tell you how we managed to make the most of it in the food blog!
Airline
Since we were on a very tight budget (especially this time), we had to travel with a budget airline. The only budget airline which flies Directly from Malta to Geneva is Easyjet. Normally, flights are a bit on the high side but since we decided our destination from a long time before we had to leave we were checking everyday how the prices are. In January, we saw a good deal and we ended up paying €122.38 for both of us back and forth (with just the carry-on bag)
As you can imagine I did not think all things through. I booked the flight in January with my
maiden name and after the wedding my passport was changed to my married name. I thought it was going to be a hassle to change my surname on the flight ticket and on the website I read that I have to pay around €130 in order to change it. In my opinion this was ridiculous as I was changing a first name and someone else was going instead of me, so I decided to have a live chat with the Easyjet customer care: https://www.easyjet.com/en/help/contact . I told them my problem and I must say that first of all whom I talked to was very nice and friendly (forgot the name unfortunately), plus the problem was solved in no time free of charge!
Something else which I like and found convenient about this airline is:
1) We were allowed to take a carry-on bag with wheels.
2) We had more space in our seats compared to Ryanair and Wizzair.
Accommodation & Money Exchange
In this blog I decided to join these two together. The reason being is that we cannot really give our opinion because we did not book a place as we stayed in a family's property and we did not exchange money as we had the money already in Swiss franks as a wedding gift.
We can though tell you about the area we were living and the people. Well, in Geneva people speak French (mostly also understand English). I know a little bit of French so it was not difficult to communicate at all. Although, we traveled to Lucerne and there they speak German. Thank God, my husband know some German and everything was good - they also speak English there.
We were living Cité du Lignon area of Geneva in a block of flats of 6,000 people. Imagine, the block is so big that it can actually be seen from space! You may have had a little heart attack when I mentioned the amount of people as you may think the area is always busy. But, on the contrary, you barely see a soul! It was a very convenient place to stay as it is very close to the bus stop, Migros (supermarket) and also Coop (another supermarket. When you go down from the apartment at the back we had a lovely walk in the forest leading to the Rhône river. Therefore, you can imagine the lovely view we had from the apartment. We could see the forest and on a nice day even Mont Blanc!
Transport
As for transport we used the public transport. This is due to the fact that we were very close to the city center, therefore we were able to go around with no problems. Obviously it was a bit confusing until we got the hang of it. Switzerland has a public transport app called SBB Mobile, but it was not working properly for us so we mostly used google for directions. Overall, the buses were also frequent and drops you off very close to every destination you need.
It must be noted that the tickets were available from a machine and you do not validate them on the bus, they would starts their validation the moment you purchase them.
1 hour - €3
Day Ticket - €6
We also made use of the train to travel to Lucerne. It was quite comfortable but we had no wifi. There is also plugs where you can change your device (mobile, ipad etc). In addition, we only visited for a day thus, when we went to the cashier we asked for a day ticket. His reply was that day tickets cannot be bought on the day, only from a few day early. Which for us was a disappointment. We had to buy different tickets, not to mention that it was even more expensive. It was about: 80CHF (€72.90) each trip, amounting to 160CHF (€145.80) each, when a day ticket would have cost us around 120CFH (€109.35) each. Not to mention that we had to use the machine for the tickets which was a bit confusing as for the return tickets as it was not listed as direct. But fortunately, a guy who works there helped us to sort this out.
Note: Be VERY careful for pick pocketing at the train station!
Wifi
All of us know how nowadays we do nothing without wifi. So, since our accommodation did not have wifi and we were spending a week in Geneva, we search for an alternative. We had a great deal with Sunrise (mobile company). Basically, it was a Sunrise prepaid card and we used my husband's phone as a wifi access point so that I would be able to use it as well. The initial was €10 but since we were there for a week we had to top up with €10 cause we would have ran out of the credit for the last 2 days. It is about €2.50 per day for unlimited data! For us it was great as it was valid for all over Switzerland, thus, when we went to Lucerne we were
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