La Fête du Chocolat | Le Musée d’Arts et d’Histoire

One of my friends from university, Michael, is studying abroad in Paris for one year and he was able to take a weekend trip to sightsee in Geneva. The weekend of the 27th of October was perfect because that was the day the Salon des Chocolatiers et du Chocolat–an exhibition of chocolate–was to take place. Michelle told me about it and I expected what any wide-eyed American tourist would expect from a chocolate exhibition: lots and lots of chocolate tasting. And by golly, we got it! Entrance cost 22 CHF and for that money, visitors got the opportunity to visit the booths of various chocolate shops located all over Switzerland and taste their chocolate. If you like it enough, you buy something from them! It definitely made sense to buy the chocolate because some shops were located deep in the Swiss German part of Switzerland and not easily accessible by train (nor cheaply).

It was a nasty, dreary day to spend in Geneva. After the convention, Michelle and I took Michael to see Old Town. I really wanted to go to the Patek Philippe Museum (the official watch of Geneva) afterwards, but when I realized nobody else did I knew we needed to find a different museum to go to. Instead, we went to La Musée d’Arts et d’Histoire. There’s really not much to say about the museum. My favorite painting was “La boule de verre” by Giacometti and the most famous painting was the “Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”.

Believe it or not, aside from dinner at my homestay family and the trekking to a club in Lausanne later in the night (in the new-fallen snow, might I add), that was the extent of the activities for the day! With the chocolate being the highlight, of course.