After the entire two comments my last trip report garnered, I thought it only fair to provide the baying masses with another one, this time for Connyland in Switzerland.
The whole Switzerland thing, and most of all the park, was pretty much a last minute thing with no real planning involved. I had a bigger trip planned for the summer a couple of weeks later, but then realised I needed something to fill some time with. I was in Edinburgh for a few days right at the start of the summer holidays - literally from the first day - for the Madonna concert, which was amazing; have a picture:
I would post a couple of Edinburgh pictures, but they'd be basically irrelevant and I've just realised I haven't actually uploaded any yet. Anyway, it's lovely, highly recommend it etc.
I just looked what cheap flights were going out of Edinburgh, and Geneva came up for about £20 if I remember correctly. I managed to get a flight back to Liverpool (or was it Manchester?) for about the same price, so yeah **** it.
Geneva was fab. I stayed near the train station, which, like in most cities, was in a bit of a seedy area. It's just always easy to find the hotels though, and it's obviously easiest for transport links. You can usually get decent places at good prices as well.
One thing I thought was amazing is that tourists get completely free public transport, including to and from the airport and the water buses across the lake. Realistically, the city itself is small enough to walk around, but I did use the free airport transfer and boats.
Have some pictures of Geneva, mostly involving the Jet d'Eau because it's amazing.
In the evenings, there was some little festival thing going on. The park at the end of the lake (Jardin Anglais) was full of temporary bars, restaurants and a stage for live music.
Because I'd arrived early - I was checked into my hotel by 1pm - I'd pretty much seen everything in Geneva by the end of the first day, so on the second day I decided to take the train to a couple of other towns on the lake.
I started off with Lausanne, which was nice enough, but there wasn't much going on at all. The main town is a fairly hefty hike uphill from the train station. Pictures:
I was pretty much done in a couple of hours, so I headed back to the train station and continued around to the far end of the lake to Montreux, which was absolutely gorgeous. I grabbed lunch in town and then took a walk around the lake, via the "flower path" (how quaint!) to Chateau de Chillon about 2km away. Byron went there and wrote a poem about it after visiting the dungeon, which I haven't read. Here are some pictures, whether you want them or not.
Conveniently, there was another train station right next to the castle, so I managed to get back to Geneva without having to head back into Montreux first. I headed up to Zurich the next day. I went to Connyland from Zurich, so we'll be getting to the part you're scrolling down for soon. First though...
The train from Geneva to Zurich goes through the capital, Bern, so I stopped off there for an afternoon on the way up. Considering I'd had no original intention of going there at all, Bern was really nice and I'm glad I got to spend a bit of time there. Next to the river they've got a few bears just hanging out; they're the symbol of the city of something.
Have some more pictures of yet another nice place you'll never go to because there are no creds and Ryanair don't go there:
I got to Zurich sometime around 6 and couldn't really be arsed to do anything. The next day I went to Lichtenstein for the day, but it's such a pointless country I'm not even going to bother putting pictures up. It probably didn't help that the weather was ****, but I was just annoyed that I'd bothered with it. This is the main street of the capital city:
Seriously.
I'm sure it's lovely in nicer weather, or for skiing and stuff, but I just **** ing hated it. I even hauled my arse up to the castle thinking there'd be something to actually see or do, but some little twat apparently still lives in it, playing at being a world leader. Dreadful place.
Zurich was really cool though. It's nowhere near as attractive as Geneva, and there's not much to actually see or do as a tourist, but it was just a fun, cool city to hang out in. The nightlife was really good as well, but as with everywhere else in Switzerland it was ridiculously expensive. Zurich, for your viewing (dis)pleasure:
Finally onto the park. I did the park as a day trip - well half a day - from Zurich. I think it was a train and a bus, but can't quite remember now. It was easy enough anyway. The first thing you notice, since it's stuck in the car park, is Cobra, the park's only coaster.
I was here for opening, intending to just do an hour or two and get out, but ended up having to hang around for a couple of hours as Cobra didn't open with the rest of the park. I left before the proper dolphin show that afternoon, but managed to catch some kind of training thing they were doing. This is the park that the animal activist people went ape **** over because they were holding raves. Two dolphins died, thought to have been poisoned by illegal drugs.
Cobra and its rather nice station being spiteful. Seeing the signs out front made me panic at first, but luckily they were just there to say the coaster would be opening later.
The park had this weird splash battle thing. I didn't ride it as people were coming off soaked and I wasn't in the mood. Normally, I'd ride anything that I haven't tried before, but I could see exactly what this did and it didn't appeal.
This was closed for the day, but I think it was some kind of simulator thing.
Kiddy log flume and some slides and ****.
They had a few other animals around the park, like this evil flamingo.
Some areas looked quite nice really, given that the park is absolutely tiny.
Pointless chair-on-a-wire ride:
Grammatically incorrect signs make me lol:
They had two different sealion shows which was a bit of overkill to be honest. One was at a small, outdoor pool.
And the second, which was immediately after, was in the larger, indoor pool.
It was pretty standard, but what was quite cool was that the sealions walked between pools with/through people and did a kind of meet and greet with guests partway through the show, as in they got this massive carnivore to "kiss" 5 year old children.
The most major ride after Cobra was Dino Attack, complete with copyright infringement.
It was ok I guess. The dinosaurs looked ok and it was well lit etc. the shooting aspect was **** though; there were just random lights to shoot at for no reason whatsoever. Pictures from inside didn't come out very well, but you can get the idea.
After two hours of faff, Cobra was finally open, so I headed over. I'd always thought that the spike that the car gets pulled up was vertical, but it's not. It's actually beyond vertical.
The park was really quiet, but I still ended up having to wait about 15 minutes for each ride of this for one stupid reason. They were only using the first four rows of the train, meaning it was running with only eight people per cycle. I'm not sure why, but I think it might be to do with the beyond-vertical spike. Even in the front rows, it's actually quite uncomfortable being pulled up there. I'd imagine that further back, being in that position for such a long time would be quite horrible.
I actually really liked this coaster. It rattled a bit, but wasn't really rough or painful apart from the discomfort of being pulled up at the start. The airtime hill was fun, the loop was decent and hanging upside-down looking back at the coaster was really weird and unique.
Another weird little park really. It's a kiddy park with an insanely intimidating coaster just thrown in there, which they didn't really even have space for since they had to use the car park. I'm glad I went though because Cobra was one of those coasters I'd really wanted to ride since I'd seen the construction topic.
After a couple of rides on Cobra, I left the park and headed up to Rhine Falls, which wasn't too far from the park, for the rest of the afternoon. It's known as the biggest waterfall in Europe, but I'm guessing that's by volume of water or something, since it's not particularly big height-wise. It was gorgeous though.
After that I just headed back to Zurich, had a big night out which was fab, and in the morning got the train to Geneva airport. It was much cheaper to fly home from Geneva than Zurich and it was an easy, fast, direct train from there anyway.
And there goes another two hours of my life. Time to see if the effort-involved/actual-give-a-s**t-it-ain't-Thorpe ratio is any better than the last one.
The whole Switzerland thing, and most of all the park, was pretty much a last minute thing with no real planning involved. I had a bigger trip planned for the summer a couple of weeks later, but then realised I needed something to fill some time with. I was in Edinburgh for a few days right at the start of the summer holidays - literally from the first day - for the Madonna concert, which was amazing; have a picture:
I would post a couple of Edinburgh pictures, but they'd be basically irrelevant and I've just realised I haven't actually uploaded any yet. Anyway, it's lovely, highly recommend it etc.
I just looked what cheap flights were going out of Edinburgh, and Geneva came up for about £20 if I remember correctly. I managed to get a flight back to Liverpool (or was it Manchester?) for about the same price, so yeah **** it.
Geneva was fab. I stayed near the train station, which, like in most cities, was in a bit of a seedy area. It's just always easy to find the hotels though, and it's obviously easiest for transport links. You can usually get decent places at good prices as well.
One thing I thought was amazing is that tourists get completely free public transport, including to and from the airport and the water buses across the lake. Realistically, the city itself is small enough to walk around, but I did use the free airport transfer and boats.
Have some pictures of Geneva, mostly involving the Jet d'Eau because it's amazing.
In the evenings, there was some little festival thing going on. The park at the end of the lake (Jardin Anglais) was full of temporary bars, restaurants and a stage for live music.
Because I'd arrived early - I was checked into my hotel by 1pm - I'd pretty much seen everything in Geneva by the end of the first day, so on the second day I decided to take the train to a couple of other towns on the lake.
I started off with Lausanne, which was nice enough, but there wasn't much going on at all. The main town is a fairly hefty hike uphill from the train station. Pictures:
I was pretty much done in a couple of hours, so I headed back to the train station and continued around to the far end of the lake to Montreux, which was absolutely gorgeous. I grabbed lunch in town and then took a walk around the lake, via the "flower path" (how quaint!) to Chateau de Chillon about 2km away. Byron went there and wrote a poem about it after visiting the dungeon, which I haven't read. Here are some pictures, whether you want them or not.
Conveniently, there was another train station right next to the castle, so I managed to get back to Geneva without having to head back into Montreux first. I headed up to Zurich the next day. I went to Connyland from Zurich, so we'll be getting to the part you're scrolling down for soon. First though...
The train from Geneva to Zurich goes through the capital, Bern, so I stopped off there for an afternoon on the way up. Considering I'd had no original intention of going there at all, Bern was really nice and I'm glad I got to spend a bit of time there. Next to the river they've got a few bears just hanging out; they're the symbol of the city of something.
Have some more pictures of yet another nice place you'll never go to because there are no creds and Ryanair don't go there:
I got to Zurich sometime around 6 and couldn't really be arsed to do anything. The next day I went to Lichtenstein for the day, but it's such a pointless country I'm not even going to bother putting pictures up. It probably didn't help that the weather was ****, but I was just annoyed that I'd bothered with it. This is the main street of the capital city:
Seriously.
I'm sure it's lovely in nicer weather, or for skiing and stuff, but I just **** ing hated it. I even hauled my arse up to the castle thinking there'd be something to actually see or do, but some little twat apparently still lives in it, playing at being a world leader. Dreadful place.
Zurich was really cool though. It's nowhere near as attractive as Geneva, and there's not much to actually see or do as a tourist, but it was just a fun, cool city to hang out in. The nightlife was really good as well, but as with everywhere else in Switzerland it was ridiculously expensive. Zurich, for your viewing (dis)pleasure:
Finally onto the park. I did the park as a day trip - well half a day - from Zurich. I think it was a train and a bus, but can't quite remember now. It was easy enough anyway. The first thing you notice, since it's stuck in the car park, is Cobra, the park's only coaster.
I was here for opening, intending to just do an hour or two and get out, but ended up having to hang around for a couple of hours as Cobra didn't open with the rest of the park. I left before the proper dolphin show that afternoon, but managed to catch some kind of training thing they were doing. This is the park that the animal activist people went ape **** over because they were holding raves. Two dolphins died, thought to have been poisoned by illegal drugs.
Cobra and its rather nice station being spiteful. Seeing the signs out front made me panic at first, but luckily they were just there to say the coaster would be opening later.
The park had this weird splash battle thing. I didn't ride it as people were coming off soaked and I wasn't in the mood. Normally, I'd ride anything that I haven't tried before, but I could see exactly what this did and it didn't appeal.
This was closed for the day, but I think it was some kind of simulator thing.
Kiddy log flume and some slides and ****.
They had a few other animals around the park, like this evil flamingo.
Some areas looked quite nice really, given that the park is absolutely tiny.
Pointless chair-on-a-wire ride:
Grammatically incorrect signs make me lol:
They had two different sealion shows which was a bit of overkill to be honest. One was at a small, outdoor pool.
And the second, which was immediately after, was in the larger, indoor pool.
It was pretty standard, but what was quite cool was that the sealions walked between pools with/through people and did a kind of meet and greet with guests partway through the show, as in they got this massive carnivore to "kiss" 5 year old children.
The most major ride after Cobra was Dino Attack, complete with copyright infringement.
It was ok I guess. The dinosaurs looked ok and it was well lit etc. the shooting aspect was **** though; there were just random lights to shoot at for no reason whatsoever. Pictures from inside didn't come out very well, but you can get the idea.
After two hours of faff, Cobra was finally open, so I headed over. I'd always thought that the spike that the car gets pulled up was vertical, but it's not. It's actually beyond vertical.
The park was really quiet, but I still ended up having to wait about 15 minutes for each ride of this for one stupid reason. They were only using the first four rows of the train, meaning it was running with only eight people per cycle. I'm not sure why, but I think it might be to do with the beyond-vertical spike. Even in the front rows, it's actually quite uncomfortable being pulled up there. I'd imagine that further back, being in that position for such a long time would be quite horrible.
I actually really liked this coaster. It rattled a bit, but wasn't really rough or painful apart from the discomfort of being pulled up at the start. The airtime hill was fun, the loop was decent and hanging upside-down looking back at the coaster was really weird and unique.
Another weird little park really. It's a kiddy park with an insanely intimidating coaster just thrown in there, which they didn't really even have space for since they had to use the car park. I'm glad I went though because Cobra was one of those coasters I'd really wanted to ride since I'd seen the construction topic.
After a couple of rides on Cobra, I left the park and headed up to Rhine Falls, which wasn't too far from the park, for the rest of the afternoon. It's known as the biggest waterfall in Europe, but I'm guessing that's by volume of water or something, since it's not particularly big height-wise. It was gorgeous though.
After that I just headed back to Zurich, had a big night out which was fab, and in the morning got the train to Geneva airport. It was much cheaper to fly home from Geneva than Zurich and it was an easy, fast, direct train from there anyway.
And there goes another two hours of my life. Time to see if the effort-involved/actual-give-a-s**t-it-ain't-Thorpe ratio is any better than the last one.
