Hotel Royal and L'Aparté Restaurant in Geneva

Hotel Royal and L’Aperté Restaurant

Jumping off our Edelweiss Air flight a bit early in Zurich, we had plenty of time to catch our Swiss Rail train connection to Geneva. It was nice to stretch out and walk about our rail car...use the washroom facilities with no line-up.

In Geneva, we were booked into the Hotel Royal, one of the downtown properties owned by the Manotel group. It took a second or two to get oriented in the right direction, but the hotel is less than a five-minute walk from the Geneva train station.

Our basic room.

An older hotel, it has been extensively renovated, and despite its location on a busy street with tram lines, our room was very quiet.

Almost all the hotels we stayed at gave us rooms with Nespresso brewers using espresso pods...just what Suzanne needed when she got up.

The room also had a very roomy safe which could hold our laptop, iPad, two DSLRs, Suzanne's camera, and all our cash & documents – things we would hate to lose during our very first stop.

Our room was very sparsely decorated, but very clean and comfortable. 

We later had a short tour of more deluxe suites, and one with an additional bed along with kitchen facilities for families.

Breakfast was included with our room. 

Suzanne doesn't eat breakie, while I usually just have cereal, milk & fruit...until I discovered the buttery, super light & flaky croissants!!! I only wish I had pigged out of these delicious pastries, fresh-baked right in the hotel...they were the best I had ever eaten. Darn, I didn't want my buttery fingers all over camera so I don't have any pics of these fab breakfast treats!!!

L’Aparté Restaurant

After being up for more than 24 hours already, we just wanted to have a shower and hit the bed...but we had a dinner reservation in the hotel's L'Aparté restaurant.

Still, a late night should be okay, since the forecast was for wet and windy weather the next morning, and our planned fishing on Lake Geneva had been cancelled. We could sleep in… though with mixed feelings about missin’ the fishin'!

Having a restorative shower, we managed to amble down to the Hotel Royal's upscale L'Aparté for a dining extravaganza.

We were warmly greeted at the entrance to the special dining room that L'Aparté occupies by our waiter for the evening, Thomas Scott. 

Thomas told us more about the tasting menu that Chef Armel Bedouet

had prepared. The chef would be introducing our meal dish by dish!

 The chef is from Brittany, and his love of seafood would feature well in our grand repast.

We would also have a personal sommelier, Gaetan Dubret, who chose a lovely Swiss wine to accompany our meal.

While we have descriptions of each and every dish, we'll just let our photos show you what exquisite works of art they were. 

And each dish was absolutely delicious. We haven't sat through a three-hour meal before, but the pacing of the dishes was perfect. Since it wasn't my sweet dessert night, Suzanne indulged, and I settled for a fabulous selection of local as well as French cheeses from across the Lake.

Suzanne loves the little weaving of cucumber strips in this deconstructed sushi…appeals to her fuss-budgetiness.