Yesterday, my wife, two sons and I headed to Geneva for the Fête de Genève, the annual summer festival there. I'm not usually a fan of festivals, or big crowds, but it's difficult to turn down a day in the mecca of watchmaking and watch shopping. And besides, my wife told me that I was going. :)
When exiting the Geneva train station, one is greeted with, among other things, a McDonald's and several watch shops. One must show willpower and pass these shops by as the really interesting places lie several minutes walk away on the Rue du Rhône. With family in tow, however, I couldn't be too obvious and had to make a show of strolling around the amusements and concessions of the festival. Subtly steering all of us toward the promised land, I casually mentioned a desire to stop by the boutique to pick up the new catalog. Everyone was agreeable so off we went to Rue du Rhône 1.
Rue du Rhône is an amazing place. During our short walk to IWC, we passed boutiques for Blancpain, Breguet and several others of less interest to me. Jaeger LeCoultre is IWC's next door neighbor. One could easily do serious damage to their bank account in such an environment.
On reaching IWC, I rang the door bell and was greeted immediately by the very friendly staff. I inquired about the new catalog and one was quickly produced, along with a very high quality shopping bag with canvas handles and the current issue of Watch International. Not content to simply send me on my way, one of the staff commented on my VC AT, which I was, of course, wearing. We began talking about various watches and before I knew it, several of them were sitting on the counter. I tried on the 5001 white/blue, the Laureus VC Inge, the new Spitfire PC with digital date (weighs a ton) and several others. Not wanting to keep my family waiting too long, I didn't linger nearly as much as I would have liked but it was a very enjoyable 20 or 30 minutes. The staff could not have been any kinder or more accommodating. And I'll be back in a couple of weeks for the Vendanges de Genève, a combination wine tasting and "boutique crawl" to which I was lucky enough to receive an invitation (will any other forumers be there?).
It's difficult to imagine that any other event of the day could top my time in the IWC boutique but I must admit that one did. The culmination of the day was a 10:00PM fireworks show over Lake Geneva. One cannot, of course, adequately describe fireworks in words so suffice it to say that it was far and away the most impressive display I have ever seen. It lasted for one hour and there were about half a dozen crescendos each of which were better than any grande finalé I'd seen previously. As for the actual grande finalé, it was spectacular beyond imagining. So much so that I couldn't help laughing from the sheer grandeur of it. Truly a very good day.
