The gardens were quite impressive and quite extensive. I liked both the desert and rainforest parts of the exhibition because those (obviously) contained the most exotic plants. The gardens seem like a very popular place to run and to eat lunch with friends. The UN seems like a great place if you're: (1) wealthy in your country (2) like to argue for long periods of time (3) don't like to get much done.
I'm always a fan of very poor translations.
The desert green house contained a lot of the pretty classic cacti, these in particular were from the southern United States and Mexico.
This was some crazy desert flower. Looks like something out of Avatar.
They had a whole row of carnivorous plants under a large cage, seemed quite unnecessary none of them tried to get me. I didn't see any Venus Flytraps but these were the tube carnivores that I recognized.
One of the entrances to the United Nations.
Sri Lanka was protesting something during the day. The big chair sculpture outside the main (mostly symbolic) entrance has only three legs, the fourth is very clearly blown off raising awareness for land mines.
The main symbolic entrance (with all the flags), I don't really think this is entrance is used much, if at all. Maybe for when a important head of state arrives but I really don't know.
The gift shop had a good selection of over priced souvineres, these books were one of them and its clear who is more favored this side of the Atlantic (8-1). I do confess I did get a T Shirt hopefully some of the purchase price goes toward "peace."
Main conference room. The United States of American is seated in the second row, dead center with the Russian Federation, France and Spain. The two "official" languages of the UN are French and English and here in Geneva the seats are alphabetically by their french spelling. The celing is explained in an earlier post.
Gifts line the hallways of the compound all donated by the different coutries. This paticual tapestry donated by China is awesome because no matter how you look at it the path and front steps face you. Crazy. May elements of the design were gifts from coutries as well; marble, granite, light fixtures doors, for example are elements that were "gifts" from other nations that aided in the construction of both buildings.
AMAZING front entrance to the Palace of Nations. This "front" entrance is almost never used (I think) but is the beautiful front facade of the League of Nations building, completed in 1938 and then abandoned in 1940-41. When the United Nations was formed in the mid 40's the Organizaion reoccupied the building and then soon expanded.
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