Hotels near Geneva Airport - French Sector - GGV, Ferney-Voltaire

This is a small town on the French side of the border close to Geneva airport. There is a mall and some restaurants in the area. But there is really not much else there. This is suitable for a one night stay prior to a flight.

Geneva is like a condensed version of Manchester: big buildings, great transport infrastructure, and welcoming people. It is extremely expensive though - 3-4x as much as London, which shocked me. However it is a bit grotty near the train station (where all the best ethnic food is typically), and I didn't feel totally safe. Interestingly, the RLD felt relatively safe because it was so busy with tourists ogling and locals going about their business. You do get approached by prostitutes but they're friendly enough when you say no so it wasn't anything that made me feel uncomfortable etc. The parks and gardens are outstanding. I also enjoyed the reptile house near the airport. The coffee and snacks at Boreal are fantastic and they cater for dietary requirements and speak fluent English too, so I spent a lot of time there. With all this said, Geneva is worthy of a short weekend city break or enjoying a long layover in, but I wouldn't go out of my way to stay there for longer.

Ferney is of course the jumping off point for Geneva. The fact is though that it’s got a good selection of groceries, lots of great restaurants, stores, banks, transport etc. it’s also pretty and has a lovely Saturday market with tons of affordable high quality food. The history drew me to Ferney as well, since it’s been hundreds of years of it being where people go to get away from how dull Geneva can be haha.

Small village. Nearby Ferney Voltaire is better small town. Prevessin had 1 good french food restaurant (PATINE ) where you can also just get drinks and only 100 m walk from Premiere classe hotel. Also further restaurants choice and large supermarket on a modern (edge of town shopping/eating) complex with plenty of parking about 1/2 km away.

A nice city, but it feels like a lot could be seen in little time. I stayed for 2 days and it seemed enough. The lake is nice, and I like the diversity of restaurants there. A lot of rare birds for France, but handfed by the public, which isn't nice. Public transportation is easliy accessible and it was very nice to get a free illimitated pass even to the boat buses (given by most of the hotels)! There is also a small open air iceskating ring, a lovely park by the lake and virtual reality experience. We did walk past a man searching for a fight around 8PM (he was obviously drunk and told us to call the cops, and we had just walked past 3 frightening guys, not so far from the center), and we also saw a cyclist inconscious on the pavement by day with a huge injury on the head... Not feeling really safe there ^^;

Besides proving more comfort at lower prices than Geneve, the Ferney-Voltaire is always revoking thoughts about life of the great philosopher and poet as well as providing interesting views of the rural France.