Final Day of Travel

Dear lord, did we ever spend a lot of time on those buses! It will make you go a little bonkers, especially if you've had two bottles of wine on the beach in one evening!

For the final night of our trip, we left the dorm and moved on to the Etap Hotel, which was very close to the airport (we had to be there at 5:30AM for our flight out) and conveniently across the street from an H&M. I admitted to Jim that I probably visited H&M five times during our five day stay in Geneva... but I had to check the sales racks in each of the four locations I'd found!

Above is a picture of a 16th century fort that was discovered when the city built this parking garage. So guess what they did? Preserved the fort and built the parking garage around it. Ingenious!
I spent my final day in Geneva checking out a few parks that I'd only seen previously out the window of my bus. Above is a statue in honor of the founders of the Reformation. Below are giant chess pieces for play in this park.

I've been reading a lot about imaginative, unrestricted play, as well as the history of playgrounds. Had to take a picture of the one in the park below, as they offer a large sandbox and only a few ride-on toys.
Ah, the airport! What a lovely place to be at 6AM!
We checked one bag and brought a carry-on each. We'd fly back to Frankfurt, Germany from Geneva, then from there to Philadelphia, then home to Newark. Of course, the flight into Newark was delayed due to "air traffic conditions", which really means too many damn planes fly into Newark. We almost had my dad come pick us up in Philly, but then stayed on for the rest of our scheduled itinerary.

If you click on the picture above, you'll see the bold black and white warning labels on each carton of cigarettes that you could buy in the Geneva airport. Warnings such as "Smoking kills" and "Smoking causes premature aging".
Once we arrived in Frankfurt, we noticed numerous "smoking rooms" in the terminals. These rooms had glass walls and doors and were sponsored by the tobacco companies. The people within them were feeding their habit behind a cloud of smoke, for all to see. Gross.

At least they had good pretzels. I insisted on getting a pretzel. We were in Germany, after all!

And finally, HOME! In the picture above, you can see the two Euro-style hats I got the kids (thank you, H&M), a ceramic duck bank for Oliver, and a pirate shark squirt gun for T. They were absolutely giddy to see us and happy to be back home sleeping in their own beds. We can't thank Mom and Dad enough for generously watching the kids for so long... You two are awesome! Here's hoping that the chocolate we brought back as a gift can work towards repaying you!