The End

On Friday our trip came to an end. Dad drove us out to Zurich and waited with us while we fought for our plane tickets (in Switzerland they still use paper tickets, so apparently our e-tickets were a HUGE problem for them. They also had trouble getting the system to accept Elisabeth as a legitimate passenger. I don't think she would have minded living with Anny and Grossi).

We finally made it through and got to our gate with only 1 hour to spare (considering we got to the airport 3.5 hours before boarding, that was pretty incredible!) When we got to our gate Elisabeth befriended a hot air balloon pilot from the United Arab Emirates. He gave her a pin of a hot air balloon with his flag on it and told her that next time she flies it should be as his co-pilot on a balloon. She was hilarious because she kept smiling at him until he came to pin the balloon on. Then she held perfectly still and refused to make eye contact with him.

It was strange for me because he had been waving at her and smiling, but then he just got up and put the pin on her without talking to either me or Andrew. Reminds me of a similar situation when we were at the airport with an infant David and a young man came up and just took Davey out of my arms. Obviously besotted with him, but uhm hello? Most moms prefer you ask or at least give some kind of indication you're going to take their baby!!

Remember how I was raving about how wonderful it was to have a play area in Vancouver airport? I guess I didn't post a picture. Well, I'll just say our play area was pathetic compared to the HUGE nursery in our wing at Zurich Airport. It was probably over 1000 square feet and had everything for kids from 0 (cribs and playpens and even teddy bears, though ewwwww germs) to a huge climbing thing and slide for older kids. Here are a few pictures, but they're only from a tiny wing at the end. And the bathrooms were totally equipped for young children.


This change station had room for five babies to be changed.

And this is the hallway leading to the nursery.

Our flight left at 4;15 pm and for the most part each time zone was at about 4-6 pm so it didn't get dark the whole way home. Everywhere except Great Britain (we flew over the Thames then up to Scotland) and BC were sunny so we (well me, no one else had a window) had some amazing views to look at.

These are taken from around Greenland.



Elisabeth was alert and happy the whole way. Enjoyed eating and playing and mostly stayed in her seat.

This is somewhere around the NWT or Northern Ontario/Quebec. Not exactly sure.

Davey slept for about 3 hours.

While Tink eagerly looked forward to the next meal and 'where's the coffee'?


Had to include that picture of a sleeping Daveyboy. Elisabeth eventually slept too, but only for a few minutes...maybe 30? Both kids switched straight back to BC time and me and Andrew too. Apart from some issues adjusting back to Canadian food we're all doing very well and looking forward to Staff Conference this week.

I still haven't hooked up the external harddrive to download all of our pictures from the trip. Once I have, I'll create some postings on my swiss blog. But I'll let you know on here so that anyone who is interested can just take a quick trip over there to look.