We decided to leave at 4:30 am on Saturday morning in hopes that Jake (mon feces) would sleep for the bulk of the 7 hour trip. You may not be shocked to find out that travelling to foreign lands for a week with a 17 month old requires a lot of prep time. Given the fact that Team HW had been pre-occupied with picnics, fancy shopping, castles, and other tourist/socialite activities... we were obviously far too busy to spend Tuesday through Thursday nailing down some of the finer points of our travels. By finer points I mean the small matters of where to stay in Paris, ensuring the correct ratio of boy band to non-boy band songs on our road trip playlist, booking train tickets to Paris, securing a GPS, gasing up the car, ensuring proper underwear quota for Jonathan, etc. So, Friday was a busy day for our little trio. Completely un-correlated fact: this was the first day that Team Housewife got in trouble.
Let me back up to the GPS. I promised you more details on this little baby and I am sure you've hardly been able to sleep since. So here we go. Melanie responsibly did her research and decided to purchase a GPS knowing that we would be coming to town and that a road trip was in the works. She purchased said item in the first week of March. It was coming from out of the country. This purchase thus kicked off what sounds like the craziest set of circumstances ever to happen to 1 single Amazon seller**.
After about 2.5 weeks later it became evident that the GPS wasn't just fashionably late and Melanie started asking some questions. First, the seller told her it didn't arrive because the Royal Post had lost a few bags of packages. Then, it didn't arrive because he hadn't sent it. Then it didn't arrive for some other reason I can't remember but let's say it was something along the lines of a bird stole it. Then he promised a refund. Which fell victim to the same thieving bird. Twice. In the midst of all of this, the GPS must have arrived in Zurich. Team HW discovered this fact on Tuesdsay and tried to amend the situation so that the GPS would arrive before we left. No such luck.
All of these facts culminated with an exciting dinner conversation on Thursday evening whereby Jonathan effused how excellent his "feel" was thus rendering a GPS useless. Melanie played an Angel card on that. The ultimate outcome of the family meeting was that the market options (getting 3G on the iPad or purchasing a GPS in town) needed to be priced.
This brings us back to Friday. Team HW task #1 for the day was to meet Jonathan for lunch and to do some market pricing. We were so busy making sure people were excusing mon feces that we wound up being 25 minutes late to our appointment with Jonathan. -100 for Team HW. After the master market pricers did their thang it was determined that buying a GPS locally was the best alternative. It was also determined that Jonathan did not have time to eat lunch with us and that we were thus still in trouble.
In an attempt to wiggle out of the doghouse we spent the remainder of the day checking things off our list left and right. First, we purchased the GPS. I'm sure when that cash register rang an angel got her wings. Then, we gased the car, we made some killer PB&Js for the road, we ensured appropriate tune-age, we laundered Ryan's Ninja Turtle shirt, we acquired milk for Jake-y, we packed, we reserved hotel rooms for Paris under Ryan's micro-managing, breakfast-obsessed eye*** - we were really rocking it.
Look at that shiny beacon of directional hope. This is an action shot, obviously.
By the time Jonathan arrived home the only remaining item on the to do list was to purchase train tickets to Paris for the second half of the week. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. Of course this turned into a debacle which led the men to the train station to close the deal. So our time out of the doghouse was short-lived.
We wrapped up the day on a happy note by meeting up at a "burger" place called Roadrunner for dinner. While the burger itself was tasty, the size and inexplicable inclusion of pineapple gave it away that we weren't in 'Merica anymore. However if you find yourself in Geneva with a hankering for a little piece of the US, this is a good alternative to the 2 CHF menu at McD's.
Once we got home we went to bed since we had to be up at 4:00 am to get our Euro-trip on. The doghouse doesn't leave much room for photography. So I've saved up some of my random shots from other days for inclusion here. Don't say I never did anything for you!
Ryan claimed on day 2 of our trip to Geneva that he knew we were close to Melanie & Jonathan's apartment because he recognized this ad. What he discounted is the fact that this ad was on every. corner. there.
Remember when I told you here that I would show you my favorite part of Melanie & Jonathan's place later? I didn't lie. I was just saving the best for last. This is the view from their awesome balcony.
Swoon.
On a super clear day you can apparently see Mont Blanc back to the left.
The Martins: ruining good views since 2007.
What? You want to see us from a different direction? Fiiiine.
Despite the fact that we got in trouble - this wound up being an incredibly humorous and laugh-filled day. I definitely miss Team Housewife. I'm currently busy designing a comemorative tattoo for all of us. Melanie? Ryan?
Next up: the most breath-taking roadtrip in the entire world.
*** I'm not sure if Ryan was hungry or what during this portion of the day but there were 2 booking options. One which included the extra 15 euro per day for breakfast and 1 that didn't. Ryan must have asked 20 times during our hotel booking if we got the breakfast option. He also made both of us show him independently that we had selected it. Then in Paris he continuously made reference to the fact that he "got breakfast comped." Did I win the boyfriend lottery or WHAT?
I feel like there have been a lot of bad amazon experiences with the mcmartins! Although yall are bad Housewives it still sounded fun. Jealous.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you referred to Ryan as your "boyfriend" on accident...wishful thinking?? :)