Day 1 - Getting There

We know that this is going to be a tough day, we have both put our patient hats on and we are off. We say goodbye to Patty who is quite happy to get rid of us, the most exciting thing about us not being there is less clutter on the bathroom shelf!

Drop the hire car off - we have had a lovely hire car - a Kia Sportage, which has served us well, we have to drop it off by 10am so as to not incur another day's rental charge. The guy to who we returned it went over it like a fine tooth comb and found scratches on the underside of the front bumper - how he would know to look there is very suspicious indeed! Rental Company is Green Motion, shaming and naming - I am. The thing is I did do the rental car inspection only to find that I had missed a crucial previous ding - I just thought it was the shape of the car!!! This was on the inspection report - so all good but the scratched under the bumper was not and therefore made by us - which is total bull shit. We would have known if we had made those scratches. Bugger, the charge is GBP500. Now, this would normally rile John, but he was so calm, it was as if he had taken Xanax. I thought he was so calm because he had decided to wear his patient hat, and it was working - what I didn't know and found out later was he thought the GBP500 charge was for the car rental! LOL, a few expletives followed when I explained that it was $1000 for the scratches. So annoying, but hey ho when life throws you lemons you make lemonade! The no excess insurance cover cost was going to cost us about GBP800 for the rental period and we didn't take it and it only cost us 500 - so there! We are only at 10am and we are already GBP500 over budget, we have 2 flights to catch and a hire car to pick up and then drive on the wrong side of the road in Geneva - what else could possibly go wrong?

We got to the airport really early because of the car drop off time, so had 3 hours to waste - I watched a bit of Netflix, and John read. The lounge was comfortable and we were still wearing out patient hats, the most disgruntled we got was when we would glance at each other and had a look on our faces saying "are we there yet?"

The flight to Amsterdam was delayed by about 20 minutes which made our connection quite tight - absolutely no way our luggage is going to get that flight. We get to Amsterdam, its an easy 1 hour flight from Newcastle and not sure if you have ever been to Schiphol, if you haven't it is massive, I mean MASSIVE. For you trivia tragics out there... The Haarlemmer Lake was drained in 1852 and the first aircraft landed at Schiphol in 1916. Technically, the airport lies on the bottom of the lake, over four metres below sea level. I digress though! We would have walked at a very fast pace for at least 25 minutes to get from the gate we landed at to the gate that we were departing from - Yikes - we legged it. Only to find that the inbound flight had been delayed, this gave us a chance to rest and our luggage time to be loaded. On we get, flight painless, more Netflix and in no time we are landing at Geneva airport. Our bags arrived, we were so happy to see them, hire car was no bother at all. We have a lovely Audi Quattro for our road trip, only challenge is that the steering wheel is on the wrong side. John is the driver and in the past he has been amazing at getting used to the wrong side of the road - so fingers crossed. It is a short journey into Geneva (which is pronounced "jeneff"). I was needing the loo, but the lady at the car rental said it wasn't far into town, so I decided to wait. She was young and doesn't know yet that when you pass 50, you should take every opportunity to go to the loo. I should know that by now.

After our earlier Car rental experience, we both inspect the car with a fine tooth comb and we find a chip, so I find the Europcar official and "he assures me that they don't charge for chips". We took a photo anyway. I failed to mention that our UK Sim cards which were especially purchased because they included roaming in Europe - are not working. I have done everything known to mankind to try and get them working but nada, zilch - No Service. Luckily for us the car has a Navigator and she speaks english. We are in luck, however, she doesn't understand either John or I - when we say Hotel Bristol Rue de Mont Blanc - she keeps wanting to take us somewhere else. Please remember I need the loo, its now getting quite desperate - we resort to manual input and off we go. John was brilliant and as a team we got us to the Hotel. We check in to the Hotel, which is very centrally located and met the lovely Stefano from Italy who when he found out we were from Australia proceeded to tell us about his time in Perth, his visa applications (I'm still busting). Then we have to resolve parking and Stefano wants to save us CHF50 for the parking and is telling John where there is cheaper parking - by now my eyes are floating. We get our keys and I am out of there - Phew made it in time.

The hotel is lovely and the staff are fab. Its 9pm and we haven't eaten, we went out for a little stroll and some dinner - we ate at Brasserie Lipp and the food was excellent. On our stroll back we walk across a bridge that had like a VIVID display on the buildings. Very charming. We were so tired from the long days travel - we were back straight home to bed.

The end.