French, Swiss....or neutral!

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Today we had a minute’s silence for our suitcases that were about to pass. Mine was 10 years old all the way from the Olympic Village and Jason’s was about 20 years old. It was sad to see them go but the new recruits stepped up to the plate wonderfully! We left Annecy to begin the next adventure, this time to the mossy rock that is the UK!

We were flying out from Geneva airport. This is quite a unique airport in that it has two sides, a French side and a Swiss side and if you've rented a car in France it costs a whole lot more to drop it off on the Swiss side of the airport, because heaven forbid if a Swiss employee has to drive the car around the corner to the French side! The drive to Geneva was relatively easy, for me anyway. Actually, the drive was horrible as it was teaming with rain and you couldn’t see further than a few metres in front. But the traffic was OK and we made it to the airport in good time. Apparently it was “really easy” to find the French side where the car had to be returned. I really hate it when people who have made a journey a thousand times tell you that it’s “really easy”! It’s NEVER “really easy”! And of course it wasn’t this time! We did end up at the Geneva airport...on the Swiss side! We probably should’ve realised when we went across the Swiss boarder! Bloody hell, how hard could this be! I went into the Europecar office to find out what went wrong and obviously it happens a lot because the agent just handed me a map and sent us on our way! The French side was literally about 50 metres away judging by the map. In fact, I almost expected us to enter the French Europcar office on the other side of this one and for this agent to simply swing around in his chair and put on a French accent!

Anyway off we drove to find our way to the French side! We followed the map to the letter but again of course, there’s always a point where you doubt yourself. We found ourselves driving down a road with barbed wire on both sides, literally in no mans land between France and Switzerland. If there was enough room to do a U-turn we would have but there possibly could have been guards waiting in the bushes to pounce on the tourist for making illegal U-turns! Luckily we didn’t because a bit further down the road we came to the French Europcar office, just on the other side of the building we were at about 3 minutes ago!

Anyway, we dropped the car off, checked in and went through security without any further problems! Only to find the inside of Geneva airport as confusing as the outside! Maybe it was the early start, the rainy drive, or a sooky 3 year old, but it took us about as long to find the eatery as it did to find the car rental return! We were spent and very thankful when we finally arrived in London, gray skies and all!

We finally made it to our friends Luke and Tahlia’s house in Southfields. They are in Australia and have kindly let us stay at their place. Great big thank you guys! It’s awesome here! It's perfect, two bedrooms separated from each other so we can't hear the girl's! Just joking, we can hear them, if we choose to! Haha!

Tonight I had organised to catch up with all my London friends that I used to work with. It turns out I didn’t have as many friends as I thought because there was only a party of four! In my defence, I did confuse the issue by sending out a request to postpone the get together in the event of a snow-cancelled flight. There was some confusion so a few of the girlies couldn’t make it! Having said that, it was still a great night out with beautiful girls, that I have missed for 3 years. Thank you, ladies.

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