20 Things I Learned While Travelling

We're home now.  Reentry is my least favourite part of travelling.  All the unpacking, and the laundry to be done.  I've taken a break from moving things pointlessly between different parts of the house to capture some learnings from our trip to Switzerland and a little bit of France.  Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/paulconroy/Switzerland.

1.  Switzerland is cheap to get to, the train from the airport to the city is free for visitors, as is the public transport in the city.  This is because ordinary people cannot actually afford to do anything once they arrive.
2.  Geneva is a lovely city.  The lake, the mountains and the city's architecture cooperate to produce a feeling of calm and well-being.  Unless you want breakfast.  Then it's just another ugly place to drag your children through.
3.  A Citroen C3 is a reliable, economical vehicle.  It gets good mileage and has adequate storage space.  It has a top speed of 72, but much, much less on an uphill grade of any sort.  I had to downshift to get up the near side of several of the country's more aggressive speed bumps.
4.  Swiss bus drivers do not appreciate American tourists who make them late, even ones who have cute kids, smile a lot and say polite things in German.
5.  Lake Geneva produces a surprising amount of sea glass, though Swiss children do not seem to have cottoned on the the hobby of collecting it.  My children have taken advantage of their naivete and smuggled a large amount of it back to England.
6.  Successfully skipping a rock on a lake is as much a function of strategic stone selection as it is of throwing technique.  It's all in the wrist.
7.  From a child's perspective, a day spent chucking rocks into a lake is as good as or better than one spent at more expensive pastimes such as sightseeing, or eating.
8.  When parking the car in a gated lot, it is a good idea to read the payment instructions before attempting to exit.  Payment is not always accepted at the exit gate, and the Swiss locals do not appreciate American tourists blocking the exit while trying to explain to the remote attendant's disembodied voice, in half-remembered high school French clouded by 25 years of disuse, why they haven't paid at the machine in the lobby.
9.  Ice cream solves most problems.  The ones it doesn't can always be addressed later with wine.
10.  Pack half of what you think you need and leave half of that at home.  Except when travelling with children, who manage to get filthy just sitting in the car.
11.  Pack twice the amount of money you think you'll need, and then double that.  Except when travelling in Switzerland, where you will really need to bring along a trailer full of Swiss francs.
12.  The border crossings between Switzerland and France are disappointingly porous.  We expected some sort of interrogation by men wearing mirrored sunglasses and peaked caps, or at least a 'Welcome to France' sign with a funny cartoon character made of cheese.  Instead, we got a set of abandoned-looking sheds in the middle of the road and not even an Arretez-Vous! sign.
13.  Evian is actually a place, and they do actually bottle water there.
14.  "Hey Soul Sister" is my children's favourite song.  Although Michael's changed the words to "Hey soul mister, I can't stand my sister".
15.  Hannah Montana is televised just about everywhere.
16.  Cartoons are much funnier when dubbed into other languages.
17.  My children are more impressed by butterflies and snakes than by mountain vistas and fresh air.
18.  Moss does NOT only grow on the north side of trees.  That's just a load of bollocks.
19.  I should really use sunblock.
20.  20 Questions is a great way to keep the kids occupied at a meal.  They tend to lose track of the number of questions asked, so you can usually beat them.