"The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet." - Bill Cosby

My parents were our grand finale of fall visitors. Something about saving the best for last. :) They squeezed in right between the week of constant rain and the predicted snow this Saturday and arrived in Geneva after a two week tour of Europe. My mom remembered the way to our apartment – cross the freeway, traverse the field, and make a right at the naked statues.

They arrived on Thursday night, and my mom was very impressed with the hominess of our apartment. Then I remembered that when she was here last year I slept on a twin air mattress in the middle of the family room, didn’t have any kitchen appliances, and all of the lightbulbs were naked hanging from the ceiling. Everything is relative.

We took my dad to a French town called Annecy the next day. We wandered through the old town and canals, took a walk by the lake, ordered a token crepe and ice cream cone, and visited our fair share of cutesy shops. I think my dad liked the town, but he probably could have done without all of the shops. Little did he know that it was just a warm up of cute towns and cute shops. 

These locks are slightly smaller than those in Seattle.

One of the cute shops. Can you guess which letter is missing?

The next morning we took them to our French market and the grocery store. I’m sure our trip to Carrefour, our local supermarket, was the highlight of their trip. They quickly toured downtown Geneva while John and I napped in the afternoon, and then we went out to dinner to celebrate John’s birthday. He picked the all-you-can-eat mussels and fries place in France that we had been to before. They have a menu full of flavors of mussels, and then they bring out a big pot of them. The best part is that you can switch flavors before your next batch. Between the four of us we had white wine, beer, blue cheese, and mustard. I was stuffed after my first pot of mustard mussels and bowl of fries. 

Sunday we went to another cute French town, Yvoire. I think my parents got their fill of cute French towns… and crepes for that matter. 

Monday we went to Gruyeres, a chocolate / cheese / castle town in the Swiss countryside. We started with a tour of the chocolate factory with the piece of heaven at the end with unlimited samples. We burned off the chocolate walking to the next town where the cheese and castle are. We did the tour of the castle and took the cheese tour. We didn’t even need lunch since we got cheese samples too. I could get used to chocolate hors d’oeuvres and then a cheese main dish. 

We rounded out the visit with a trip to Chamonix on Tuesday where we went to the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe and then strolled through the cutesy shops in the town. My poor dad.   

My mom grabbed this bag to carry coats on our way out the door. As we were taking the elevator downstairs I wondered why she was taking out our trash. Come to find out the bag was coming with us all day. I guess parents are embarrassing at any age. So I had her pose with a trashcan.