Starting the new year over the ocean

For those of you still waiting to hear if we made it to the U.S., we did and we're back :) Zürich Daddy Geek was able to take care of things at the Kreisbüro and we made it to the airport with plenty of time. In fact, our flight to the U.S. was delayed by over an hour because the incoming plane was late. So late, that we missed our connection from D.C. to San Francisco. They rebooked us on a later flight, but we were so tired that ZDG negotiated a hotel room and we spent the night and part of the next day in D.C. We had the chance to visit some old friends and pop into the Natural History Museum to look at some dinosaur skeletons. A trip recap with some pictures will follow shortly.

We started New Year's Eve day very early -- waking up at 5 am (after struggling to convince Little Geek Girl to go to sleep the night before) to catch our flight from San Francisco departing at 7:42 am PST. We departed D.C. a little after 6 pm EST, probably just as the fireworks were celebrating the New Year in Zürich. 2009 started for us somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The good thing about traveling on New Year's Eve was the flight wasn't full and ZDG had a set of three seats to himself and LGG and I shared a set of three seats. We should have fed LGG before the flight left D.C. and we probably shouldn't have tried to move a sleeping LGG during the flight, but one day we'll learn. LGG fell asleep near the beginning of the flight, but was awake for the remaining five hours (grumble, grumble).

We arrived in Zürich around 8:15 am. Zürich was blanketed with a fresh thick coat of snow. We stopped for some coffee and decided to take tram 10 towards home. Tram 10 started going out to the airport after we left and LGG wanted to take the new extension. Lots of snow everywhere, but the sidewalks were mostly cleared. We showered and then headed into town to be outside and reset our body clocks and look for lunch. Oops. Almost everywhere was closed, but we were able to get some sausages for lunch. I think the clean-up crews that would have normally cleaned up the NYE debris was busy clearing the snow, because there was tons of broken glass/plastic beside the lake. We walked (or slipped and slid over the icy walkways near the lake) towards the Zürichhorn and ran into the family of a colleague of ZDG at the outdoor ice skating rink. ZDG and LGG decided to skate a little (we were trying to distract LGG from wanting to fall asleep). The ice skating rink had some cute kid-sized penguins with handles for beginning ice skaters, but they were all taken. Unfortunately, ZDG's hat walked away in the chaos of the changing room. Litter and a stolen/missing hat all in one day!

We then made one final stop for caffeine and picked up some groceries. ZDG used the Simpsons to keep LGG awake while I cooked dinner and then we all collapsed in bed at 6 pm. Hopefully we'll get over the jet lag soon.

Happy New Year Everyone!