10 March - Hello Singapore!

By some miracle both children slept in til just before 7am local time (10am Australian time). We had either fooled their body clocks or we were all just plain exhausted. Given it was after 2.30am when we went to bed we were expecting them to be up and about after another couple of hours.

After Soren was fed we headed down to check out the buffet breakfast.  We had breakfast included in our hotel (random bonuses of last minute bookings!) and were pleased to only have to wander downstairs when we were tired and weary. We are staying at the Grand Mercure Roxy, on the East Coast. About 15 minutes from the city.  It is a nice hotel and our room is a good size, even with the cot and rollaway bed in it. Here are Anto and Astrid posing in front of our hotel (it's the big brown and glass building in the background).

Our room has a king sized bed, the rollaway for Astrid, a cot for Soren (for decorative/storage purposes only since he won't sleep in it) and a desk, comfy chair area, coffee table, fridge, nice TV, and wardrobe space. The bathroom is also a decent size.  Not too bad at all for a week.  Anto managed to take some photos of it in a semi-organised state. It seems to turn into a disaster once Astrid moves things around!  Of course Anto managed to take photos while I was changing Soren's nappy, not my best angle......

The breakfast was pretty good. The usual Western fair mixed with Asian options, an egg station and plenty of pastries and breads.  The coffee was pretty average but the food wasn't too bad. After our obligatory eggs, Anto and I tried the curries and dahl, figuring it was almost lunch time in Australia. Astrid still had a sensitive tummy so stuck to a plain croissant and waffle but we figured she would be into to it all the next day.

After breakfast it was operation decontamination. With a huge bag of vomited on clothing stinking up our hotel room, and both the ergo and stroller out of action due to said vomit. we figured we had to do something about it.  Anto headed out with Astrid to find a screwdriver to pull apart the stroller for washing purposes, and some power adaptors (the one thing we seemingly forgot to pack). They also scoped out washing locations.  I decided Soren needed a sleep so got him off to sleep (in his hammock which we had bought with us since he wasn't having a bar of the hotel cot).  I then had time to start unpacking and cleaning up the tornado of stuff that had ripped through the room at 2am.

Anto and Astrid returned with the screwdriver, the adaptors and stories of tasty food providers and washing facilities.  Once Soren was up and fed  we paid a quick visit to the pool as Astrid had been bugging us to go. It turned out to not be quite warm enough yet for either her or Soren as there was a lot of cloud cover so after 10 minutes we abandoned that idea and we collected all the smelly washing and headed across the road to deposit it with some nice lady who was happy to deal with it for $4 a kg.

Anto decided it was time to introduce Astrid to chicken rice, the food he lived off last time we were here. Last visit we ate a lot of meals at the local eating houses since they have interesting food and are very cheap and there is one near pretty much everything.  There seem to be about 5 within 5 minutes walk of our hotel.  The only problem if finding vegetarian food for me. The lack of English often makes it difficult and nearly everything seems to have at least prawn in it.  Astrid decided  it wasn't a good day for chicken rice and to share some pork and rice with Anto. Anto obtained me some steamed 'carrot cake' which is actually made from turnip and not carrot at all.  Soren in his sling being grinny and cute, and Astrid eating pork got lots of attention from all the locals.

After a hot and sweaty lunch  we headed back to the hotel and commenced afternoon napping.  Everyone was very jetlagged and tired from a busy few days so we inadvertently slept for many hours. I had kept waking up and looking at the clock and thinking it was time to get everyone up and falling back asleep again.  We eventually all arose, and after Soren was woken from his comfy slumber and fed, we figured it was time to explore the nearby Katong shopping centre.

It was now late afternoon and mid-30's. Anto had been carrying Astrid everywhere since she isn't fond of walking and her transportation devices were being washed so we didn't want to go too far afield. The Katong shopping centre was just around the block from the hotel, and pleasantly air-conditioned so we perused the shops for food options and located another supermarket for snacks.

There were quite a few dinner options at quite cheap prices. A little more expensive than the food markets but still cheap as long as you avoided the more restauranty places.  We ended up in one of the food courts and Anto thought he had found me some good tofu and vegies from a tofu place..... until they put chicken gravy on top! So he and Astrid go that for dinner.  Astrid was a big fan of the noodles in chicken gravy. I ended up with some Korean rice which was nice and actually vegetarian.  Astrid put on quite a spectacle of slurping noodles and Soren displayed extreme cuteness trying to gurgle at everyone and grab everything off the table so they both got a fair bit of attention.

It was now late and we headed back to the hotel for baths, showers and bed. Astrid is a big fan of her hotel bath and bed, and Soren has conned us into leaving him in his hammock.  Luckily there is a spot to hang it between the bathroom and the main room. Everyone lets their baby sleep in the hotel bathroom, right?

Our designated jet-lag recovery day had been quite pleasant but we were all still tired.  After the kids were finally asleep Anto headed out to find us some actual coffee.  The hotel cafe was wanting $7 a coffee and that is the cost of 3 meals, so he walked back to the shopping centre to obtain $5 coffees....... not necessarily a bargain but we need it that night.

Given our late end to the day, Soren's dreamfeed got delayed til very late and we were hoping they might sleep in til at least 7 again the next day (or later since nothing is open early).  Well that plan didn't work!

28 October - Reflections on Switzerland

We planned a quiet day since we were tired after the last few days of travelling. We also had a mountain of washing to catch up on. When we had arrived home the previous night we realised a certain young lady had left the fridge slightly ajar (her favourite trick) and pretty much all the food in the fridge had to be thrown. This meant a big shop for groceries as well.

We caught up on most of the washing and shopping/cooking in the morning and let Astrid have a decent lunchtime sleep so headed to the park in the afternoon. It was still cold out so after an hour or so we went back to the apartment for some hot chocolate and episodes of playschool.

So for today's update here are our thoughts on Switzerland:

We knew we wouldn't get to see everything in our 5 days/4 nights and there are definitely things we want to go back and see.  We were fairly underwhelmed by Geneva, but we might have just had a bad day. Plus we were tired. Montreux and Luzern were lovely towns to walk around and we could have spent longer in both.

Interlaken wasn't that exciting, although we didn't really see much of it and used it as a base. We would have loved to have stayed longer in one of the towns further up the Alps. We could easily have had a few days there and done more exploring of the alpine regions and some of the walking trails. Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen were lovely, but plenty of others we passed through also looked great.

Despite the appalling weather we loved Zurich and would have loved to have spent more time there. We will have to go back.  There were also plenty of places we didn't see. We didn't get to see any of the Northern regions or the South-Western Italian regions.  Definitely a country to go back to at some stage.

The Trains:
The rail system is brilliant. All the trains were clean, comfortable and efficient. Aside from a few issues working out connections we had no complaints. The international commutes between Paris and Geneva/Zurich were great and less hassle than flying.  Most of the smaller towns had free train/tram/bus connections for tourists which made life easy and the bigger cities had reasonably priced passes.

The trains do very much run on time. The first day or so we were freaked out that the trains just took off without warning. No door closing sound, no announcements, no warning at all. They just leave. The first couple of times Astrid and our bags went flying as we were unprepared. We soon figured out that they go by the railway clocks (which are all perfectly synchronised). Once you know what time your train is meant to leave you just know to be seated and ready at exactly that time.  There are copious clocks around, and all the trains had them so it was easy once we knew. Anto also synchronised his watch to 'train time' which made it easy.

They often didn't make announcements about stations and stops so sometimes you just had to guess how long til your station. The time stopped at each station would also vary as the train would leave when it got to 'exactly' it's leaving time. This meant we often didn't know how long we would be stopped for in order to get ourselves and all our gear off (and Astrid in the carrier) so we sometimes had to rush around just in case.

The currency:
Switzerland uses Swiss Francs and it is worth slightly less than an Aussie Dollar. It made it easy to see how hideously expensive everything was. The food was extremely expensive in restaurants and cafes, but fairly well priced at the supermarket.  So if you could do your own catering it wouldn't have been too bad. Coffee and soft drink was very expensive, but beer and wine not so much. Chocolate was very well priced and delicious!

The Swiss Francs seem to come in stupid coin denominations. The 5 Franc is a silver piece that looks exactly like an Aussie 20 cent piece. Very deceiving, when you are carrying around a pocket full of them and you realise how much money it is. For 10 Francs they go to a note that looks like our $50.  The half Franc looked like a 5c piece and again you could end up with a ton of them in your pocket.

The language/s:
It was very odd swapping between German and French in different towns. We didn't go to any of the Italian areas, but Luzern had a lot of Italian sections, where everything was Italian food in German. Another odd experience. The Swiss all spoke French and German with very precise accents to it was actually easier to understand than French in France or German in Germany. They were also more willing to swap to English than the French and pretty much all spoke some English.

Weird hotel things:
All the hotels we stayed at gave us a heap of hand towels and no face washers. They also have towels that are a good large size, unlike most hotels where you struggle to find one big enough to wrap around yourself.  When they made up the beds, they always put 2 single bed doonas (folded lengthwise) onto the bed, so each person had their own doona.  The baby cot (porta cots) were really  nice, with big thick mattresses and came with a pillow and thick doona. They obviously don't care about SIDS guidelines in Switzerland. Astrid didn't get the doonas, but she had her sleeping bag anyway. She enjoyed the more comfy matresses. All hotels seemed to include breakfast, which was good given how expensive food (and hotels) are.

All breakfast seemed to consist of copious different choices of meat, cheese, yoghurts and breads. It was generally really yummy though.

Going out with a baby:
Every time we went into a restaurant or cafe they appeared with a highchair automatically. Very different to France where you have to ask and may or may not get one.  They also assumed that you weren't going to feed your baby as they never asked if we wanted anything for Astrid and if we did order something (or ask for an extra plate so she could share ours) they looked at us like we were weird.  Generally they loved babies though and she got tonnes of attention, biscuits and chocolate and multiple people offered to take her home.

General impressions: 
The food was good, but not as good as Paris.  The German influenced food was pretty good quality but the French influenced just wasn't as good as what we were used to. It's hard to beat Paris though!  The food was nice everywhere we went and we  enjoyed most of our meals.

The people were very no nonsense. They don't chat much (unlike Paris) but were friendly and  helpful.  We didn't get hassled at all and we didn't really see any homeless people (unlike Paris, where there is one on every corner). Of course the Swiss probably hide them all, or it's too cold........

The scenery can't be beaten and photos couldn't do it justice.

They really do love banks, watches and chocolate..... and Roger Federer....... all 4 were everywhere!

A picture of Astrid in her new French coat and Swiss hat: