Today has been quite a day! We started by getting on a train, we met a wonderful lady Michelle and her dog Archie, she travels a lot in her life time and had many wonderful stories to tell us. All of a sudden after about an hour of traveling we stopped because of student protests outside of Paris. We were diverted to another station but still made it to Calais on time for the ferry.

We got on the ferry where we also met some wonderful people, Sally and Mike. Coincidently they live very near my grandmother. They referred my mom to the head of Mathematics at my dad’s old secondary school, Ravens Wood School. Evidently there is a chance that she might be able to tutor me in Algebra while we stay in Bromley.

We arrived in Dover, traveled through the beautiful Kentish countryside to Canterbury where my dad went to University. We checked into The Pilgrims Hotel and set out to explore Canterbury a bit before having a delicious meal.

Bugsly

This morning we grabbed breakfast said high to the waitress who was also a manikin, and headed out into the rainy city of Geneva. Our first stop was to look around for a pocket watch for Michael which he has been longing for a long time. We found a very beautiful, yet durable one in a small watch store that was packed with cuckoo clocks that all go off at different times. We were starting to feel faint from hunger we decided to try another packed restaurant, Molino’s, only this time Italian not Thai. Every ting in Geneva is expensive, and the tax doesn’t have much to do with it being that it is five percent (Italy is twenty!) but never the less (literally) we did have to find somewhere to eat that didn’t look too overpriced. It was a good (and busy) restaurant; the waiter having a French air about him being that Geneva is on the French border and speaks the language. We met up with Dad during lunch who had stayed behind to make a few phone calls. We then split up Dad and I going to look around and work on a plane booking, while Mom and Michael went to look around and then go back to the hotel. Dad and I stopped at a few stores never buying anything except for a few postcards, a Swiss Army Knife and a charm for the charm bracelet I am making. We stopped by Qantas Air to straighten out a few reservations and then head back to meet up with Mom and Michael at the hotel. We said hello to the “Bellman” and then took the rickety elevator up four floors. We didn’t go out again that night except for picking up takeout that we scared down before turning in for the night.

Bugsly

Today we woke early and arrived in Milan by train, killed an hour of waiting time and then went to on to Geneva. From there we went to our hotel, dumped our luggage and headed out to explore. In Geneva one of the main forms of industry is clocks, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, modern clocks, watches, pocket watches, and even swatches. Michael has been in search of a pocket watch for a long while so we plan on looking tomorrow morning, I am sure we will have no trouble. Another interesting thing to see in Geneva is the four-hundred and fifty four feet fountain in the middle of the huge lake which is suitably named: Lake Geneva. Anyway we eventually after a fifteen minute walk found a packed Thai restaurant which is always a good sign (Thai is my families favorite food). It was so good that we ordered seconds of almost everything! After we had walked off our delicious meal we were greeted by the hotel bellman, who is a manikin wearing a “Hotel Lido” uniform.

Bugsly