France – Day 8 (Thursday, January 1, 2009): New Year’s Day, Musee de Musique Mechanique and back to Geneva

Our last morning in Les Gets got off to a lazy start. We slept late, played with Lillia and hung out with Tina and Megan.

We packed and got everything ready to go so that we could go sledging (sledding in the States) with Lillia’s new sledge. We went to the snow covered road around the corner and Nick pulled her up and down the road. How cute is Lillia in her pink snowsuit with her pink sledge!!!

Nick decided to take a stroll in the snow and ended up sinking down to the tops of his legs. He ended up stuck and Tina had to go an help him out. I must say it was hilarious! Megan was up to her waist!! Here are some pictures:

We put Lillia in one of the holes where Nick's legs had been. She just smiled and took it all in!

After a little while of sledging, we just enjoyed the snow and cold and took a few pictures.

Nick and Tina took Tori to ski school, and we took Megan to the Musée de la Musique Mécanique. We all three thought the museum was one of the worst ones we had even been into and, even worse, we got caught on a French speaking tour. The first part of the museum had automaton boxes which were used to advertise perfume in store windows. They were little boxes with people moving and depicting an event of everyday life like bathing, getting dressed, shaving or putting on perfume. Many of them were in disrepair or didn’t work at all. The second part of the museum had music boxes, player pianos and various versions of automatic music boxes including ones that were placed in chairs, desks and pictures. We politely excused ourselves before the tour was over because we had no idea what the guide was babbling on about and the museum wasn’t interesting enough to hold us there on our own.

We went back to the chalet, packed up the car, said our good-byes (sniff, sniff) and headed back to Geneva. It was a lot easier getting back to Geneva than it was getting from Geneva to Les Gets. We filled the car up with petrol and then turned the rent car back in to Hertz. We had a small adventure getting back to the hotel. It looked so simple and we really did think we could walk but, after about half an hour of walking in circles and finding no way to get to the side of the street the hotel was on, we hired a taxi. He must have thought we were nuts when we told him where we wanted to go but it was dark and cold and we were hungry!

We had dinner at the hotel again and this time we ordered the dinner buffet. We entrees were quite good and included flavoured rice, spaghetti with seafood, fillet of John Dory (fish), tortellini in pesto, carved roast, boiled shrimp, air dried meats and other goodies. There were also some delicious desserts including several buche (pistachios and a chocolate one), yummy cookies and a fantastic raspberry mousse.

We checked in for our flight and got everything ready to go because we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to catch the shuttle from the hotel to the airport. Ugh!