La Belle-Mere

When Justin and I returned from Paris, we went into a bit more of a cleaning frenzy than we usually do (let me be fair and say that Justin did ALL the cleaning). That's because Justin's mom was coming in for a visit for the weekend and staying at my apartment.


Most girls would probably freak out a little bit of the idea of their future mother in law coming to stay with them for the weekend, but I was excited. And I am not just saying that because I know that Mrs. C is a regular visitor of my blog! Justin and I are very lucky in that we both get along very well with each other's families, and also I suppose lucky that for example, my dad is not a very threatening, questioning man (i.e. "What ARE your intentions with my daughter, boy?") and Justin's mom is not a crazy, overprotective woman (i.e. relationship between Principal Skinner from "The Simpsons" and his mother). In any case, you get the idea. She is, to quote Mean Girls, "a cool mom," and so the visit was not something to be nervous about.


On Thursday night after a glass of wine on the balcony, we headed down to the Paquis for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in Geneva, a small traditional Swiss place. We settled on a little bit of raclette and Fondue Chinoise, which is meat fondue that is cooked in bouillon instead of oil and very very good. Afterwards we got ice cream and walked around the lake to check out a little of the Pre-Fetes, which is kind of the "before" party week before the Fetes de Geneve (more on that later).


Friday I took off from work (I have not worked more than 4 days in a week since Justin got here) and we decided to rent bikes downtown. You can rent a bike for free for four hours and after that, it is just one franc an hour. Sounds like a great deal, right? I'll come back to this. It was a spectacular day with lots of sun and no clouds, and we biked along the lake, looking at vineyards and the French Alps across the lake and beautiful mansions and sunflowers all along the way. After about a 30 minute ride, we stopped for a delicious, leisurely filets de perches lunch at a place right on the water. We took a long break and then headed back to the bikes.


Justin pedaled about 10 feet and abruptly stopped. His tire was completely flat. Pancake, board, whatever analogy you want to use, it was the flattest tire I have ever seen. And we were basically in little village Switzerland where we hadn't the faintest idea of where a bike shop was or how to ask to repair the tire anyway.


So the three of us tried several things. We called the bike shop who didn't understand us or more likely didn't care (remember: FREE bikes). We asked several people where the nearest bike shop was and they responded: 4 km, 2km, 5 meters (translation: we have no idea you stupid English speaking bike riders). So that was no help at all. We asked a woman at a car dealership if there was anyone who could fix it in the mechanics dept and she responded "that's not my job." Finally we stumbled upon a motorcycle shop, and Justin asked the grumbling French mechanic if he could "reparez la bicyclette" (as we had the actual bike there with the tire, it kind of helped to explain). Grumbling Frenchy inflated the tire using a little tube and after about a minute, it seemed fixed. Rejuvenated, we pedaled off through the next "big" town, Versoix, and into Coppet.

After about 15 minutes, I noticed that Justin was riding very slowly. In fact, annoyingly slowly and I kept almost passing him. As I was thinking of some snide comment to make about this point, I noticed that an awful (yet amazingly rhythmic) sound was coming from Justin's bike. "Thun-thun-thAUNK-thun-thun-thAunk...I am the woRLD's flattest t-IRE" the bike seemed to be humming. And it really was, worse so than before, and he eventually had to stop riding. Now we were completely screwed because we were in a much smaller town and no where near any bicycle or motorcycle shop.

Just at the moment all seemed lost, we saw across the street upon a bus stop which stated that the bus to the Nyon train station would be arriving in 10 minutes. As you know by now, the buses in Switzerland are always on time and lo and behold, 10 minutes later, a bus pulled up, with a rude French woman as our savior. At first she refused to let us on the bus but I argued that Justin's tire was completely flat. She begrudingly let him aboard, charged him an exorbitant fee of 12 francs for the bicycle, and sped off, leaving Justin's mom and I to continue riding to Nyon. The ride to Nyon was about another 20 minutes and very nice except for ONE small detail. Waiting for us at the very end of the journey was the biggest freaking hill in all of Switzerland which was what we had to pedal up on our rickety-you-get-what-you-pay-for bikes. Miraculously we were able to find some teeny tiny sign posts to point us to the train station after that and were reunited with Justin shortly thereafter. We celebrated with a glass of wine down by the lake and then rode the train back to Geneva with the bikes. Worried that I might not get back the full security deposit upon returning the bicycle with the flattest tire ever, I made a big show of needing the strong, non-English speaking worker at the store to help me with alllll the heavy bikes. They never knew what hit them, and we took the money and ran!

The rest of the weekend was a little less adventurous. That evening we made a big fondue at home to celebrate our long day of cycling along with some champagne. On Saturday we headed at first back to the scene of the crime, Nyon, and took a boat across the lake to a town called Yvoire in France. It was a gorgeous old medieval town with lots of beautiful flowers and ice cream shops! We walked around and enjoyed lunch before the crowds started to swarm and then high tailed it back to Geneva. That night we went to Les Amures for dinner, an awesome restaurant in the old town of Geneva. Overall the weekend was lots of fun, with lots of walking around, talking and laughing, and me and Justin enjoying being spoiled just a little bit by a mom.

Oh and Mrs. C also met Pasha, the kebab guy down the street, which was a highlight as he did a little bow and referred to her as "Madam" everytime he saw her after that.