Daddy Daughter Adventure

This is a guest post by Mike.

On Friday we let Marianne spend the day by herself, while the girls and I went on our own adventure.  Katherine seems to have had a lot of fun at the last museum she had gone to, so going to a museum was what she wanted to do.  I was happy to oblige.  We went to Lausanne to check out a bunch of museums all located in the same building.  Within just two hours of arriving, we had seen everything we could handle.

It was funny because Katherine kept saying throughout the day that she wanted to go to the "real museum."  I guess that since it wasn't as fun as she expected, it wasn't really a museum.  Anyhow, it was a great day outside, so we were able to pass some more time eating lunch on a bench with a nice lookout for awhile before I decided to get us in gear to go somewhere else.  (Lausanne is great for lookouts because it's situated on a hill right next to the lake.)

The next stop was the "Espace d'Inventiones" a sort of science and discovery museum that I decided we'd go to on a spur of the moment decision.  I was a little worried that it wouldn't be something we could get much from since I was sure that it would all be in French and perhaps geared towards older children.  Well, I was right about that, but additionally it didn't open until 2pm and I got us there promptly at 1:15pm.

No problem.  It's located in a large park area with gardens (that no doubt will be spectacular in just a few weeks, but just had budding flowers and plants for us), playgrounds and walking trails.  This too is located on a hillside and we saw several people whiz by on bikes, skateboards and rollerblades.  We started in the garden where I was happy just to take it easy for awhile.  The highlight was find a lizard.

I was excited to take the girls to a slide I had seen that has been built into the side of the hill, but we first played on the some of the playground equipment.  The girls had a great time.  So much so that it took some work on my part to get them to go to the slides.  But after going down once I'm sure the playground equipment was no longer on their minds.  Almost as fun as the ride down was the climb back up.  Katherine called it rock climbing--closer to bouldering I think, but still a pretty good climb, especially for Ellie who did it all by herself.

The museum was pretty much how I expected: for children ages 7 and up and all in French.  That said, we actually had a nice time looking at the exhibits.  I was able to deduce from the French what most of the exhibits were about, and the fact that the girls were a little young just made it easier to just move on when we didn't understand.

In all it was a pretty fun day.  Marianne seemed happy that I was able to wear the girls out.  (Besides all of the time playing, I didn't take the stroller along so there was even more walking than usual.)