The drive back to Zurich

This day deserves its own entry - a lot happened.
Nicole and I dropped off Uncle Dave at the airport in Marseille at 8am on Sunday, and then we were on our merry way back to Zurich with a stop in Monaco. We were playing a U2 CD we had just bought for the road trip, and life was good. Monaco was a great place to visit, and I could have spent more time there. We tried to see the casino, but it was closed, along with many of the streets, because there was an antique race car event happening that weekend. We visited the Museum of Oceanography, which was an eclectic mix exhibits. The basement had a great aquarium which was very impressive and extensive. Prince Albert I of Monaco was apparently really into the study of marine biology and founded the museum back in the early 1900s. Monaco likes to take every opportunity to remind you that they have a royal family and that they're rich. The museum had a large collection of his studies and research as well as cetacean skeletons and countless pickled embryos of sharks and other creatures. Throughout the museum, there was an exhibit of sculptures, paintings and other art. I found some of the sculptures really fascinating. Monaco likes to constantly remind you of how rich they all are. They make art out of diamonds and gold.
To drive back to Zurich from Monaco, we had to drive through northern Italy past Genova and Milano. We anticipated that it would take about six hours of driving. So we left Monaco at around 1:30pm, and about 80km (maybe more) outside of Genova, there was standstill traffic. It didn't last long, but then it began to just creep along for the next two hours. It was terrible. We finally got past Genova and the traffic sped up again, and getting past Milano was not a problem. We just had to get through the mountain town of Como, and then we would be in Switzerland again. Como would have been very pretty, but it was almost dark at that point and it was pouring rain. We had a terrible time trying to find our way from one road to the next - for some reason the road signs just didn't want to lead us to Switzerland. We finally found our way by trial and error (and lots of error) on the right road. We were running out of energy and it was getting late. And it was still pouring rain. We were sending text messages to Nathan and his dad, who were scheduled to pick us up at the car rental when we got back to Zurich. On the way, they planned to pick up Stefan, who was on the train from Paris to Zurich. All of the Thormosets were congregating one by one in Zurich. We told David and Nathan that we would probably be arriving at the car rental (at the Zurich airport) close to 11:30pm at the rate things were going. At this point we were in the highest mountain pass in a 17km long tunnel. Those tunnels were such a welcome haven of light and no rain. At the end of the longest one, we came back out into the dark night to a wall of snow. We pressed on, and the snow turned to sleet, and the sleet turned to rain. We finally made it to the Zurich airport at 11:30 and were relieved to park the car and turn in the keys and not have to drive any more. We went inside to wait for the guys to come pick us up.
Then we got a call from Nathan. He and David had been driving in downtown Zurich to pick up Stefan from the train station, and they got pulled over by the police. Long story short, they finally made it to the airport to get us at 2am. After making a wrong turn on the way home from the airport and driving 30 minutes in the wrong direction, we finally made it back to Sonya and Thomas' apartment at 3am.