We would have loved to stay even one more day in Paris and do some sightseeing, but we had to get back home for a very important appointment. At least 2 months ago, I had called and reserved a time for us to go down to Zurich and get our official Swiss passports and id cards. They have the new bio-metric ones now, and rather than applying for them through the mail, you have to actually show up at the office and do all the paperwork there.
They reserved a nice big chunk of time for us, as we had 7 (seven!) people who needed them all at once. :) We didn't need to bring birth certificates or any form of id with us, except for our expired green cards. Everything else was already in their computer from when we applied for citizenship in the first place. Ah, Swiss efficiency. We also didn't need to bring passport photos with us, as they had a special machine to take their own digital shots right there. It looked like a very high-tech version of the photo booths found at almost train station in the country. There was this cool reversible stool so you could adjust the height for super little people, like Alexandra, and she took two photos, showed them to you immediately, and let you pick the best one.
Once that was done, she had us sign our names with one of those electronic pens like the UPS man uses. Everyone 7 and over had to "sign" their name. The kids got a big kick out of doing something so official. After that, we just paid our money (700 Swiss Francs) and were told to wait for them to come in the mail. It was all relatively painless and quick and they arrived about a week later. Aren't they pretty?
