Variations with a splash page

Hi guys
I have sort of confused myself here, so would be grateful for any help.
I am building a bilingual website that uses Variations to handle the 2 languages. This all works well but I need a splash page at the root so a visitor can choose what language to view the site in. This can't be automatic i.e based on language preference in the browser so I have to make the user choose everytime they come via the front door.

I have tried the following which sort of works but I just need some help with fine tuning.

1. created a sub directory in CONTROLTEMPLATES called test and copied VariationsRootLanding.ascx into it.
2. removed everthing from this file and simply put two hyperlinks to lang1 and lang2
3. edited VariationRootPageLayout.aspx  and pointed the reference from _controltemplates/VariationsRootLanding.ascx to _controltemplates/test/VariationsRootLanding.ascx

now if I go to the root of the site in a browser I see the simple splash page with my two links to lang1 and lang2 but the url is showing /Pages/VariationRoot.aspx. So my questions are:

1.  Is this an acceptable way of doing it or have I gone down the wrong track?
2.  I'd like the url to read /Pages/Splash.aspx instead of /Pages/VariationRoot.aspx is this possible?

Thanks

DG