Paradise is found

After the WTO tour, the bus dropped us off at a train station so everyone could go their separate ways. Some were going to Interlaken, some were going to the south of France to check out the French Riviera. Adrianne and I decided to do our own thing and went to Annecy. I had struggled to come up with an idea for our free weekend, but luckily I stubbled across a forum that discussed Annecy. Let it be said that the guide books don't dedicate nearly enough space to this gem. I have been to London, Prague, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Paris, and Lyon, and this place, by far, takes the cake. This might have to do with the fact that I'm more of a slow paced, outdoors kind of girls. Part of me wants to write to Lonely Planet or whoever & say - why the heck don't you say more about this gem? But then another part of me doesn't want everyone to know about it... so that when I come back some day, it won't be filled to the brim w/ tourists. And as is usually the case, pictures are not going to do this gem of a city justice!

Don't get me wrong, this place is not undiscovered. It just wasn't full of Americans & other tourists from outside Europe (at least that's how it seemed). I feel like this is where the French & Swiss go to get away. Which you can sort of see by the picture on the right. I had to take a pic of this thru the bus window because it really reminded me of the traffic you see heading up to the lake on 94. Granted, this is a small little road, but man was it backed up! Luckily our bus driver knew of some back roads to avoid some traffic, but the trip still took about 40 minutes longer than it was supposed to.

We got to Annecy and successfully navigated our way to our hotel. Despite the fact that Annecy doesn't get much coverage in publications such as Loney Planet, it's not undiscovered - we had to call 3 different hotels before we found one that had room for us. So the hotel we stayed at wasn't quite in the city, but was a nice 15-20 minute walk, along the lake :), from the city center. We were pleasantly surprised by the size of our room! Originally another person was going to come with us, so we had a room that accomodated 3. It had a double bed & then another murphy bed that was folded out. After checking things out a little closer, we discovered that there was another murphy bed next to the other one! So EXTREMELY spatious by American standards and downright palatial by European standards!!

So we really lucked out. The only interesting thing was the bathroom situation. We had what we joking referred to as a 'bower'. aka a shower that wasn't really a shower... As you can see from the pic, it's basically a tub w/ a shower attachment, but no curtain... So maybe the French like baths better? I have no idea. So it made for some awkward showers; Adrianne basically flooded the bathroom after her first shower, but after that, we got it down. I have a good friend that spent the last 6-8 weeks (not sure how long, sorry Matt!) who has been in Tai Pei - he just had a shower head on the wall - no tub or anything, so it could have been alot worse.

After cleaning up, we walked into town to grab dinner. Even though we are sort of on 'vacation' it had been a stressful week, so Adrianne and I really enjoyed a quiet evening. On the way to our hotel we had already found a restaurant that served really good pizza and inexpensive wine, so we decided to head there for dinner. It was pretty fun trying to decipher what the various ingredients on the menu were. The French phrase book definitely came in handy (thanks, Brooke, good bday gift!). We ordered some pizza & some wine. It was a little cooler here than it was in Lyon, so we were enjoying the outdoor dining, and wonderful food.

Halfway thru dinner we noticed that the tables next to us were speaking english. It was actually 2 different tables w/ a couple at each table. We could hear that they were speaking English, so asked them to snap a picture of us (the picture above). When we were done eating, they were still there, chatting, so we asked them where they were from - one couple was from Norway, one was from Austria. They started teasing us about how 2 girls had ordered a liter of wine to share (I guess they thought that was a bit much?), so after chatting back and forth, they insisted that we join them. It was so much fun. Adrianne and I joked that we were having our own little league of nations. We had an absolute blast with them and talked about various topics from the US Presidential campaign, to the French approach to work/HR, to maternity leave in Norway. It was an unforgetable evening and we walked home, talking about how we learned more from that exchange with them than we probably could have learned in a classroom. Here's a picture of our new found European friends... aka the Friday night League of Nations.

We knew we'd have a full day ahead of us on Saturday, so hit the sack for a wonderful 10 hours of sleep!!!!!