Today we drove up to an incredibly gorgeous lake town called
Annecy, which is known as the Venice of France.
The town consists of a beautiful clear lake right next to a steep,
stunning mountain covered in greenery and around the lake is a perfectly
manicured town complete with freshwater channels fed from the lake. The channels and streets are lined with huge
hanging baskets and flower boxes dripping with flowers, with almost no garbage. Plus, it’s nice and cool, the water doesn’t
stink, and I didn’t even see any construction.
These are major differences between Annecy and Venice. Yes, Venice has more canals, but it’s dirty,
stinky, disgustingly hot in August and you can hardly get where you want
because they’re always trying to fix some ancient bridge or dredge a canal to
fix a sinking house. One thing France
has that Italy doesn’t is a sophistication and charm. It seems like France has a very well
functioning infrastructure and they take time to worry about the details and
they can because they’re on top of all the major maintenance issues that
Italians struggle to maintain. I saw no
road construction, no unattended pot holes, good road signage, street sweepers
cleaning up every night and hanging baskets adorning every town every few
meters. Even the larger cities were
clean. I am thoroughly impressed. Back to Annecy….So as we walked around we
were met with street performers at every corner and picturesque bridge after
bridge. We found a darling candy and
cookie store and we bought the kids giant suckers. I do have to say that the cookies and candy
in Europe just aren’t as good as we have it.
People from Europe say that they don’t like our sweets because they’re
too sweet, but if I’m going to eat something full of butter, I want it to taste
good or else it’s not worth the calories.
The French pastries have PLENTY of sugar in them so why don’t they
sweeten their cookies? The cookies are not only tasteless, but super hard and
dry. So after the kids refused the nice
French girls’ offer to try their cookies, we settled on giant cube suckers that
the kids dropped a million times on the cobblestone streets. Yuk.
We unsuccessfully tried to take a photo of our kids on this gorgeous
bridge, but the kid were already fading.
We wandered to a piazza where we let the kids run around and listen to a
band called the “Red Hot Peppers” not to be confused with the “Red Hot Chile
Peppers” who played New Orleans Jazz music that was really entertaining. They also sung English in French
accents. We bought their CD, which
wasn’t as good as their live performance, but is a fun reminder of our
trip. One of the cutest things we saw
were these little pony bikes that the kids could ride around. It was really picturesque to see all the
little kids on the promenade on the little ponies. Annecy was truly a magical place. From there we went to my favorite new place
on the planet called Chamonix. It’s
probably the most spectacular place I’ve ever been to. Mont Blanc is a 12,000 foot mountain that
rises almost vertically from a very low valley to a peak that’s completely
covered in glaciers. Naturally there are
rivers and waterfalls flowing down from every peak. Even though the mountains aren’t as high as
the ones in Utah, the base of the mountain starts a LOT lower than our
mountains so they seem to be three times higher from base to summit. I’ve never seen anything that seemed so
majestic. It was almost unreal. Unfortunately we arrived too late to take the
tram up to the top so we ended up taking a stroll up the main street instead to
gaze at the mountain. Before we left,
Bea put about 5 pounds of gravel in her dress and in every little hole and
every flowerbed she “fed” the flowers or filled up the holes. We found this pastry and chocolate store and
as soon as we walked in we realized that we had made a serious mistake. Bea was sneaking chocolates and taking bites
out of them and then dropping them on the ground. She successfully bit one and was about to
take another one when the store owner yelled, “stop!” and we offered to pay for
the candies. She said it was ok, but we
ended up buying a few things from her anyway.
The macaroon sandwiches were to die for.
The chocolates were normal and the giant merengue snowball we bought for
the kids was like eating a huge chalk made out of sugar. They kids pretty much hated it. Haha.
Then as we were outside eating our treats, Clementine darted inside the
store and grabbed a macaroon from the display window. Lucy intercepted went in to tell the owner
and this time she complained and said that even though those were only for
display, it just wasn’t right that we let our kids come in and ravage her
shop. I totally agree. So sorry.
At that point we realized that the kids were starving so we stopped at
the nearest Fondue restaurant and ordered a giant pot of fondue that could of
easily filled a gallon container. There
was an inordinate amount of cheese. We were
each given plates of sausages, cured meats, potatoes, salad and bread to dip
and we were pretty much in heaven. The
view was spectacular and the kids were silent.
After dinner we walked up to the main street and watched a band of three
brothers, reminiscent of the Jonas Brothers, playing two guitars with the
youngest on the drums. They only played
cover songs but they were really great, especially the kid on the drums. As I looked at that kid’s four limbs and head
in constant motion I realized that the drums could be Henrys outlet instrument. I will force him to play the piano but he
might just LOVE the drums. I think I’ll
get him started on that ASAP. The town
was the town of our dreams with every single outdoorsy clothing and gear store
known to man. There were real estate
shops around every corner and we salivated looking at the unrealistic
possibilities. We might be able to
afford a studio apartment one day, but that’s about it. Actually, the prices were less than half of
what something of equal size would cost at any resort in Utah. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy something there if
we ever could. The kids were almost dead
at that point and we had a long drive home so we headed out and finally got
into bed after 1am. Totally worth it….
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