Annecy

A refreshing trip to another region of France…

…made less refreshing by the second unprecedented heat wave this year. However most of my day was spent in my rental car, Camille, and she has air conditioning. I had checked Google Maps before making hotel reservations for just one night, and it said the drive from Moulins to Annecy would take a bit over three hours. The GPS in Camille was set for no tolls, which very slowly dawned on me as we ascended toward the Alps on roads so tiny and twisty that in one mountain gorge we had to wait at a little light while oncoming cars snaked along the vertical walls, and it was our turn. The driving time turned out to be over six hours, but I have never yet figured out to set the GPS to any other setting. And I’m glad I saw the little villages in their Savoyard architecture. They would appear wherever there was a patch of flat land large enough for a wheat field or a pasture of cows, and the Alps began to appear in their grey grandeur.

I arrived pretty wrung out with the constant navigating and shifting and speed limit changes–I swear I’m not just whining, you have to try it some time. But I feel I am taking advantage of the time I have with Camille, who goes back in two days. I will be happy to take my next trip by train.

The hotel was better than I expected, and the location in the old town, by the outlet of the clear Lac d’Annecy, was good for strolling about and just being a tourist. First I had Savoyard fondue, which has much more flavor than the Swiss versions I’ve had, and then to make up for eating a bubbling hot cliché on an 88 degree evening, I bought a bowl of gelato, in rhubarb and rose flavors. 

In the park by the lake, I let my sweating face dry off while savoring the ice cream. A park created when Napoleon III put Annecy on the map as yet another Gilded Age watering hole.

 

Then I went back to my hotel room and luxuriated in air conditioning and crispy white bed linens. Not for long, as I was soon asleep. It is hard to sleep in my normal living arrangements because of how hot it is, and it is due to get hotter. What can you do? 

Earlier, about halfway through the drive eastward, I stopped at Cluny to see the famous old abbey, or what is left of it. The history fascinates me, because of my interest in monetary history. The town is in a nice setting as well, and the ladies at the museum were especially friendly and interested in my story. About two hours of walking about was topped off by discovering a horse show at the nearby National Stud. I watched a couple of advanced riders take their horses through a stadium jumping course, and looked at the lean, scornful rich people, and was reminded that horses are beautiful, but horse people are weird. Nowadays all those knights and nobles would think Camille was to die for. 

The street on the right was said to have some houses dating from the Roman era, but I couldn’t figure out which they were. I put it in here because it’s pretty. The pictures I’ve seen of the Roman vestiges are much, much prettier, but all I saw on site were bits and pieces of them. Everything seems to have been busted to smithereens by maniacs during the French Revolution. Why make a special trip all the way down here to this obscure valley just to break rocks? I thought they were tired of that sort of oppressive lifestyle. Things don’t add up, as usual.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day I used my phone to do the proper route back, and flew along at 80 mph through astonishing views of the Alpine foothills. I did not add up how much I paid in tolls, because it was worth it. 

On the way to Annecy in the morning, near the region of Burgundy, I came up over a lovely hill to see a new watershed laid out under the clear sky. There were low blue mountains on the horizon, vinyards and dark green woods in patches all about. I exclaimed in delight to no one, and felt like I did so often on all those explorations in Janet.

And I stopped and faced facts. Janet Weiss, is me.

I’ve been alone all the times I’ve “shared” my adventures with my anthropomorphized hunk of German steel. I knew that.

But am I really? I think not.