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Annecy & Geneva
Entry 10 of 26 | show all | print this entry |
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Well we had never heard of Annecy before, but it is truly a very pretty town, called "the Venice of Savoie" as its downtown area is situated on canals, with geraniums and petunias flowing from the many flower boxes and hanging baskets on the old stone buildings, and bridges across the canals, and the whole town is beside the beautiful Lake Annecy which is a picture of brightly coloured pedal boats and canoes in Spring and summer, with the snow capped Alps as a backdrop. Oh there is also a beautiful old chateau which started life in the 11th century and was added to in the 16th.
I imagine at the height of summer Annecy would be quite crowded, as it is only half an hour to the mountains in one direction and about the same to Geneva (Switzerland) in the other direction. So as we had just come from the mountains we headed off to Geneva.
Unfortunately it was a rather rainy dull day, but it cleared up enough for us to have a walk around the city, and for Howard to ogle all the watch and knife shops which seemed to be everywhere. Interestingly, Switzerland has not changed to the Euro, and the Swiss Franc is worth almost exactly the same as the Aussie dollar. Also surprisingly, petrol is cheaper in Switzerland than in France, and there are a few petrol stations just over the border catering to the French visitors. It is still $1.97 per litre though. (France is more like $2.50) We had decided to stay here but yet again there was some sort of convention on and it was booked out so we headed back to France and stopped in a quaint little place called "Divonne les Bains" There are apparently Thermal Baths here, but as I write this we have yet to find them. There is however a casino. At first we thought it was just poker machines (a room filled with 350 of them), but then we found the other rooms. They were quite small, although very plush, only one stud Poker table; one blackjack and two roulette tables in operation. We boring old farts still didn't play though! H was intrigued watching one very large Arab chap playing on a roulette table by himself watched by two others, one who looked like his son. He kept putting huge piles on all over the table at random, and lost the lot every time. Guess that put us off somewhat! We found out later that it was here that the record European jackpot of 1,312,518euros was won with a stake of 2.29euros. If I had known that earlier I might have dabbled!!!!
From mountains to rolling hills We set off from Divonne north towards Besancon after looking for and accidentally stumbling across the source of the great spring "La Divonne" which is the start of the river which flows into Lake Leman at Versoix. There are actually five springs which the Romans raised to godlike status in different parts of the town when they were here. There is also one of the oldest electrical power power plants in working order in France here. It was built in 1887 and was in continuous use until 1993.Now it has become a tourist attraction to explain how hydro electricity is generated. Wish I could send you some of the water that seems to be all over this town!
Heading north we hit the Jura mountains and passed through many tiny towns devoted to skiing. There seemed to be a never ending network of ski lifts and delightful Swiss cottages catering to the winter trade, rather quiet at the moment. At one lay over where we stopped for a coffee and a couple of "to die for" French tarts (strawberry and lemon) we could see Geneva and its large water jet, the same as the one in Canberra, though I suspect a bit higher. Suddenly a semi came screaming to a halt with smoke billowing from the break pads. The driver jumped out with the fire extinguisher and liberally sprayed the flames, before getting on his mobile phone and I suspect calling for help. We didn't fancy his chances of going down that way with suspect brakes as we had just crawled up it in fairly low gear the whole way!! But then we are driving a Citroen C3 and our Getz has more guts!!
Seems that morning tea is the time for excitement, as yesterday, when we stopped by the side of the lake at Geneva there was an emergency helicopter there, and soon an ambulance arrived and loaded someone onto it and flew off. H watched the whole thing and felt certain that the person being loaded onto the helicopter was already dead, by the way it was handled. When we asked the chap who seemed to be in charge about it he said that the body had not been pronounced dead as that would have entailed a lot of paperwork, so she was being taken to hospital. I can see the headlines "Geneva emergency helicopter comes to the aid of woman who was rushed to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival." What a waste of money just to appease the public, she could have easily been transported by the ambulance. It reminded us of a story about a couple of policemen at the end of their beat finding a dead body by the side of the road. If they had taken it back to the station there would have been a lot of paperwork to fill out, and they had had a long day and were tired so they just rolled it over to the other side of the road which was not in their territory. A short time later as they drove past that spot on their way to knock off they saw the body back where it had started. presumably the other policemen had rolled it back again! Not sure if that one is true, but it was told as a true story.
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