Lac d'Annecy

We have moved on to France now and we have spent four very nice days in the area around Lac d'Annecy (Lake Annecy). Annecy itself is a beautiful little town with canals, narrow alleyways, bridges with flowers on them, lots of playgrounds and a park right by the lake. An amazing two-way cycle 'road' runs along the entire western shore of the lake (and carries on south for another 10kms or so) and there are mountains with sheer rock faces towering over the eastern shore. There are also giant meringues to be sampled. It's a very nice area.

The first night we spent on a carpark together with lots of other campervans, despite a sign saying no camping. We couldn't quite understand the text of the sign, but were pretty sure camping wasn't allowed given the campervan picture with a cross through it. However, we thought that the town must tolerate campervans, otherwise there wouldn't be 15 or so campervans parked there. The carpark was right by the lake. In the morning I went for a run along the lake. For the rest of the day Lindsay went for a bike ride, while Yana and I explored the centre of the town. We did some sightseeing and went to two different playgounds. Afterwards we relaxed in the park.

The next couple of nights we spent in a legitimate parking spot, which wasn't as close to the lake though. Because the second day was rainy, we went out for lunch and then spent the rest of the day in an indoor swimming pool. Yana loved playing around in the water and Lindsay and I took turns swimming lengths. Lindsay had to buy some speedos from a vending machine, because shorts weren't allowed.

On the Sunday we went for a walk on the eastern side of the lake. We followed the markers to a mountain, but even though we were climbing up at a continuous rate, we were struggling to get a view. We knew there was an amazing view, but it was covered by all the trees. Finally we found a spot, from which we could see down to the lake. we didn't make it to the top of the mountain though, as we had no idea how long it would have taken us.

Because we liked Annecy so much, we decided to spend another day there, exploring the town centre and relaxing by the lake. We biked into town along the lake from where we were staying and then spent the day in town. It was beautiful and sunny, and we were almost tempted to stay on for another day.

Now we are on our way to the Provence, eager to find out what kinds of places we will discover here.

Beautiful Switzerland

So after a long pause, I check our blog again to see that Yana has cheekily hacked my
password and added herself as an admin on the blog... That earned her a month computer ban.

In other news, we are now (and have been for the last 4 days) by Lake Geneva in Switzerland where we have found a rather pleasant campingground with a beach nearby and the neccesities of modern living - power and internet access ;-)Kerstin has been using this to make some serious progress on her Information Design assignment while Lindsay and Yana have been making sure nobody causes any problems on the beach.














Before coming here, we spent our time in the following way:

We visited our friends Julian and Jana in Freiburg and organised a survey that was testing the correlation between price and taste of 10 different pinot noir wines. Julian invited some work mates of his and we all sampled the wines (without knowing which was being tasted)that ranged from €1,50 to €16. There was a slightly positive correlation between taste and price, but some people had pretty random results. Most of us realised that the wines started tasting better, the more we had.

We did several walks in the Berner Oberland (or Jungfrau) region of Switzerland, making use of the incredibly nice, sunny weather. We stayed a couple of nights in Interlaken and a couple of nights in a small place in the Lauterbrunnen valley, called Stechelberg. Our walks took us from Stechelberg to Lauterbrunnen, from Stechelberg to Gimmelwald and Mürren, and from Grindelwald up the hill to no particular destination. Yana was such a great companion, either sleeping or being a quiet little angel in the backpack. We did make her do her share too though: she had to crawl parts of the way, especially up steps, which she loves to do (crawl, because she still can't be bothered walking).



































On our way to lake Geneva we found two less touristy, but still really nice places: Saanen and Leysin. In Saanen we stopped off for a day to do a bike-ride to the neighbouring town of Gstaad and in Leysin we spent two nights on the carpark of an sports complex. From Leysin we did a walk up to a mountain called Berneuse and took the cable car down. It was quite a long way, rather steep and hot, but we had amazing views and Yana behaved really well again.