20 years ago today – Day 76

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Saturday, May 18th – car trip to Annecy

Our bedroom window in the guest house is shuttered closed so no light can get in. I can’t see what time it is. Mike is still asleep, as usual. I throw on a T-shirt and my jeans and make it out the cabin door. It is apparently a better day than yesterday. Christian, Gerard and Thierry are already seated on the living room with their coffees. Gerard slices some bread and cheese and we begin a ‘petit dejeuner’ before Mike comes in.

This gives me the chance to ask questions and have them answered slowly so that I can understand them. Mike and Thierry go shopping for lunch while Christian and I do last night’s dishes. Lunch, when it is ready, takes an hour and a half and is done over several small courses again. What a luxurious way to eat, but I cannot imagine profit-oriented Torontonians taking this much time to eat.


After lunch, all five of us pile into Gerard’s car and drive south to Annecy, Christian squeezed in between Mike and I in the back seat. I have seen Annecy on my map of the Haute Savoie, but know nothing about it. It turns out to be a wealthy tourist town at the north end of Lake Annecy, about 30 km south-east of Roche. The river is diverted through the town to look like gentle-flowing canals. It is known as the Amsterdam of the Alps. We promenade and window-shop for three hours. I buy Gerard a CD of Gino Vanelli, who he has never heard of. He likes it though, once he has heard it.

In the evening, back at Gerard’s, we have another casual meal over two hours, with lots of conversation. I am doing a bit better at following their French this evening, but it isn’t easy. I learn we have been invited to dinner tomorrow night by friends of Gerard and Thierry’s, a gay couple who live in a small mountain village. This sounds exciting, just the chance to be right in the mountains. This means we will be staying here a third night, which I don’t mind. I just wish I could understand more French and be more part of the group.


PHOTO 1: Annecy, the Venice of the Alps
PHOTO 2: Lake Annecy
PHOTO 3: Mike, Thierry, Gerard, Christian
PHOTO 4: des petits fleurs, Thierry, Christian & Mike