We are on Day 36 of our current trip, but only on Day 21 for the planned activities for this trip, so we are way behind schedule. We have decided to just enjoy the journey and we feel OK if we only get through a portion of what we had planned. We have been in Annecy canton for 9 days now as we are only moving 9-10 miles every few days. The weather has been variable with periods of sun but unfortunately longer periods of rain.  The locals have told us this is the wettest and coldest Spring they have had in decades. So, in addition to the many other responsibilities Tony has during our van adventures, he has now taken on the role of meteorologist. We have 3 different weather apps loaded on our phones and none of them report the same weather forecast and also their weather forecast changes hour to hour. The app could indicate 3% chance of rain in the next 4 hours, so we head out to explore only for it to downpour 10 minutes later and also the visa versa when there is 100% chance of rain but the sky remains completely sunny for hours. Tony has been a quick study in meteorology and now he can predict the weather better than any of the apps just by looking at the sky, recent temperature fluctuations and weather radar.

Evian, France: After leaving Switzerland, we headed to Evian, France. We set up to camp at a lovely older, small family-run campground on the outskirts of town only to realize that we had left our electrical adapter back in Geneva at our last campground. Andre, the campground owner, and several of the long-term residents at the campground all scrambled to find us a spare adapter to use during our stay. I know the stereotype is that French people are rude and unfriendly, but this is another personal example of the exact opposite in our experience. While in Evian we jumped on our Bromptons and headed off to follow the “Raindrop Tour” of the city. The highlights were visiting the Cachat Springs Point of Emergence which has a free-flowing Evian water spring and tap.  With bottles and bellies full of gloriously crisp and cool Evian water, we hopped on the funicular railway to the top of the hillside for lovely views of Lake Geneva. With storm clouds approaching and Tony predicting rain, we quickly finished our tour of Evian with a final stop at the small, but well-done Japanese Gardens. By the time we made it back to the van, the weather had shifted again and sunny skies were upon us. Tony headed back out with more empty bottles on his road bike for some more water from the Evian spring.

Bonneville, France: We only drove a short distance the next day to Bonneville, France where we stayed in one of our least favorite campsites to date. The location was nice as it was close to a small village with cool suspension bridges and it had lovely views of the mountains; however, most of the actual campsites were deep mud, very sloped and a portion of the campground had been taken over by squatters. Not our jam, so we only stayed 1 night.

Our biggest obstacle in France is the language barrier since we don’t speak French…or German…or really any language other than English. This makes us feel a tad bit isolated since we can’t have any meaningful conversations with people although our experience is most people do speak some English. We always start with bonjour and then ask (in horrible French) if the person speaks English. In the major cities, most people speak some (and pretty decent) English, but in the countryside, we have found that is not the case especially in small grocery stores and local shops. We do use Google Translate when all else fails and so far we have always been able to communicate our basic needs, but sometimes the finer details are lost in translation. Commonly the French speakers will say they don’t speak very good English and then proceed to have an entire conversation with us. For example, when Tony picked up our new Bromptons in Paris, the owner of the shop wanted to provide some training and orientation for the bikes.  He told Tony he could only speak “a little” English but after a few minutes his English was as good as any person in the US and if it wasn’t for the accent, he would have forgotten English wasn’t his primary language.

Mont Salève, France: Our next stop returned us fairly close to Geneva, but while still technically in France. We drove to Mont Salève and took the telepherique (cable car) up 660 meters. The cable car stations had just re-opened last year after being closed for several years and now the top station has a lovely museum and several restaurants. We watched the paragliders taking off from the hilltop while we ate our picnic lunch before heading out on a 7-mile panoramic ridge hike. The ridge hike was a bit more than a typical “moderate” hike we do as it not only involved lots of elevation but also involved walking along very narrow single-track pathway covered in rocks, tree roots and wet and spongy recently fallen tree debris with sheer drop-offs going down hundreds of feet just inches from the edge of the trail. This was not a trail for people afraid of heights.  The weather was thankfully quite cool, and the rain stayed at bay during the hike. The trail conditions and difficulty were all worth it for the views! Since this was a panoramic loop trail we had views of Lake Geneva from the beginning of our hike but even more glorious views of the snow-capped Alps from the end of our hike. All of the research we did prior to this trip stated that the French people are very private and do not greet strangers on the streets or trails with “Hello” as is typical in the US; however, we have found this to be completely false. Almost every hiker we pass on the trail “bonjour’s” us before we “bonjour” them.  Very, very few hikers walk by without somehow greeting us first, so I not sure why all of the travel books have this wrong. Our AllTrails hiking app slightly misled us and took us (unknowingly at the time) right across private property where we encountered who we presumed was the owner and her adorable Boxer, Bruno. Thankfully this is France and not America, otherwise we might have been met with a gun in our face versus just a “it’s OK” hand gesture.

La Balme-de-Sillingy, France: Tony found us an aire to park at in La Balme-de-Sillingy, France as the weather was turning stormy again with a massive thunderstorm headed in our direction. This aire was just a glorified parking lot near the city center but was on gravel and had all of the services we needed and only cost 10 Euro/night. We ended up staying for 2 nights due to the weather. Tony worked in 2 shortish bike rides in between the storms, we walked to a nearby grocery store for provisioning, I did some food prep and cooking and we hunkered down while watching movies and Netflix while just re-charging our own body batteries. At our departure, we spied a new car wash which not only had a bay for large vehicles but had elevated stairs to wash the top of our van, too. I can’t tell you how happy this made me to get all of the sap and bird poo off the top of Chickpea.

One thing I learned about Tony on this trip is that he has a scarcity mentality when it comes to groceries. I am not sure if this originated out of the pandemic or some type of childhood trauma, but he always wants a fully stocked refrigerator and pantry and starts to get a bit “nutty” when supplies dwindle. At home in the US, I have a working pantry and also a back-up/pandemic pantry with usually 1-2 back-ups of every item in my working pantry. In our small van with very limited storage, this just isn’t an option. I barely have enough space for a single item and absolutely no back-ups which means we are at the grocery store almost daily. Daily grocery shopping is common here and there are a plethora of stores so it is not a big deal, but Tony’s need for fully stocked supplies is something I did not know about my husband until now and we have been together for almost 30 years.

One of my favorite activities is to sit and watch people. Watch people as they go about their daily lives whether it is shopping, doing errands or just going about their business. I especially enjoy watching people check in and out of the automated campsites we have been visiting along with watching people trying to locate and park their motorhome in a specific campsite. Tony just laughs as I tell him, here comes another one and then for the next 5 minutes, a person stands in front of the automated machine (sometimes in the rain) trying to pay and get a ticket so the gate opens. Sometimes a 2^nd person comes out and tries to help (that usually doesn’t help at all), sometimes a 2^nd person comes and just offers morale support or an umbrella and sometimes the 1^st person just gets frustrated and drives away. We witnessed one person recently who was so frustrated with the automated machine that he called the municipal police to help him with it so now there was a camper AND a police officer trying (still unsuccessfully) to get the machine to work.  Why this brings me such enjoyment I do not know, but it does.

A few campground observations we have made on this European trip include that most of the people wash their dirty  dishes at the community sink. After each meal the women (very rarely a man) carry a large plastic basin of dirty dishes down to the community sink and wash and dry the dishes before loading them back in their basin and going back to their motorhome. I am a bit baffled by this exercise as all of these motorhomes have hot water and waste tanks. What am I missing? Also, recycling is a way of life here. There are recycling bins everywhere and it seems everyone recycles all of the time. There seem to be special glass recycle bins at central collection points (typically in grocery store parking lots) and people bring bags and bags of glass bottles to recycle at one time. In the bit of research we did, about 80% of the plastic can truly be recycled here in France. The big controversy is over the polystyrene yogurt “pots” that are generally not recyclable, but the manufacturers have been successfully able to keep them in place. I need to figure out how European countries are able to actually recycle so much of their “recyclables” while in the US much of it actually ends up in the landfill even though it is deposited in the recycle bin, especially glass, as we don’t have the right facilities or technology in place to manage it. Maybe it is the packaging over here that is made different and actually more recyclable to start with? Not sure, more research is needed but they seem to be doing recycling right and as a country (US) we can certainly learn from them.

Annecy, France: We drove another 10 miles to Annecy located on the banks of the pristine Lake Annecy. Tony was somehow able to score us a campsite even though the sign outside read full. I am really not sure how he does this. This specific campground was the closest to the city of Annecy itself, but it was not our favorite campground. The pitches (campsites) were teeny, tiny, there were lots of low-hanging tree branches and the spaces required us to parallel park our motorhome in between 2 large trees. We squeezed into a tight spot for the next 2 days, but it was too crowded, with too many kids and too wet for our liking. It also did not have any views and just had a weird energy about it. While at the campground we followed a decent free audio tour of the city distributed by the tourist office, picked up some packages from an Amazon locker and relaxed in a lovely city park on the banks of Lake Annecy. Tony was able to complete 2 separate road bike trips up into the mountains with one ride including a 10-mile climb which ascended over 4000 feet.

Lake Annecy, France: We decided to stay in the general area a few more days, but moved to a lovely newer aire (https://hirondelle-du-lac.fr/) on the south side of Lake Annecy which was adjacent to an organic farm and restaurant. This new aire was very nice with gorgeous views of the mountains. The weather had again turned gray, foggy and rainy but we managed to get in a few walks, a Brompton ride and Tony got in 3 more road bike rides in. There are 35 km of cycling paths here and we peddled quite a bit of them on our Bromptons. The path is one of the oldest bike paths in France and follows the former railway tracks connecting Annecy and Albertville. There are restaurants, cafes and bike shops all along the route. This area is also known for paragliding and we could watch from our campsite literally dozens of people jumping off the cliffs with colorful parachutes keeping them aloft all day starting at 7 AM and continuing until dusk.  At times, there were 2 dozen parachutes above us and it was very fun to watch as the landing zone was only about 2 km from us but in the case of 1 jumper literally in the field across the street from us (oops!). We also took a 90-minute yoga class at the organic farm next door with 6 other yogis, mostly locals. Tony and I agree this was probably one of the best yoga classes we have ever gone to and being held on an outdoor platform next to a beautiful pond didn’t hurt either. During our stay, the MaXi Race and European Outdoor Championships were occurring and the course was going right by our campsite. We didn’t realize this was a big deal at the time, but hundreds of buff runners with running sticks and backpacks trudged past us starting at daybreak. After some research, we learned the distances vary from 17km to 117 km and the route goes up into the mountains around Lake Annecy and requires 7500 meters of elevation change for the longest distance. It is a big deal! We really, really enjoyed this part of Lake Annecy and we would definitely come back again.

Tony states he feels safer riding his bike in France and Switzerland on their narrow roads without any type of bike lane than he does riding in the US on roads with dedicated bike lanes. The reason is cars here treat him like another motorist and pass only when no other cars are coming.  The motorists seem more tolerant and it may be they themselves use a bicycle for either recreation or transportation given the sheer numbers of bikes in France.  

The roads in France and Switzerland are anything but straight. I call it “active” driving as there is always a speed bump, roundabout, curve, or another object to slow us down. Our Google directions are a series of go 0.2, 0.9, 1.4 miles (yes, we are still using miles on our Google maps 😊) and these types of instructions persist the entire length of our journey. Some of the roundabouts will have 4 or 5 different exit points. We have come up with a system where we pretend the roundabout is a clock (e.g. enter at 6 o’clock and exit at 9 o’clock or sometimes on a complex round-about enter at 6 o’clock and exit at 2:30). We are still careful to match road signs as some roads are marked with small distinguishing letters (for example 1209 vs 1209a) which are very different roads. We are getting better every day driving on the French roads and understanding their very unique system of signs which are not like anything we have seen before.  The one area which still gives us trouble is “priority roads”.  There are places where motorists can be making left hand turns onto busy roads and the person making the left-hand turn has priority over drivers going straight on their road. These roads seem to come out of nowhere and don’t seem to have anything to do with the size of the road, but they are marked well now that we know what to look for.  Another thing we like about France is speeding is considered speeding even when you are just 1 km over the posted limit, so most people obey the speed limits. Unfortunately, the speed limits literally change every few minutes so we are constantly speeding up or slowing down from 30, 50, and 80 kph over and over again.  Our new van has “sign reading” capabilities so when the speed changes we hear a ding noise. We hear a constant ding, ding, ding, but at least it keeps us going mostly the correct speed.

Onwards!

Up Next: Chamonix, France