A Day in Annecy

Before my wife bought a car, about 6 years ago, we used to have lots of arguments about it.  I don’t like cars,  it’s probably my least favorite form of transportation,   and one of the things that drew me to Europe, to Prague in particular, was that it was possible to live there without having one.

Annecy, a well planned city

They are expensive to  buy and that’s only  the beginning.  Gas, insurance, breakdowns, the risk of accident, I  had a list of reasons a mile long why we shouldn’t get a car.  But, she  wanted a car, so she bought a car.

Today, we wanted to get out of Geneva, partly to avoid paying all day parking  but also just to do something interesting for the day, so we went to Annecy, in France.  It’s less than an hour drive, and on the way, we found this really cool bridge.  Next to the road bridge, there was a pedestrian bridge, over a steep, but very heavily  wooded gorge.  It was safe, there were barriers on both sides, but I get weird around heights, queasy in the stomach, so when Sam pointed out to me that you could look straight down between the wooden slats and see the stream at the bottom, several hundred meters straight down, it gave me a bit of a jolt.

We found free parking in Annecy, although it was a tight squeeze, and walked across the street to the lake and went for a swim.  (I knew we were truly in France when I saw the toilet.  Yup, a squatter.)    Then we walked into town.  It’s kind of an amazing place, actually.  They’ve taken great advantage of the little river coming out at the bottom of the lake, channeled in into a series of canals and scenic falls and pools, with plenty of ducks and swans swimming around, little bridges going across, and plenty  of shops and restaurants to keep the tourists occupied.  We stopped at a bakery, got some sandwiches and some desserts, took them to a playground and had a nice lunch, then started walking back to the car.  We had planned to be back at 6 to have dinner at 7 and go see my brother and nephew’s band rehearse at 8.

We got out of Annecy in plenty of time, but the 1st  argument happened right as we exited the parking lot when I pointed out that a left turn was illegal, at least if I was reading the sign correctly, my French is a bit rusty.  After that there was no place to turn around and the traffic going by us in the other direction was a jam several kilometers long, so we headed up alongside the lake.  We wound up driving right around the lake, almost back down to Annecy and then several miles south of where we should have been before we got on the freeway, and got home at almost 8.

We couldn’t have done the trip without the car, but everybody being there with their cars turned an otherwise lovely  day into  a  nightmarish experience.  I still think the world would be a better place without them.