Went to Lake Annecy in France, where you're never far from a great cake, which makes France a great country. That and the coffee.
France being notorious for its cuisine, we dined a few times at the Turkish takeaway in town. Delicious. Not that we're cheap or anything. Being close to Switzerland, the local Carrefour supermarket stocked almost an aisle's worth of Lindt, including Roasted Sesame and Lime Intense, which we'd never seen before. We were amazed and started planning to live in France right away, enquiring how much it would cost to pitch tents in that aisle.
Watched a lot of French TV. Upon returning, I happened to pick up JG Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition and read in one of his notes that he always hired a TV when in France and boosted the volume, even though he didn't understand the language. I too became transfixed some nights listening to mouths forming words which I did not understand....staring at the faces...not even trying to work out what they were talking about.
We watched DVDs, such as this one...
We rode 'round to the East side of the lake on crappy bikes that came with the apartment, stopping for drinks, of course...
...then travelled further to Talloires, entered via an extremely steep zig-zag road heading down in our direction. When at the bottom, it struck us that we could no way cycle back up and were committed to going all the way, unless we could get a cab big enough to take bikes (we tried) or the friend of the girl at the bar who we told our sorry story to (we're too old/unfit for that hill - help!) would take us back - he couldn't. So we rode on, despite having been warned before that the road was 'dangerous' towards the more remote eastern end. But a French cyclist reassured us that it wasn't. So we went and it was fine. Around there, the drivers are used to cyclists and know how to deal with them.
Listened to Jazz24. I recommend it if you can take occasional lapses into the mediocre contemporary; mostly it plays classic Modern from bop to Blue Note. Nothing to scare the horses of course, unless in the wee small hours they let rip with loads of Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler, which seems unlikely. Even Ahmad Jamal crops up, reminding you that you're listening to Jazz24. There's nothing like it in the UK so it was a novelty. Oh, and there are no ads.
Finally, the obligatory mountain shot...nice, innit?
Been to Talloires twice. Very pretty, laid back place. Annecy is great for a bit more bustle with your river water views. Never did the cycling thing, just walking and boats. And swimming in the lake at night, which was incredibly restful.
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