Once you cross into French soil, you go through a toll gate where you take a cardboard ticket (much like in parking garages) then once you take your exit you go through another toll gate where you hand over your ticket and pay your toll. Roy and I didn't really plan ahead very well and forgot to take Euros with us but luckily the toll booth took credit card. Another difference with the motorways in Switzerland and France is the speed limit. The limit on motorways in Switzerland are a cruisy 120km/h whereas France is 130km/h (much the same as the rest of Europe) so we put Poh to the test. When we bought Poh, we made sure that we test drove her on the motorway before we decided to buy her and while she was pretty sluggish whilst getting up to speed, once she was there she didn't ride too badly. Before too long we were on the outskirts on Annecy searching for a fuel station (Poh's tank is pretty small and we didn't leave St-Maurice on a full tank). To our dismay there was a LOT of roadworks happening on the outskirts of the city and what seemed like a pretty poorly planned city at it's best, it was really quite frustrating trying to navigate - even with a TomTom to the centre of the city.
After quite a few laps of the maze of roads we finally made it to a parking garage right in the centre of the city. We were glad to finally find what we had come for, a really pretty city. There are canals with picturesque cafes and restaurants lining the banks with happy patrons sitting and enjoying the warm sun. One of the main attractions in Annecy is Palais de L'isle, a castle in the centre of the Thiou canal.
We wandered through the maze of tiny streets and despite it being a Sunday, most of the shops were open selling locally made souvenirs and produce. We also caught the end of the fresh produce markets. We oggled the many stalls of cheese, fruit and vegies and homemade nougat. We then remembered that neither of us had Euros so we went in search of a cash machine with the help of our trusty navigation system. Unfortunately once we had our Euros, the markets had finished and all that remained was trodden on fruits and vegetables that had dropped on the floor during the peak of the markets.
Our stomachs were in tune with each others and they both grumbled almost in harmony. It was lunch time. It's quite exciting crossing over the border for a meal because lets face it, Switzerland isn't very cheap (I've found myself thinking that CHF 20 for a main meal is quite cheap) and the variety and quality of food isn't all that magnificent so once we found a pizza restaurant that had whole pizzas for 10 Euros we were sold. It was a nice little, quiet pizza joint on the bank of a canal with a nice choice of pizzas. Roy ordered the vegetarian pizza and I ordered "La Mozza" (tomato and mozzarella cheese with a few assorted herbs). They came out quite quickly and Roy's, much to his dismay didn't have any cheese on it (what's a pizza without the cheese?) and mine... I think there was more cheese than anything else. So I was giving slices of pizza to Roy so he could pillage it of it's cheese to add to his vegie-filled pizza. Our tummy's grumbled no more.
After more wandering around the city admiring the sights we found a rather popular ice-cream shop and ordered a bit of dessert. I'm not really one that can pass down the opportunity to try new flavours of ice-cream. I had a small scoop of salted caramel ice-cream which I alternated spooning into my mouth and then Roy's as we continued wandering the banks of the canals.
We both then decided that we had seen enough of the city and walked back to the parking garage to find Poh. It was good timing on our behalf because as we drove out of the garage it started to rain. On our route back home we decided to drive around the other side of Lake Geneva through Thonon-les-Bains and Évian-les-Bains.
How cool! Looks like a movie set!
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