DAY 35 - 15.7.2006

Our next stop, Annecy, was behind the Swiss border, but not far away. We drove there in about half an hour. Annecy has a population of 50 000 and it's located in the French Alps. The city has a long history which explains it's narrow streets and old houses and castles. Two French girls from my university had recommended the place for us.

After parking our car we noticed that there was a market place two blocks from our car. We went to get the morning fruits from there. We bought nectarines from there. Actually we have eaten those quite a lot these weeks. They're just so tasty and cheap:) We continued to the tourist office. When I asked what places are worth to visit, the lady there gave me a walking tour map. You could see that the city is visited very often as they have these kinds of guides to give away. It just makes our search for sights a lot easier.

We made the suggested walking tours around the old town and along the lake. The scenery was very nice. The city reminded me about St. Emilion as they both look like medieval cities with castles and walls.

Like our visited cities in Swizerland, Annecy also is built next to a mountain lake. But it's beach beat it's Swiss opponents easily. The water was amazingly bright and 50 meters from the waterline you could still see the sand in the bottom of the lake. We had seen these pedal boats before and now we just couldn't resist them. We rented a 5-passenger pedal boat for an hour. It was unbelievably relaxing. We just lyed on the little boat and jumped to water whenever it became too hot to under the sun.

After our time was up we went to this normal beach and continued our relaxation there. After Annecy we would have once again quite hectic schedule and long drives. Anyways, I recommend Annecy to everyone as it's such a beautiful and unique city. What are you waiting for? Go book the flights NOW!:)

After Annecy we were going to Nice. We had to options: choose the motorway with longer distance and expensive road tolls, or the small roads with shorter distance and unpredictable roads. We chose the small roads as they seemed cheaper. The first part of the trip was good as the roads were good and nature offered us a nice show as the nearby mountains had thick clouds and lots of flashlights. But unfortunately when the smaller roads started, we turned to those mountains and now the rain was on us and road went along mountains making the average speed low. After 50 kilometres of struggling, the roads became better and our faces turned to happy faces again:) At 11 pm we pulled over, ate something and went to sleep.