Aventure d'Annecy à Genève - en Vélo

So when we were in Autrans for the training, Flor, my new Argentine friend from the States, asked me if I wanted to bike to Geneva, Switzerland in the upcoming week.  I thought, 'haha sure that'd be crazy, but fun! if it even happens...' Here's the thing about Flor: she's legit.  She wants to do something like that and then sticks to it through the end! Here's the story:

As I described in plenty of detail in the last post, I came to Annecy on Friday the 21st of October, and then we were gonna leave for Geneva the following Monday.  Well, we did.  After getting everything we needed for the next couple days, we headed out!  We didn't get very far before we stopped for the first time.  Mostly because we needed a bike map to figure out where the heck we were going, because really we didn't know.  No one at the office de tourisme in Annecy could help us, so we went to get food for when we would stop for lunch.

After loading up Flor's bike basket with goodies, we started pedaling towards where we thought we were being pointed by bike signs in the city.  Turns out that was for a super hard route, as we discovered after we stopped and asked a guy on the side of the road for directions.  He pointed us towards another road, where we found some police on the side of the road and decided to ask them for help as well.  They gave us some more directions, and then we finally got a good ten minutes on the road...before we got stuck again.

iFound an apple in the street that
had fallen off a tree close by. so good.

Luckily, Flor, Adriana, and I were all wearing Argentina apparel, because this car driving past us saw the jerseys and pulled over to talk to the girls.  I don't speak Spanish, unfortunately, so I just sat there and smiled when they all laughed. They could've been making fun of me and I would've been laughing at myself.  Oh well!  Eventually they left and Flor clued me in:  they were immigrants from Argentina who hated the government, so they both moved to France and had been there for five years.  Woah.  Apparently we were headed in the right direction, but we needed to cross a bridge or we'd end up in the middle of nowhere.  Thank goodness for friendly neighbors!

We found the bridge, no signs attached, and continued on our way for another ten minutes.  Up until then we had been on two-lane, bike friendly roads. Now we came up on a really busy two-lane road that had nothing for a shoulder, but we saddled up and went for it anyway.  We hit the first of many ascents, but finally we knew where we were going, sort of.  We stumbled across a bike route sign and followed it the wrong way for a little while, talked with a post man who pointed us back to the right place, and found the sign we needed and followed that way instead.

It's funny, not far from where the sign pointed us we passed through Genéva!  It was literally a 25 second bike ride from the beginning of the little town to the exit sign.  Fun fact: I realized that's why "Geneva" in French is actually Genève, and not Genéva!

Anyway, we biked through a lot of little towns and villages like that, up and down hills, through little fields and meadows, and it's just impossible to show how beautiful it was.  Also, I didn't really take any pictures because I was biking the whole time!  Turns out the 7-speed was just about perfect.  I rode probably most of the trip in less than fifth gear because of all the climbs.  It was a great work out!

We stopped for lunch in this little town, Cercier, where the map showed a fork, one way going towards Geneva, the other back towards Annecy.  After we were well rested and filled, we took off to Geneva again.  Or so we thought.

I got ahead of the girls and came to this round about where nothing pointed towards any of the cities we were looking for on our bike map.  We had to flag down three different cars before we finally realized we had gone in the wrong direction about 20 minutes.  After backtracking to Cercier, we asked again for directions, and we found the right way.

P.S. Every time I say "we asked for directions," 95% of the time it was Flor.  I was always like, "come on, we'll figure it out on the way!" and then she would just ask the next person anyway, and most of the time she saved us from going the wrong way.  Turns out I'm awful with directions, and for some reason I feel like I'm bothering everyone by asking for directions, although, thanks to Flor, I'm pretty much over that by now.

longest bench in Europe!

So.  We rode downhill to this city, which was super nice until we had to bike back up.  It felt like a never-ending hill of death and despair.  I was standing up in first gear huffing and puffing, it was awful.  Finally we got to a flat part, and then we had to climb again.  After probably an hour of this, we finally got to go flat for a while.  We decided that, because it was starting to get late, that we would aim for a city, Vulbens, on the map that was only an hour or two from Geneva and then just stay the night there.

For 20€ per person, it was a pretty great deal.  Two full beds and then my bed, with a bathroom.  Plus we slept in until 11 the next morning and didn't leave until after noon.  That night we rode out maybe 10 minutes to the nearest grocery store and bought some stuffs for dinner and breakfast, and then we came back, ate and showered, and tucked ourselves in for the night.

entrance to the library in
Geneva! pretty sweet.

Like I said, we didn't leave till about noon the next day.  My legs were dead starting from the first pedal away from the hotel.  Unfortunately we still had a long aways ahead, so I bucked up and we continued on our journey.  We were in Switzerland not too long after we left Vulbens, but there wasn't really a welcome sign or anything.  It took us a flag in the yard of someone's house and several license plates to realize we had crossed borders.  No passport check, no visa scans, no nothing! Going country to country here is as smooth as a babies bottom.  Since I'm 21 now, can I still say that without sounding like a pedophile...?

The Swiss road to Geneva was so much easier to follow than it was in France,  we were there in no time!  The weather was nice for the first five minutes we were there, and then it started raining.  After a couple salami sandwiches in front of the tourist center (we needed maps of the city) Adriana and I split up from Flor so she could go to the UN and we could walk around and check out the sites in the older part of town.  There were a lot of things I wanted to take pictures of, but wasn't able to because of the blasted rain.  It's ok though, we're gonna do it again when the weather is warmer, so probably not until April!

 iThink we got there around 1:30, and it was raining all the way until like 5:30, which was when we met up at the UN to leave.  An hour later we had all walked to the nearest train station and gotten in line to ask about departure times to Annecy and to ask about our bikes. We figured out that there was a train that let's you bring your bikes on for free as long as there's space, but the station was a ways away and we needed to catch the next train at 7:30. We left in a hurry, because we weren't exactly sure how to get there and we didn't have a whole lot of time.

The rush out of the train station was a big mistake.  Flor and I lost Adriana.  One second I was waving to her from across the street, and the next she had disappeared behind a bus.  I went and looked for her, only to find two guys fighting over a handful of money and a bunch of scattered coins on the ground.

Adriana wasn't picking up her phone, but we decided that she was smart enough to use the map she had to get to the train station, so we would try to meet her there before the train left.  If not before the train came, obviously we would just wait there until she got there.

We got a text when we were right at the station that she had made it there, so we met her out front.  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  The train we were looking for had already left, so we waited half an hour for the next one to show up, got on and connected at Aix-les-Bains towards Annecy.

The next morning, I packed everything and went into town with Flor to keep her company while she took care of some administrative stuff.  We ate at a McDonald's (second time), went further out of town, and eventually came back to meet Emily so they could talk to someone at Orange (the TV/phone/internet company).  I walked around an outdoors/sport store and saw a bunch of stuff I would've loved to buy, but for some reason making purchases is like a fine line between the decision between life and death for me.  So I walked out like 30 minutes later empty-handed.

Emily and Flor led me to the train station so I could buy a train pass and return my bike, and then I said bye to Flor and Emily and I walked around to look for something to drink.  We got a liter of fruit juice and sat in this nice park for a little while before we decided we were also hungry, so we got up and looked for an open restaurant.  Fun fact:  I would say most French restaurants and cafés don't serve lunch after like 1 p.m. It's crazy sauce! We found a sandwich place that was still open, so we ate there.  Why didn't I take a picture? No idea.  It was delicious.  I was probably too busy obsessing over the taste to think about my camera.

Emily hung out with me at the train station as I bought my ticket and waited for my train, and then we said goodbye and I got on board and headed to Lyon.  Just one transfer onto a bus and I was on my way back to Davézieux!  It was an amazing trip.  I can't wait to go back!  I'm currently in the works of planning a trip to Rome next week, but we'll see how that pans out...until then! Ciao Ciao!