France: Crest Day 2 & 3 - Annecy & Chamonix

We left Crest around 8 a.m. to meet Christian in Annecy after he made a delivery for his work.  The drive was about 2 hours and was very interesting - the landscape changed dramatically and wonderfully as we went into the more mountainous area  around Annecy. 

Annecy is beautiful.  We met Christian at Annecy Castle or Chateau Annecy, restored to be the Art and History Conservatory of Annecy.  The view from the Castle was very nice. 


We walked around the city and hunted for lunch.  The city has many canals and a number of street performers. 

The sausage shops are fascinating - for the eyes and the nose.   




We toured the Castle and then checked into our hotel for a nap before going sightseeing and then to Delphine's apartment for dinner.  Delphine is Edwige's god-daughter.

Annecy is on one end of Lake Annecy.  Christian drove us to the other end of the lake before we drove to dinner.  What a gorgeous lake!  And hidden amongst the houses on the lake is a part of Tufts University... what a surprise! 



The weather turned nasty and Christian drove in a very heavy rainstorm to the apartment where we met Delphine and she gave us a lovely dinner.  We chatted for a bit and then headed back to the hotel so we all could get up early, Delphine for her job and us for Chamonix.



Thursday dawned overcast and we were concerned we wouldn't see much up the mountain at Chamonix.  We figured we definitely wouldn't see Mont Blanc - not seeing it is the norm we had heard. It tried to break through. 






The town is really cute, like many of the ski towns in Colorado such as Breckenridge. 

We walked the town and the weather seemed to clear a bit so we took the tram / railway up to the Mer de Glace.  The glacier has receded an incredible amount since 1990.  Since 2003 the glacier is losing ice at an increasing speed.  The loss of that much of the glacier made Christian and Edwige sad.




There are still ice caves, we took a cable car down, trekked down the "walkway", and we walked through.  That was spectacular. 

 
We hiked back up - seemed longer going back up, had a beer at the station, and caught the tram back down to Chamonix.  We had lunch and headed back to Annecy and Crest... discovering too far into the journey that we left our binoculars at the restaurant.