20. Aix-les-Bains, Chambéry, & Protests, October 6
Putting bicycling on the back burner, we took advantage of a perfect day and set out to explore Lac du Bourget, and nearby Aix-les-Bains. Pretty drive, and fun to have no agenda,
but to see what we can see.
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| The French poet, Lamartine, visited here in the 1800's I believe and wrote "The Lake" |
First stop was Le Grand Port, which bills itself as the Riviera of the Alps…a little grandiose in our opinion! Sure, there’s supposedly a Casino in the center of town, and there are boats on the water here, and small hotels and restaurants/coffee shops for a couple of blocks around, but…..
It’s a beautiful lakefront port, lots of small fishing boats and some larger craft for social use. We enjoyed sitting and talking in the sights of the port and mountains across the lake.Tres tranquil!
What’s next? Drive into the center of Aix-les-Bains, of course, and see if we can find the famous Spa there. Driving was scenic for a short while, then miserable on the tight narrow streets with our too-large SUV. NO PARKING was available anywhere, which is always the curse of urban driving here. We found the Spa, which had NO CHARACTER at all, just a big old hospital-looking building that was impossible to visit inside ‘cause we couldn’t park the car after a search for several blocks.
What a disappointment, as we’d expected something at least as cool as the baths at Aix-les-Thermes we visited last summer with cousin Paulita and Earl in the Pyrenees mountains above Quillan. “Screw this”, we said, and set out for Centre Ville, the old town center. Miserable we were, and successful we were not! There were many narrow streets, nothing interesting (to us) to see, and miserable driving. “Screw this”, we said again, and set out for Chambéry.
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| See, they're spouting water from their trunks today! |
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| Professional high school, students wearing coat and tie uniforms had just |
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| pretty impressive curriculum, described on the stone plaque on the left of the photo |
We visited Chambéry a couple of weeks ago with our French class, with a fast-moving walk-through tour led by our professors, and a wonderful lunch. This time we wanted to explore some more. What a beautiful town, in scale, architecture, and “vibe”. We easily found public parking, walked into the Centre Ville, past the huge majestic Palais du Justice and its wide-open front plaza. Our goal was to find the ELEPHANT fountain we saw on our last visit…so we did! This time, the elephant fountain was working, and all four elephants were spouting water from their trunks as they held up the tall obelisk and statute. Sweet - this would be our landmark to navigate by as we walked around random streets exploring.
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| resting from the stress of exploring! |
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| John's Plat du Jour |
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| Lynn's Chicken Ceasar Salad was equally perfect |
We eventually got hungry, as always, so searched out the restaurant we’d visited with our class. “Les Halles” was our target, we found it, and the late lunch was superb. I got the plat du jour, “Paleron Braisē, which turned out to be the most perfect beef pot roast I ever had! Lynn was equally stoked with her Ceasar Salad. Service was impeccable, we sat, relaxed, and watched passersby for a couple of hours. Magnifique!
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| We found some more new sights, and ran across a couple of cool things we remembered from our earlier tour. Tres nice to have no crowds (this must not be a classic tourist town), wide main streets with no cars, tiny ancient narrow alley-esque streets with thriving businesses still in place. This is our favorite town of this trip! |
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| tail-end of the demonstration, spreading wayyy out in the plaza a block ahead |
On the way back to our car, we saw a HUGE demonstration a few blocks away. It was so large that we were able to photo the final participants, while the hundreds of others already past us seemed to mass in the Palais du Justice plaza. Student protests are going on all over France right now, with some turning violent from what we’ve read. This demonstration was loud and huge, but no abhorrent behavior by participants or their police escorts.
We drove home without incident, and napped a bit, then headed out for a small drink along the Annecy canals. We found some sights we'd not seen before. While chilling with a kir and a beer, Jane, from our French class, came by and reported on her just-finished Paraglider ride from Taillories, above Lake Annecy. Her photo of Para-flying didn't inspire confidence...She’s a ski instructor in Whistler, British Columbia, and VERY safety minded. I believe her final verdict for ME was, “NO”, so voila, I’m convinced to stay on the ground as much as possible!
Annecy Demonstration video
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h5A7P1iI1Ls
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| CGT Union has recently joined the student protests around France. Red vest. |
Last big deal of today: A HUGE demonstration involving Student issues joined by labor union CGT, took place in Annecy today as we were arriving back in town. Enormous crowd, chanting and waving hundreds of signs. They eventually made it to our hotel, so I went down to photo/video a bit of the demonstration. WOW, they were escorted by police, well-behaved, no anger or violence in sight. But they were VOCAL. The crowd had to number almost a thousand by the time they all passed us, on their way to a gathering down several blocks to the Lake. We understand these demonstrations are going on with huge participation numbers all over France. I'll give a YouTube link to the video. It is only a minute long, but will give you an idea of the situation.
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