The last of the real Col roads today 🙁 The main one being another popular route on the Tour De France, the Col du Granier which crosses the Chartreuse mountains and is located between Mont Granier and Mont Joigny. The road is lined with the greenest trees and at times we almost felt like we were in a jungle, in a good way! Very lush and fresh.

After stopping for a quick coffee and crepe avec sucre et citron in one of the Chartreuse towns (I’d like to think I don’t need to translate that?) we crossed through a couple of busier towns including Chambery and Grenoble – when I say busier towns they are more Torquay busy than London busy, so not really that busy at all to be honest although Grenoble did have a tram! At least compared to the quaint remote villages we have been staying in it was certainly different!

We finished today’s journey in Lake Annecy, known as the mirror of the alps, at a beautiful little hotel called Beau Site which had its own private sunbathing area and access to the lake, as well as tennis courts which we were excited about as we have been carrying our rackets and tennis gear around with us! Not just tennis courts though, there is a volleyball court, table tennis set, foozeball and games room – being keen competitors we decided to do a mini tournament, Luke and I vs Mum and Dad but some more on that tomorrow. We named ourselves after things we had come across on pour journey – Luke and I being team Marmot (the little prarie dog style animals running along the clifftops) and Mum and Dad were the donkey’s ears (after seeing this odd delicacy as a plat de jeur!)

In the mean time we took the time to enjoy the sunshine, popped a bottle of Champagne and used our unfinished Kir from Dijon to make Kir Royal sundowners on the balcony overlooking the lake.

We then headed down to the lake and Dad even decided to take a dip! As it is water from the glaciers I’m sure I need not explain how cold it was – even from dipping my toe in I got the gist it was bloomin’ freezing!

We are staying in Annecy for 2 nights so we had plenty more exploring to do tomorrow. So we headed down to dinner on the terrace at the hotel with a beautiful outlook over the lake, another place to be thankful for the alfresco bug spray!

After dinner we took each other on in the first round of games; pool in the library, foozeball and some old school connect 4. Team marmot (Luke and I) won connect 4 and the pool and Team Donkey’s Ears (Mum and Dad) won foozeball.

French sentence of the day:

Avez-vous un ballon de volleyball? (Do you have a ball for the volleyball?)

Lexie

xxx