Holiday Adventures

As I mentioned in the last post, the girls had a holiday from school the last two weeks of October. Although it was definitely nice to have a break it sure did throw off our routine and made for a bit of a rough transition once school resumed again.  But we survived and enjoyed the family time.

Thought I'd share with you some of our day-trip adventures.  Since finances are tight at this point, we do have to make it another 9 months, we decided to stay close to home and explore Haute Savoie a bit.  That's the region of France we are living in.

Annecy
Despite the rain, we enjoyed a day trip to Annecy.  This beautiful town on Lac Annecy is about an hour away from us.  It's known for it's old town charm and winding canals.  I coupled business with pleasure as I had to get a chest x-ray to show that I don't have TB.  This is only one of several other things I've had to do in order for France to honor the Visa that I thought I completed in the US.  Ugh! More on this in a future post.

We had lunch at this sweet, little restaurant right on the canal.  Wood-fired pizza, salad, and....

That's right, Escargots!! (or snails, if you can't tell by the pic)

 

We actually got the girls to try one!!  Lola's stayed in.

Not Teah's though.  She tried a bit and it quickly went back on her plate.

 I just love the canals and that little cutie posing with her lollipop of course.

Mountain Trips
With the base of the Alps literally being only 10 minutes from us we enjoyed several trips in the mountains.  There are three Valleys close to where we live; Valle Verte, Valle Aulps, and Valle Abondance.  We drove all the way through Valle Aulps to the ski resort of Morzine.  We walked through the town, the girls got to ride the merry-go-round, and we enjoyed delicious baguette sandwiches before heading back home.  Marc's brother has a chalet in Morzine that we will be fortunate enough to visit during the winter for skiing so I will definitely speak more on Morzine in future posts.

We also explored Valle Verte a bit and hiked up to the top of Mont Forchat.  The girls actually did it with only minor cheerleading from me along the way.  It was a beautiful view at the top.  We could see the mountain tops and the Lake; a 360 degree view.

When we got back to our car a beautiful, but quite large, mountain cow was waiting for us!  

Thankfully she didn't mind us too much.

Along the route to Morzine is the Abbey in Saint Jean d'Aulps.  They had a monastic market one Sunday afternoon, which we visited.  The Abbey is a former Cisternian Monastery and was founded in the 11th century!! It had a great museum inside chronicling the history of the Abbey and the feuding Lords in the area.  I felt like I was back in Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth (if any of you have read this book or watched the mini-series, you know what I'm talking about).  It was fun to read up on the history a bit.  That is definitely one thing that continually enchants me about France. There is so much history that we just aren't accustomed to living in America.  We forget how young our country really is.

Had a "fun" talk with the girls about corporal punishment for bad behavior.  Ha!

Inside the Abbey's Cave

Abeilles = Bees (in case you couldn't tell by the adorable bee houses behind the sign)

We have a bit of a North Face ad going here.  Ha!

They have a beautiful herb garden.

The ruins of the Abbey.

The Market had an array of local goods but of course we only took a photo of the beers!

Visiting Friends in Geneva
We rounded up our holiday by visiting some long-time friends of Marc's family.  We always make it a point to see them when we come for a visit.  They live just outside of Geneva, so we got to go into Switzerland for the day.  It was a lovely day and we took advantage of the weather by walking around their village.  Geneva is actually surrounded by France.  So part of the hike actually took us to the French border which had a little sign marking it and felt a bit odd to be straddling two countries like that.  The walk also took us right by the CERN particle accelerator (which is underground).  That was also exciting and strange.  If you don't know what CERN is it's the European Organization for Nuclear Research and they operate the largest particle physics laboratory in the world!!

Holding their adorable long-haired Guinea Pig, Crunchy. 

Why walk along the trail when you can run through the vineyards!

We also interspersed our day-trips with some lazy days at home where the girls got to have lots of Barbie and Chicken time.  They're two favorite activities currently.  Not so much the Barbies but the chickens are definitely becoming one of my favorite past-times as well.  They continually delight me. I never realized just how much fun they would be or just how mischievous!  More to come on their shenanigans in a future post.