Car, boat, bus

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We returned to Annecy from Chamonix by car last Sunday afternoon with plenty of time to spare before getting the car back and much of the afternoon still open to see what we could see.  The 10th Anniversary of “Lac en Partage” (sharing the lake) was going on in Annecy and several other towns that “share the lake.”  Besides different booths about keeping the water clean, fishing, etc., and activities like giant bubble making, there were short boat rides to and from the different towns, so you could check out their event festivities as well.  We decided to take a 35-minute boat ride to Duingt, which is south of Annecy and directly across the lake from Talloires.  

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It’s a quaint village of only about 900 people. The streets are old and narrow with many wonderful 17th and 18th century stone houses and buildings.  There are even two castles, but both are privately owned (!), so they aren’t available for tours.  As we made our way to the town center, we passed by a man playing some sort of hand-cranked piano.  All around him were people singing what we assumed to be traditional Savoyard songs. Had I known the words, I would have joined right in with them! 🙂  

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Unfortunately, when we got to the town center, we could see that things were winding down and people were packing up for the day.  Fortunately, there was still fresh-pressed apple juice to buy, which was delicious.  We also managed to sneak in a couple of crafts — G made a bookmark and L got to write his name on a bookmark with a real wooden-dip-in-an-ink-well fountain pen.  And then we found out that the boat we thought we were going to take back was cancelled and that the last one was leaving in 10 minutes!  

We didn’t have a long walk, but we decided to walk briskly so as not to miss it.  We got to the dock behind about 20 other people, who were looking forlornly at the boat that was at capacity!  The announcement was made that there would be a bus leaving from the front of the church in 20 minutes, so we headed back for town.  After a short wait, we ended up on the regular bus line that runs between Annecy and the surrounding villages. We’re not sure what happened to the one that was supposed to arrive in place of the boat, but we got an unexpected bus tour of the other side of the lake, which worked out just fine. 🙂

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1 Reply to “Car, boat, bus

  1. I believe the hand cranked piano is actually a hand cranked music box. The paper coming out (or going in) has holes in it to call up the correct notes, like a player piano. Looks like you had a wonderful day!

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