day off in Annecy, June 21st

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This entry by Tom.

Day off so we slept in a bit, but not a ridiculous amount. Just past 9am I took a walk to a bike shop not too far away, ProVélo, that looked better than average from its website. It’s always interesting to see brands of bikes, clothing, parts and accessories that we don’t get in Canada. The showroom at ProVélo was chock-a-block with Cube bikes, both road and off-road. There were also quite a few off-road e-bikes in stock. I guess that’s a thing now, here. Didn’t walk out with anything even though the shop brand jerseys and shorts were fairly attractive.

Picked up some flat peaches and waffles at a corner grocery on the way back to the hotel and that was breakfast.

Early afternoon we packed up our laundry for the five-block walk to the nearest laundromat. In the half hour that it took to wash, we headed over to a post office and Caroline mailed home about 2 kg of clothes that she wouldn’t need for the rest of the trip. Then 20 minutes in the dryer plus some folding, and we were done. Dave and Linda wandered in while we were there; they were at a nearby Air BnB and not the hotel since Dave only joined this trip at the last minute and only for several days in the middle so he booked his own accommodation. Good news: ProVélo replaced Linda’s broken front (triple) shifter last night so she’s not stuck in her middle chainring like she had been for the past two days.

After a short afternoon snooze we were back in the street, window shopping mostly but also some shopping-shopping. Toured a hobby store with an impressive inventory of R/C vehicles and drones. Popped into a stationary store and picked up a Michelin guide to the French Alps plus a handful of Michelin road maps that are similar to the ones I can get at home but these are updated for 2017 and better yet they’re printed on tear-proof paper. Caroline combed the racks of the clothing shops and picked up a snazzy summer dress which she wore to dinner later on and we popped into a stitching shop and a fabric store. And more ice cream, of course. We went back to the same place we stopped at yesterday and this time I had the raspberry. Superb.

The streets were a LOT busier this afternoon than yesterday at about this time.

One more pit stop back at the hotel to freshen up before going out for dinner. By 7:30pm the streets were PACKED and there was music everywhere. Turns out there is a music festival in Annecy today, perhaps because it’s the first day of summer. We returned to a restaurant that we saw earlier where I could get a three-cheese tartiflette and Caroline could get spaghetti bolognese with no cheese whatsoever. It was exactly what I wanted.

Seemed like a longer day than it really was with all the going out and returning to the hotel so we just headed straight back to our room after dinner and called it a night. It’s back on the bikes tomorrow so might as well turn in early.

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