The Ups and Downs of Travel!!

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As we left Beaune on Friday, October 4, there was a misty rain falling. Our GPS guided us to the motorway and most of our trip was on the beautiful French superhighways. They are beautiful because they are all toll roads and not cheap! Our toll from Beaune to Annecy (250km) was 19.50 E or around 28.00 Cdn. Our trip took us south toward Lyon and then east towards Geneva, Switzerland. The further east we went, the higher the mountains became. We travelled through three long tunnels. The rain intensified and even though the traffic was not heavy, there were a lot of transports on the road which made for a somewhat stressful drive at times. We were relieved when we left the motorway and headed towards Annecy on a two lane highway. The secondary roads, for the most part are narrow and have very little shoulder so you still have to be on your toes all the time.

We arrived in Annecy around 2:30. We knew our apartment was in the old town so knew many of the streets would not be accessible by car. We found a parking place, which is always a job, and headed for the Tourist Information office to get a map and find our apartment. We had the address and access info. Map in hand we walked through the busy streets of Annecy in search of 20 Rue Sainte-Claire. Our landlord had given us the lockbox code where we retrieved the keys, opened the first door which led into a dark hallway. NOT AGAIN!!!! Three flights of steep stairs to our lodging. On first impression, it seemed to appear as advertised. We found the underground parking nearby so now all we had to do was retrieve the car and move it to the garage and move in. By now it was well past 3 PM so we decided to have a bite to eat as we needed to relax awhile because we knew we had some work ahead of us. We found a wonderful coffee shop that sold decadent desserts and indulged in a hot chocolate and pastry.

We made our way to the parking garage with maybe only a couple of misses and paid for parking for three days with in and out privileges for 33.00E. The apartment is above a very busy bar which always seemed to be packed with people. We manoeuvred our luggage through the patrons, opened the door and started the climb! It took two trips to bring all our belongings to rest in the apartment as we had visited the grocery store and bought provisions so we wouldn't have to go out again. We were glad to be settled.

This apartment caused us quite a bit of stress! We believe the landlord seldom visited it and trusted the renters to take care of things. Not a good idea!!! We were able to contact the landlord and was able to solve one problem but others were left in limbo - (leaking washing machine, leaking shower, sofa bed closure problem, vacuum cleaner that didn't work, TV that didn't turn on, and window hinge broken) I wrote a note to him regarding these problems as well as giving a very poor review for Airbnb but I see it is still on for rent and my review is NOT there.

When one travels on your own you have to roll with the punches and we did that. When others may have thrown up their hands in despair, we made the best of it and tried to laugh instead of cry!

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