As Sunday was boat trip day on Lake Geneva, we got up bright and early and got down to Ouchy for a morning ferry, buying coffee and croissants from stalls along by the lake. One of the stalls was called UK Tuck Box and sold all kinds of British foods from Hula Hoops to Heinz ketchup, but as we’ve been away for less than a week we weren't tempted at this point. We were impressed by the rooks that seem to be trained as litter-pickers. When I'd finished the coffee and croissant I put the empty cup down on the wall while peeling a satsuma and when I looked round for it to put the peel in, a huge rook had flown down, picked it up and walked along the wall with it, and was munching the tasty cardboard - obviously not enough decent grub available that day.
I was a bit disappointed that because the summer timetables didn’t kick in for another couple of weeks, there were no ferries going down to Vevey, Montreux and Chillon Castle, but there are always ferries going across between Evian, of spring water fame, and Thonon, both on the French side of the lake, so we had a few hours back in France in Evian. Those of you who know that we are pretty keen on our holidays in France will realise that’s no hardship for us and we spent a few hours having a nice lunch and walking along the lake looking over to the Swiss side and enjoying the alpine views, again not as clear as we would have liked. We found the source of the Evian water spring and tried some, which was lovely and cool and just like in the bottles (well, obviously). We were quite amused that someone was there with a box full of empty bottles and was happily filling them up to take away with him. Ironically we paid 4 Euros for a sealed bottle (or so we assume) of the stuff with our lunch. As we left the waters, we were approached by a sightseeing couple who asked for directions to the "waterfall." I think they were a bit underwhelmed when we pointed out the tap and the entrepreneur filling his bottles.
Evian is evidently a pretty lively place during the summer season with a casino and a beautiful Palais des Lumieres, which is now the art gallery and boasts some gorgeous art deco stained glass. It also had some interesting and quite puzzling sculptures.
On the ferry over we found ourselves sitting next to a group of Chinese academics who were engaged in an in-depth conversation about economic growth in China in relation to the rest of the world and looking at stats on a laptop; I learned more than I’ll ever need to know about GDP and the policies of the World Bank vis a vis developing economies! They were deep in conversation but as the ferry drew up to the shore at Evian they suddenly switched topic to where to go for a decent lunch - sensible people!
After a less educational return ferry trip to Lausanne, we made our way to the Botanical Gardens and enjoyed an hour in the sun appreciating the plants, most of them further on than the plants we’d left at home, for instance the forsythia, which was in full bloom in Lausanne, in contrast to the bush in our garden, which was only just coming into bud when we left.
We were totally exhausted after having walked miles and used that as an excuse to go back to our hotel for a relatively early night, some coffee and chocolates and a bit of reading, and packing up for the journey to Florence on Monday.
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