To Annecy from Geneva

Good name for a restaurant

We made a trip to Annecy yesterday, ostensibly to get some shoes for the little one. Considering they were half the price of the last pair we bought her in Switz, it was a 40 minute car journey well spent.
The town isn't all that big, about 50,000. The old town is quite a decent size, and stacked with restaurants, cafes and boulangeries.
The shoe shopping was amazingly straight forward.
The assistant was one of those people you come across who at some point clearly felt a stronger calling as a shoe fitter than a linguist. Though she lives in a small town in southern France, she speaks accentless, perfect English, and then, when you are struggling to remember the word chausseur, annoyingly tells you she isn't very good,  The little one seemed like a natural, proving happiness for any girl can be found in a shoe shop. She stood quietly as her foot was measured, stood up when asked to fit the shoes on and didn't throw too many pairs on the floor, nor rip the boxes to pieces. So when it took less than a quarter of an hour to find a pair we like and buy those we were a bit surprised.

Thankfully Annecy, with a very cute old town, is worth a second look. We wandered around in the cold air took a look up the hill at le Chateau, spied a couple of boulangerie we thought might be worth a visit after lunch, one with giant meringues in the window beside something equally enormous called Croix de Savoie.  

Eventually things began opening for lunch, and down a little side passage we found Au Lilas Rose, a brilliantly named restaurant. Where we sat by the fire and ordered steak for me, and lamb kebab for Sarah. Dead simple food cooked brilliantly. If you are ever in Annecy I highly recommend getting to this restaurant. Conscious of picking somewhere that was expensive and not very good we chose this because of the name and were the first people in for the lunch cover. We tentatively sat down, mulling our order, well aware that beside having bad French, the fact that I didn't drink wine at lunch marked me out as utterly alien. In five minutes the restaurant was more than half full with locals, miraculously we had made the right choice! 

Post lunch we returned to the boulangerie, and having made our choices, we headed for the lake side, where we found a park for the little one to stroll around in. Besides the wary eye required to ensure she didn't fall in, it was a very relaxing, easy trip to a very cute little town. Four hours passed without much effort. All of which was made easier because we took the toll road home. A charge of nearly €7 cut the journey time in half, though I'm not sure 25 cents a kilometre is exactly good value.