Annecy

I had the marvelous opportunity to visit my sister Bethy and her husband Reece in Switzerland for the past two weeks.  Reece is doing an intership at Cern in Geneva and they are enjoying their experience living in Europe.  For the first week I was there the three of us traveled to some of the neighboring cities that we could reach by train.  Our first stop was Annecy which is technically in France but still had a very Swiss feel.  This is a beautiful and charming town, I loved everything about it.  While it does have that distinct Swiss town feel about it, it is also very similar to Venice in that there are canals running through the city with beautiful, still water that create mirror images of all the colorful buildings.  The first two pictures were taken from the train window, we had a beautiful ride through the countryside on our way to Annecy from Geneva

The Palais de l'Isle, also called the "old prison", was built from the twelfth century. Taking up most of the island in a canal, it is the symbol of the town and is among the most photographed monuments in all of France.

We peeked into one of the churches we found along the canals.  It was very pretty inside, I loved the green accents, very unique.

Europeans are so stylish.  Honestly I was a little astonished at how classy and stylish everyone, everywhere was, even the little kids.  I loved this little boy with his pinstrip hat and black leather jacket.

After exploring the town for a while we strolled along the water front of the lake.  There were all sorts of paddle and row boats lined up along the water's edge.  There was a gorgeous, peaceful park on the otherside of the sidewalk.  The fall leaves were just breath taking.  I am now convinced that the best time to see any city, town or country is in the fall, everything is marvelous in the fall.

On one of the bridges we ran into this man who had a very creative, and effective, way of feeding those cute, fluffy little birds that seem to be everywhere.  He taped bottle caps all over his bike and filled them with bird seed and even held a couple of caps in his hands.  It sure got the little guys' attention!

Halloween isn't a huge holiday in europe although it is growing in popularity.  Some shops were decorated for the holiday though, I loved this chocolate shop.  I wanted to buy some of all their Halloween themed candies they were so adorable!

By dinner time we were all starving.  We looked at the menus of a couple of restuarants, but when we saw that Captain Pub served hamburgers our decsion was made.  They were DELICIOUS! They difinitely hit the spot since we were so freezing and hungry they were just what we needed!

The town was a magical sight all lit up at night