Evian and Yvoire

September 12, 2011

                Last Wednesday, we went to Evian-les-Bains, which is just 30 miles from us in France along Lake Geneva. The draw was the water bottling plant for the famous Evian water. Lucas, who turns out to be a bottled water connoisseur, says it’s the very best. So we thought it would be fun to see where the water comes from. The drive was long – through lots of little towns where the speed limit is about 30 kph – but very pretty. I was a little bit worried about our hotel, because it was surprisingly inexpensive, but it turned out great. The woman who ran it was from Colorado, so she spoke English with an AMERICAN accent. I never thought of myself as being the kind of person who would miss a familiar accent, but it turns out that I am. Here is the view from our hotel room at night.

And here is the same view in the day.

We looked over a cobbled street with the kind of crowded, narrow buildings I always picture when I think of Europe. The hotel also had a breakfast with . . . here’s the real excitement . . . huge coffee mugs! The kids were more excited about the pain au chocolat (chocolate pastries; they’re everywhere here, but the kids never seem to get sick of them. Johanna ate 5 or 6, and Lucas about the same. I think Drew limited himself to a couple.).

                We had tried, without success, to set up a tour of the bottled water plant before we came to Evian. So we just showed up at the Evian information building, only to be told there were no tours that day. Very disappointing (but it just means we’ll have to go back).  We did go behind the information building to the Source Cachet. This is where the original Evian water comes out, apparently always at 11 degrees Celsius. There were people there filling bottle after bottle, but we just filled our one little half-liter. It was good water. Not being a connoisseur myself, I couldn’t tell if it was the same as in the bottles you buy at the store.

                We walked around Evian for a while, then decided to go home by way of Yvoire, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful towns in France, with medieval buildings and cobbled streets and a labyrinth garden.  The town was really pretty, and the garden was fun (I loved the apple trees they had trained to grow in a lattice pattern with their branches straight out to the side). The town, on the whole, however, was rather touristy. It felt like Mackinaw City in Michigan, rather than like a real place where real people live. We did get some excellent sandwiches and Belgian Fries (seemed the same as French Fries to us)at a place called Lulu. We also had a great time watching the waterfowl. The kids wanted to feed the ducks, but the swans were real bullies. Whenever we threw food to the ducks, the swans would come cruising up and grab it. When we refused to throw any more, the birds sailed around to the other side of the rocks where we were sitting, looking for all the world like they were going to make a sneak attack from the rear. The ducks turned out to be "red in tooth and claw" as well, however. We tried to feed a small bird, and one of the duck grabbed the poor bird in it's beak and shook it until we thought it was dead. It turned out to be okay, but we were kind of disenchanted with the ducks.