European Road Trip Days 11 & 12 - Driving Home via Annecy & Paris (Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th June)

We set off from the chalet, and drove through some lovely scenery - hills, towns, winding roads, and tunnels, on our way to Annecy. It's one of my brother and sister-in-law's favourite places, so I wanted to stop off at the lake there, just for a little bit.

We didn't have any definite plan - I just hoped that we would find somewhere that was easy to stop off at, along the main road that skirts the lake. At lots of points you can see the lake from the road, but we eventually turned down a side road which we hoped would lead to a quieter, more picturesque spot. We were totally lucky and found the perfect spot!!

The kids at the end of the little pier. The water is just such a lovely colour here!

Happy memories of just sitting and enjoying the sunshine, and the gorgeous view.

(... and getting wet of course...)

There was a large grassy area too, where we had a picnic lunch. (Though couldn't find a toilet that was open.)

The kids trying to dry out quickly before going back to the car...

We then had the long drive to the outskirts of Paris and our last hotel. The journey was fine - pretty uneventful. We had been quite looking forwards to this hotel, as on paper it was posher than our other ones, and had an indoor swimming pool, and evening meal in the restaurant. We did look fairly out of place traipsing in with our 3 million suitcases and the usual rubbish, and our bad French, but it wasn't really anything that special, and our meal was mediocre (and we had some language barriers trying to figure out which items on the menu came in our 'package' etc.) The kids didn't show us up too much (!) - they were the only kids in the place, though by the end of it we were all feeling in a bit of a silly mood!

After dinner we all went down to the pool - the thing the kids had really been looking forwards to, though felt a bit daft running back to our rooms soaking wet afterwards!

I shared a room with Lucy and Jack.

View from our balcony.

The next morning, we had a great buffet breakfast - there was everything you could think of, then we got all our stuff packed back into the car for the last time.
It was strange to be driving so close to Paris and not actually stopping off there, though once you start to head home, you just want to get on with the journey.

We took the Euro Tunnel, and stopped off at a McDonalds for lunch once back in England. It felt quite odd to be back in England really, and I don't think we felt particularly at home... certainly not that glad to be back. We felt very united though - by a million new and brilliant memories of all the wonderful things we have seen and done this trip!