Today was a horrible day in Annecy in my opinion, due to the weather. I hiked up mont Veyrier that sophie recommended. However, the views were not that spectacular because it was a cloudy day. I had a bird’s eye view of lake annecy and the whole town. The hike up the mountain was a gravel and rocks path, some sections were very steep and it is not a hike for the faint-hearted. This climb is as arduous as the one I did to go up Machu Picchu, but this one took even longer, almost 2h for me.
After taking photos and resting awhile, I began my descent down the mountain. Going down is worse because it is slippery and I lost my footing a few times. Moreover, the terrain was made muddy by the rain and I was drenched. It was an unpleasant feeling, I just wanted to go down quickly. Along the way, I saw other French people and some with their dog, they managed to descend so effortlessly.
Back on the level of the lake, I saw many people running a marathon. This annecy marathon is special because it is done in pairs, one will run and the other will cycle. When they are tired, they will switch positions, doing so until they complete the race.
I went to find guillaume to return him the hiking boots. He is really very nice and allowed me to rest at his place for about 4h until my train back to Grenoble. His couchsurfer, Zhou wen who is from china, came back shortly after. We drank ginger tea and had a long chat. Zhou was very surprised that I could speak Chinese so well. She has been in France for 10 years plus and is now working as a teacher, so her French is quite good. It was very heartwarming to find someone else who spoke Chinese, so we communicated in Chinese most of the time during dinner last night. It was still raining when I left the house to head to the train station, so irritating!
