Yesterday and today were rainy and no good for outdoor pursuits…so ROAD TRIP! We were invited to stay the night with our great friends Valerie and Yann, who have lived in Geneva, Switzerland the past 5 years. Villers-La-Faye is only 2 1/2 hours away from Geneva, so sure, let’s go!
The drive to Switzerland was simple. First, we ate a ‘quick” lunch at a local little restaurant best described as a good-quality truck stop. Good food, pretty fast service, and loaded with working guys on their lunch hour. These are the real working guys: truckers, farm workers, plumbers, road workers - from what I could read on their uniforms and shirts. They make a different path through the world than many of the people we routinely run into as visitors to France. It was a good meal, good experience, and good practice trying to speak a slightly different kind of French, used by the workers over here.
After lunch, we spent most of the trip on “A” roads, which speeded up our progress at the expense of the large French road tolls.The day stayed rainy and gloomy, so no pretty scenery photos. We did see remarkable sights once we neared Switzerland, as the mountains were tall and craggy, unlike what we are used to in Appalachia or other eastern USA mountain ranges. We also used three LONGgggg tunnels, the longest being 3.2 kilometers (2 miles). At the toll booth near the border, the customs police in Switzerland asked us if we were bringing $10,000 or more into the country. We started laughing, and said “We wish!”…after which they laughed and said “We also…” and waved us on our way. We learned later that everyone can tell we are in a rental car because of a code on the license plate. Guess that’s why we were questioned.
Once we connected with Valerie and Yann, it was a busy afternoon catching up on families and friends and news. Yann officially retired from his work a week before we arrived - so we both celebrated retirement on this visit. Their older child, Ben, was married a few months earlier. We got to see the beautiful video of that wedding and reception. What a spectacular bride, groom, setting and ceremony. Of course, Lynn made fast friends with the dogs: Vega, an Australian sheepdog we met as a puppy, who is now 12 years old, and Ben's 4 month old Samoyed puppy, Fluffy.
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| Lynn and Fluffy |
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| Valerie, Yann and Ben |
Ben joined us later in the evening for a delicious supper Valerie prepared. What a discussion we had about the USA and French presidential elections!!! Ben is a commodities trader, and his colleagues are all predicting a victory by Donald Trump in the USA Presidential race. Ben explained the purely financial reasons for that prediction…I don’t think I understand the reasoning, but am anxious to see if they are right. The eventual winner of the French election is not certain, I think, but there is a primary election at the end of November which will set up the final election contestants for a few months later. Like many in the USA, Ben and his family bemoan the lack of good candidates running for office, and find themselves holding their noses to vote for someone they do not like in order to avoid a worse candidate. We talked about “Brexit”, Crimea, Ukraine, and other concerns we as Americans don’t often consider (What are the personal effects on business people and workers in Europe from the strict financial sanctions imposed by the USA government on Russia, for instance? You’d be surprised.) It was a great night.
After a good night’s sleep, we awoke to more rain and gloom, so sightseeing in Geneva was ruled out. No matter: we still got to inspect Yann’s awesome Porsches! Without getting too technical, he has a collection of three important Porsches: a 1975 Carrera RS, a 1995 Carrera RS, and a 2015 GT3 RS. The first two are air-cooled classic collector Porsches, the newest is a technology-laden beauty that is just spectacular. Yann is restoring the interior of one of the cars this summer, with his new-found spare time as a retiree. One of his cars is kept at a friend’s garage…so we were allowed to see THAT guy’s car collection too. What an assortment of beautiful machinery! Yann and his Porsche friends are my idols, in that they USE their cars, and do not treat the cars as icons that are not allowed to be on the road or track. Ahhh, it was a fun morning my friends…there are more photos if you’d like to see!
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| 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing - with original Rudge knockoff wheels and more |
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| 1976 Ferrari DINO - so beautiful |
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| John in Yann's 1995 Porsche Carrera RS - one of the last air-cooled mega-Porsches |
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| TWO NEW RETIREES!!! happy celebration with Yann's 1975 2.7 Porsche Carrera RS |
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| Yann and his 2015 Porsche GT3 RS - this thing is amazing. |
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| The 1995 Carrera RS in garage |
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| On our way home from Yann and Valerie's |
We couldn’t stay longer, so said thanks and goodbye to our friends, then headed out for the drive back to Villers-la-Faye. Rainy days are the best days for driving, I think, since you can’t play outside anyway. We found our way back to the “A” road, ran the mountain passes and tunnels, stopped at an Aire along the way for a snack, and made it “home” without incident. Coming into the main intersection in VLF, we saw a sign reminding us that Friday (today) is Pizza Truck Day! Since there is no bakery or restaurant in VLF anymore, this is apparently a big deal! Our dinner plans were instantly settled.
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| PIZZA TRUCK at Villers-la-Faye!!! |
By 6:00 p.m. we were hungry for supper so bundled up and walked two rainy blocks to the pizza truck. It parked near the main intersection, across from the boarded-up former restaurant. After talking to the pizza guy, we learned you can order your pizza for a particular time of night, or wait 5 minutes in the rain for him to cook it specially for you, We chose to wait. Pretty soon we got our pizza box and went home to eat. It turned out we had a pizza and a beer and a kir for supper. WooHoo, VLF Friday night madness! The pizza was surprisingly good. So much so that I walked back down and ordered a dessert pizza, covered with Nutella, bananas and Smarties (miniature M&M thingys). Well, we should’ve quit while we were ahead; this dessert pizza was a dud. Live and learn is always our motto…we won’t order THAT again!
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| Parked across from the closed restaurant - Camion Pizza moved in when the other food establishment moved out! |
Tomorrow is Market Day in our little village, AND in Beaune, the much bigger town near us. Lynn has big plans…I hope to get in some great bike riding if the weather improves as predicted. Thanks for following along with our little adventures.
Here are more photos if you would like to see them:
TRIP PICS
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