Annecy, France

I first stumbled across Annecy during the summer of 1985, on my way down to Spain with my Swedish friend Christina Thunell. Our intention was to spend a night there and press on southward, but we wound up staying for four or five days, enchanted by the Amsterdam-like, Venice-like canals lined with flowers, the lovely lake, the imposing castle.

My second visit, with Becca's mother not long after, was less enjoyable — but my third, with Becca during the summer of 2001 after our Maryland semester in Itay, was as magical as the first. We ate Pierre a feu (a fondue variation where you cook your food on a hot slab of stone rather than in a pot of hot oil) at an outdoor restaurant, took a paddle boat (with a sliding board on the back!) out onto the lake, and found an exhibit of the works of the Aardman animation studio (Wallace & Grommit, Chicken Run) in the castle....

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