Catching up with a few travel notes.

The hotel wifi has been whiffling in and out, causing me to go down to the front desk and have conversations with the staff along the lines of, "The weefee, it works but not very well. It begins, it stops, it begins, it stops. From time to time it can find the network but then it tells me 'Impossible to rejoin.' Yet the box with the green lights, they are illuminated all the time."

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The unreliability of the weefee is the main reason I haven't blogged the last couple of days. The photostream hasn't been syncing. But ! It has now. So here are some notes.

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There is a little amusement park within walking distance of our apartment, tucked at the base of a little ski hill, the sort where you bring your little kids for lessons. There is no fee to enter the park and a few things are free, for example, there is a play structure -- actually two, one for toddlers and one for ages 3 to 12. The rest of the things take either tokens, wristbands, or tickets, which you buy at a cash window.

There appeared to be about three staff members running the whole thing. The 4yo wanted to ride the little train, which was apparently abandoned, and we stood around looking confused until a staff member ran up, took his token, helped him on, and started the train.

The train was not very different from American kiddie rides, but the bumper cars sure were. Regardez:

No attendant. No seatbelts. No rules. You put a token in the side of the little trike, it starts up, and it goes for about 10 minutes controlled only by a foot pedal (off-on, no speed control) and the steering handles. It was awesome. It doesn't go backwards, so if you run into a wall you have to get out and push it back while other people are zipping around you. You could totally get hit and hurt yourself. Kids loved it.

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Friday we drove an hour to Annecy to see the Basilica of the Visitation, have lunch, and walk around the old town.

Basilica campanile.

I found it hard to have a proper pilgrimage attitude. I was herding children around, and I felt more... I guess like a tourist! But my daughter made up for that. She was so excited to meet her name saint up close.

Reliquary containing the body of St. Jane Frances de Chantal

The basilica is twentieth-century, but the Visitation Sisters have been here since the time of St. Francis de Sales (who is in a similar reliquary on the opposite side of the basilica). The central viewpoint is a large mosaic of Christ suffering on the cross. The face is suffering yet peaceful; the Lord is flanked by Mary, John, the Magdalene, and Marie-Salomé; angels catch the blood of Christ in vessels while some of it falls upon an image of a chalice and host "signifying the identical sacrifice of the Cross and of the Mass." My favorite detail: Daisies (marguerites) and roses grow beneath the cross, memoralizing Ste. Marguerite-Marie, the Visitandine who received the apparitions of the Sacred Heart, and Ste. Thérèse.

I have a picture, but it hasn't synced yet.

The stained glass windows depict the lives of St. Francis and St. Jane Frances. My daughter liked the one of the saint with her four children. One is shown as a toddler holding a doll.

We went into the gift shop to buy some mementos. I told the Visitation Sister (who guessed I was maybe Canadian!) that my daughter had Jane Frances for her name saint, and she was delighted. "Une petite américaine qui est nommée Jeanne-Françoise!" she told several other people that came through the shop as she greeted them. She went into the back and came out with a slip of folded paper that contained a little square of silk touched to the garments of the saints: a third-class relic, which she gave to my daughter, who was equally delighted.

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Also enjoyed in Annecy: two well-designed playgrounds, each encircled by a gated fence, you know, so the small children can't get out without you knowing and you don't have to actually keep WATCHING them. So sane!

 

Nice artificial turf! The baby liked crawling around on it.

And lunch. Note the existence of chicken nuggets and ketchup in France. We told the 4 yo he could eat ketchup on his fries if he ordered it himself. "Je voudrais ketchup," he said and the waiter whisked away to fetch it. "They are really going to let me have ketchup?!" he asked in amazement. (We had warned him that it might not be available everywhere.)

More later...

 

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Comments

[Rebekka]

The comment about the fenced in playground made me laugh. I guess that is a European thing, because it's the same in Scandinavia. It keeps dogs out, too.

[bearing]

I hate American playgrounds.