I wanted to make quite an early start (8am) in order to meet Sam and Lucy in Annecy, so we were first to breakfast. There was plenty to eat and Novotel gets a good mark from us.
Outside, the car was covered in thick frost and there was a freezing fog. It looked pretty grim, but I put "Annecy centre" in the sat nav and off we went. The roads were dead quiet and the fog soon became thinner and then disappeared completely.
We were in Annecy within two hours; Margaret texted Sam to say we were getting close and he said to meet us at the car park by the Hotel de Ville. I was busy looking for that when we passed Hotel Splendid where they had been staying, so I pulled up in front to get my bearings. Margaret said she could see Sam in reception and, sure enough, he was just checking out. Lucy had gone on ahead to the car park. We loaded their cases into the car (it was a tight fit), Sam texted Lucy to say come back and we were all set for Sainte-Foy.
 |
| Beautiful Annecy - on Lucy's iPhone 6 |
I'd been to Annecy last year with Sam and Lucy and we'd had a nice wander around the mediaeval centre and also a swim in the lake. There was no swimming today, but Sam took over the driving and it was good to see the place again - it is a beautiful location.
Sam and Lucy had not had a great journey yesterday. They'd flown from Jersey to Geneva and had hoped to get a bus to Annecy. Unfortunately, there was just one bus available and it was a long wait, so they'd had a very chilly afternoon in Geneva and got to Annecy much later than planned. At least their hotel booking was on the computer!
Annecy and the drive to Albertville was familiar and once we got into the Tarentaise valley, it seemed like going home. The gothic churches are dotted about the hillsides and going past Bellentre brought back memories of a sunny walk last spring. If it was familiar for me, it must have been much more so for Sam and Lucy, who lived here for seven months and were both feeling quite nostalgic about the place.
We got to Sainte Foy by just after noon and found the cleaners still busy, so we dropped our bags, parked the car and went to a cafe by the bottom lift for lunch. It was a lovely sunny day - quite similar to our last visit when we'd snow-shoed to La Monal and had visited the same bar at the end of our trek. We got a seat on the sunny terrace, surrounded by high, snowy mountains and I have to say - this beats sitting on a hot beach any time! We had the fixed menu - massive salad for starter, then sausage and polenta. I was very full, but Sam and I had said we'd have a ski in the afternoon, so we had to keep moving! The snow was lovely and the resort really quiet.
We only skied for an hour or so and then called in at the Piano Bar for a drink. Sam has a lot on his plate right now. He's about to buy into the doctors' practice in St Helier so has been arranging the loan for that, he'll soon buy into the pharmacy business as well and will then need to borrow more money to buy a house, perhaps in 2016. It's a lot of debt to take on - perhaps seven times annual earnings - compared to me where my maximum debt has never been more than three times annual earnings. Debt is such a necessary evil for young people today. For sure, my children earn a much better salary than I did, but they are saddled with debt from the age of 18 when they leave for university. Owing so much money must be really stressful and quite scary, especially with inflation being so low. At least I had the advantage of relatively high wage and retail price inflation to devalue my debt and make it easier to pay. Interest rates hit 15 per cent during the 1980s, but inflation was pushing 20 per cent some years. I'm not sayings that's a good thing - it definitely isn't - but an inflation rate of two or three per cent does help reduce debts quite a bit over 10 years and, with government debt being so great, I'm pretty sure they'll be making sure we get back to those levels quite soon.
Our Sainte-Foy chalet is fantastic, there are three bedrooms downstairs, two bathrooms, a large lounge kitchen upstairs and a mezzanine area at the very apex of the roof. It's fitted out to a good standard and the views from the front are amazing (as this picture from Lucy shows).
 |
| View down the Tarentaise towards Bourg-Saint-Maurice from our chalet. |
No comments:
Post a Comment