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 Dwight Peck's personal website
Summer
2003 -- Yvoire, France, in 33°C heat and lots of company
You
may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a
good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught
up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
Holiday-makers
from Switzerland bound for Yvoire can queue up and wait for the lake steamer on
the pier at Nyon.
(Half-price
rail passes work for the boats, too.)
Leaving
Nyon and its white castle behind, anticipation grows and almost becomes uncontrollable.
The front
gate of the medieval walled town of Yvoire in France (seen from the enormous carpark
for buses).
Large
numbers of visitors pace the crowded streets of Yvoire in 33°C (92°F)
heat, some seeking unlikely bargains in the boutiques that line the narrow ways,
most just seeking ice cream.
Granted,
Yvoire's charming and well-preserved ambience would have been stunning on a sunny
out-of-season afternoon. . . .
So
great in this awful heat, however, was the press of strolling and chattering tourists
oblivious to everything in their paths that the narrator and his friend gave up
sight-seeing and wrestled their way back down to the port.
Last
chance for ice cream before the boat leaves.
The
heat is horrible, and the press of humanity no less so, so we'll go sit by the
water's side.
Rather
than run interference for the hot, bustling crowds, we bought The
International Herald Tribune, The Guardian,
and The Independent and
reclined under the trees near the port until another boat came along, reading
up on what our government's been up to when we weren't watching it closely, tallying
the casualties again as usual.
The
Vevey's here to take us home. Nope, that's not for us. We're on the next one.
Goodbye
France, back to Switzerland.
Yvoire
is just left of center on the far shore, seen from the narrator's livingroom window
in Bassins, Switzerland in 2010, with Mont Blanc behind.
Another visit to Yvoire, May 2010, without the oppressive heat
Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative,  .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 8 November 2003, revised 26 May 2012.
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