Yvoire (yee-vo-ahr) is situated on the banks of Lake Geneva, which means it is about 2 hours of a leisure boat ride from Lausanne's Ouchy harbour. For 30 Fr, it was a pretty good deal. The trip included the transport to and fro with a guided tour of the city. Instead of saying that it is a city, it is more like a village that is really a tourist destination. Tourism is definitely the main trade there, as could be seen by the many shops selling really touristy stuff like toys or souvenirs.
One can certainly see how Yvoire got its reputation as one of "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France", or the most beautiful villages of France. It has a picturesque view of Lake Geneva and the buildings there are small and quiant (read: restored for tourism) and has a chateau, a garden and a church that are of tourist interest. Unfortunately, we did not visit any of these 3 places. :-p Well, it wasn't due to the lack of trying. For some reason that I did not catch (because the tour was conducted in French) the chateau seemed to be off limits and the garden had an entrance fee of 7.50 euros. Since all of us were not really interested in flowers and that we had only 1 hour left to explore, we decided to skip it. I think the flowers all around the village is impressive enough.
Indeed, you can really tell that spring is here. Not just the presence of the blooming flowers, but also from the swarms of flies that seem to decide on congregating in the village today. Maybe swarms was an ovverstatement, but the flies were definitely a nuisance. The absence of most insects is a definite plus for winter.
Moving on, the town of Yvoire has 2 ports and fishing seemed to be the number 2 dominant industry, after tourism. I didn't really understand what the tour guide was saying, but it seemed that in the middle ages, a duke realised the stategic position of Yvoire and decided to fortify the area in order to secure the lake for some battle. And thus, strong walls and the chateau could seen, restored to its formal glory as I believe, from its past disuse.
One could see that the French people took pride in preserving the place, even if it was only for tourism. The flowers looked very well taken of, the streets were clean, fountains of portable water were around. Even the medieval houses that are now shops and restaurants are all well preserved, with most windows having a trough of flowers adorning it.
Makes me think about Singapore. Sigh, due to the space constraints and the turnover rate of buildings, it is a miracle that we even have a building, not to mention several buildings, that are well preserved and still in use. I guess its because the usefulness of the buildings in a cultural and commercial sense (more commercial than cultural, perhaps) outweighs the costs of maintaining and replacing them with newer ones.
Anyway, picture time:
A monument for some war, I think, outside the tourism office. Note how the tulips are in bloom.
Tulips seem to be the favourite flower here.
The entrance to the village proper.
The chateau of Yvoire, as captured from over the head of an unknown guy.Just a disclaimer: It is not that I like France in particular. I would LOVE to go to another country but it seems that just nice France is the closest country that I can go to without taking too much time to travel.
Anyway, I am planning for a trip to Budapest, Prague and Vienna with some friends for early next month, before the exams (I like to live dangerously... Or not...) That's 3 countries in a shot. Ha. Looking forward to it! Especially since I heard that one could get a good meal in Budapest for like 5 euros!
Definitely looking forward to some meat. MEAT!!! I can finally afford to eat decent meat then!!!
Not frozen, not in the form of some mashed up burger, but really SLABS of steak dripping with awesome-ness!
Ok, I better end the post here before I salivate all over my keyboard.
Ciao~!
No comments:
Post a Comment