Day 8 - The Storm

Couldn't write this post yesterday, but better late than never.

At the end of day 7, around 11PM after we finish our bbq dinner outside, write our blog posts and just ready to go to bed, a massive storm came to hit us. Thunders and lightning, strong winds and torrential rain. Wind calmed down early, but thunders and rain just kept all night. It was a big adventure because we were plugged in to electricity in the aire, using socket extension, eu-uk adapter plus all kind of adapters, as there was 4 vans plugged in to only 2 places. The rain and wind was so strong, that even if it was under some kind of roof, the extension was getting hit by the rain.It felt quite dangerous and I had to go in the rain and unplug it from our van. Laima was quite afraid, and said she would never sleep in this weather. Just started watching a movie and problem solved, she was sleeping in 10 min even with a big noise caused by the rain. 

Next morning we bought a  fresh baguette, had a nice breakfast and set off. The first half an hour driving we realized how big the storm was, lots of branches destroyed, even trees completely broken, sheds and green houses ruined. A lot of damage but nothing on us. 

After about an hour driving we finally had our first contact with the Alps. What a great experience! We drove into Nantua, which is a town surrounded by mountains and a lake, Amazing scenery but the town didn't really seemed that nice. We were planning to overnight there but decided to move on. Dozens of Portuguese flags everywhere in this little town though. I still had time for a quick 1h20 bike ride, my first contact with serious mountains, went up to 800m and it was incredible.

When we left Nantua, we were planning to overnight in St Juliens Genevois, a town right in the border with Switzerland where we could easily visit Geneve the next day. Again we changed plans. The town was awful, we just entered a car park and there was cars with the 4 tyres off, probably stolen. We just left the town and set the gps to a small village nearby, Neydens. What a great choice, just parked in a nice place, with good great views and very quite (apart from the school party full of kids until around 10pm). The best was, there was a direct bus straight into Geneve from there taking only around 30 min.