Evian

 Last week was the yearly pastor's conference in Evian-les-Bains, France. Paul has gone every year for the last 8 years, but this was the first time with me. It's 3 1/2 days of sessions and meetings with food and free time in between. Over 100 people were there, mostly pastors, but quite a few brought wives and babies. Paul and I were singled out as one of three new young couples there who had been married in the last year. While everything was done in French, there were quite a few english speakers who were kind enough to give me english breaks.
  So Tuesday morning we met our friend Matt and his dad to road trip with them from Paris to Evian. The drive was about 6 hours with frequent stops for food and coffee. We arrived there and got our room. Paul was excited to get a married room and not have to share with three other guys like he had before. We were still put in a room designed for four people, with two bathrooms, but for just two of us. It was definitely bigger than our whole place in Yerres. So we pushed our single beds together for the week and settled in. 

View of the lake from the Center

  In the mornings, we would start with an hour of worship time and prayer, then have a break. Then we had a different speaker each day for about an hour. Then another break before an hour of questions for the speaker. Then lunch! We would skip the question hour and go take a break from all the french before coming back for food. You didn't want to miss the food. Breakfast was pretty boring with just cereal and bread, but lunch and dinner were both three course meals. You had a choice of 5 or 6 different starters, salads or meats or tomatoes mostly. 
   Then you had a choice of 5 or 6 different desserts, which was the hardest part of the meal as they all looked really good and the choices changed somewhat so it was hard to plan going through them all. If you didn't want dessert, there was a cheese plate with 5 or 6 different cheeses to take, (we did this once or twice). Then you chose your drink from white, red or rose wine, beer, cider, pop, juice, or water. Last was the main course, always a meat dish with either rice or pasta or potatoes with some vegetables. They liked to give you American sized portions too. 

     Both afternoons we were there we walked down town and looked around. When I say "down", I really mean it. The town is on the side of a hill and it's not steep. So it was mostly the going back up that we had to look forward to later. The first day we went down with some of Paul's old friends who I got to meet for the first time. It was fun to catch up while we explored the area. The biggest attraction, apart from the big beautiful lake, was the "source cachet" where they bottle the Evian water. It's a really interesting looking building. 

There were also fountains scattered throughout town where you could fill up a water bottle easily. 

My favorite part was probably walking down by the water and looking at boats. We didn't go in at all, too cold, but it was nice to look at. We could see Lausanne across the water, just a short (but expensive) ferry ride away. There wasn't really a beach to speak of where we were, just a rocky area, but I'm told it's a popular water-sport area in the summer. The last two days were really warm and sunny, so we stayed outside as much as possible before we had to come back to cloudy Paris.