This morning, it was up to catch the train to Chambéry. Chambéry is a small city in the French Alps and is the heart of the Savoie region. It is just around the corner from Albertville, close to Grenoble and Chamonix.Three Winter Olympic venues within a one hour drive (and Torino is less than a two hour drive away). It also hosts one of the Alpine stages of the tour de France. This is where my wife’s cousin and her family lives, along with other aunts, uncles, cousins and other family I was lucky enough to marry into.

The day was mostly taken up by the train ride, but we did have time for a quick car ride to Aix Les Bains, a lake side resort town on Lac du Bourget, the largest natural lake in France. For me, there was a lot of similarities to my home in Canada’s Okanagan Valley. It felt like home, except they were speaking a different language.