Remember “the road less traveled?”

We took it!

I woke up this morning with a yen for Chinese (it had been a couple of months) and knowing my house mates propensity to fall in with any and all restaurant plans that I might have, mid-morning I said “how do you feel about Chinese?”. The answer – no hesitation, no pause – a resounding “yes… when I woke up this morning…”.

We asked R., but he had too much writing to do so shortly before noon we got on the road.

Now this particular restaurant lies across the border in neighboring France and for several years has always created a challenge in accessing it, which is probably why we have taken to trying it on Sunday instead of during the work week.

They are building – or rather enlarging, rebuilding and in short totally messing up the whole thing – the main road that goes past this particular Chinese buffet restaurant. Normally a 15-minute drive, it had changed into 20 minutes (shoot past it a couple of miles and turn left then left to get back on the opposite side for an off ramp); then finally 25 (no left hand turn so all the way to the next town then a u turn on the roundabout). However, at some point on one of the return trips, we had discovered another small village, which made the road shorter, so we tried to memorize (with a notable lack of success) the return path in hopes of finding it going the other way.

After a couple of trials several months apart, I thought that just perhaps I could re-trace it.

First weird thing – we had to check several times our memories and my calendar to make sure that we were Sunday as I have never – and I mean never – seen as much traffic on a Sunday as there was today and it wasn’t just one road, but everyone that we took!

Secondly – managed to actually exit properly at the round about (first time I recall there being any signs whatsoever as to the village that we needed to cross).

Ah, but then it all fell apart: roadblock in the middle of the village due to the yearly “vide grenier” (literally an emptying out of one’s attic), At that point it had been far enough from the round about that I wasn’t willing to re-trace my steps, so off we went, first ending up in the school parking lot, then traveling farther up the mountain turning right a couple of times hoping to be beyond the fair: no such luck.

Another left hand turn, yet further up the mountain and finally a long, very narrow and winding road (actually I would describe more as a paved path), which actually went through and we found ourselves back in a neighborhood that I recognized, albeit there also the road had changed.

It was a beautiful day, the scenery and views overlooking the lake gorgeous, even the back of the Salève was interesting: of course this was the one out of a hundred times that I had no camera in the car!

Arriving at the restaurant we were almost afraid that we would find it closed, but Lady Luck after having led us a merry chase smiled upon us and we enjoyed our made-even-more-delicious-for-the-trial-endured Chinese buffet.

As Jerry Seinfeld put it “Sometimes, the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason”!

Road to Nowhere