After the long ride through Switzerland, we arrived in Annecy in the late afternoon. It’s a small city in south eastern France. It belongs to the region Rhône-Alpes and is the capital of the Departement Haute-Savoie.
Does anyone in Germany know Annecy? We don’t know anyone being there before. On a quick research, we couldn’t find any information in other German travel blogs.
Nevertheless, we didn’t want to be that unprepared when in Annecy. We found a little bit in English or American travel blogs and at Annecy’s city homepage.
Lac d’Annecy – Getting away from it all
The city is quite popular for the French and the English, who want to avoid the trouble at the Mediterranean in summer. It’s located at the beautiful Lac d’Annecy, a lake inviting you to jump in on hot days.
The piers were full of people: People of every age are here and the French love their lake. You can see it and you can feel it. There is a very good atmosphere here. The lake’s water is of best quality. The air is totally fresh and the heat standable. The city is surrounded by huge mountains.
Our highlight: Sunset over Lac d’Annecy from Menthon St. Bernard, where we had our overnight stay. We’re always happy about seeing a beautiful sunset, but this one came unexpectedly beautiful.
Great location
In our opinion, the region around Menthon St. Bernard was perfect. First: It’s calm, it has parking spaces and not a long distance to the lake. Secondly: The city is not too far away and the parking garage at the Hôtel de Ville is not expensive.
Just as mentioned before, we arrived at our airbnb room in the late afternoon. A beautiful apartment with a parking space – which was perfect for us. Unfortunately our host’s English wasn’t very well, so communication was a bit difficult. But they had a very cool dog and talking with hands and feet is even more fun.
There was a restaurant at the lake with English speaking waitresses, which cannot be taken for granted in France. Not many Germans were here in Annecy. We even think, there were no Germans at all in Annecy. How can that happen? I mean, it’s France and usually we’re everywhere.
Old Town of Annecy
Same goes for the Old Town. We could recognize some Americans by their accent. But Germans? Nowhere. We were confused. Well, just said before, we hadn’t heard so much of this place before, but obviously we expected something else.
Nevertheless, the Old Town was beautiful. It reminded us a bit of Colmar in Alsace.
The Palais de l’Isle, Annecy’s landmark, stands in the river Thiou and was built in the 12th century on a natural rock. In the course of time, it was used as a prison and a court-house. Nowadays it contains the Museum of local history.
We loved the alleys and canal streets of the Old Town, but you can see everything very quick. It’s really small. There are a lot of restaurants and bars along the canals and everything is lighted up. Prices: high. Like almost everywhere in France.
What would we love to see or do, if we had had more time? Seeing Château d’Annecy and making a boat trip over the lake.
Was there something we didn’t like? Yes, traffic on weekends on the main roads. But this happens everywhere.
Would we return? Yes, but for a vacation at the lake.
The next day, we headed to Provence!
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