45 54’58” N. 6 07′ 59″ E
Annecy in the Savoie region in France is the gateway to the snow sports resorts in the Mont Blanc area. In summer it is a tourist haven which boasts a lake, ice cream, dogs on holidays and the most photographed monument in France. Or so the tourist brochure claims. On this trip we have become more and more aware of the inflated claims of tourist guides. My money is still on the Eiffel Tower, or maybe Notre Dame de Paris given the number of people out the front on any given day. The Annecy tourist bureau think it is an obscure stone building in the middle of a river. Make up your own mind.
Lake Annecy
In the summer, at least, the most important feature of Annecy is the lake. The lake is about 15 km long and 3 km wide at is widest point. It is reportedly 82 m deep at its deepest, which is not out in the middle somewhere, but right at the beginning near Annecy itself. The locals have been unusually prescient, realising that a lake with clean water is much preferable to a lake full of sewage and so back sometime in the 1980s they constructed a sewerage ring collector around the lake and captured all the waste water for treatment – resulting in the claim that Lake Annecy is the cleanest lake in France. It certainly looked clean. And cold.
The lake is central to Annecy life – and the most expensive real estate, hotels and boats are all teetering over the edge of the lake or actually in it – even if they seem like they have never been used. And so it has been for centuries, because the most prominent old buildings are also clustered in the same locations.
Little Venice and Water Engineers
There seem to be a few streams flowing through Annecy into the lake. Put streams, a lake and French water engineers together over the centuries and you are guaranteed to find every type of weir, diversion and steam improvement imaginable. Over time they become features for tourists to photograph, so it is not all wasted. They were soon followed, as is the French progression, by gardeners planting flowers and artists installing whatever it is they install – in this case metal frames depicting boats in a river.
Dogs and Ice Cream
While the lake is an important part of the experience of Annecy, and the old buildings and most photographed monument are featured in the tourist propaganda, the most prominent attraction on the ground is ice cream. I saw at least ten ice cream vendors with almost identical names within a few small lanes in old Annecy. I saw many more people partaking of their product.
In France people take their dogs on holiday. Annecy is a place of happy dogs looking at the most photographed monument in France and eating ice cream.
TGV
The final and, for us, the most important part of Annecy is that it is the end of the line for the TGV or to put it another way, the beginning of the line! We chose Annecy for a short sojourn prior to our visit to Paris partly because it allowed a quick TGV trip to Gare de Lyon. The train departed at 5.32am, so we stayed in an apartment five minutes walk from the station and set out at 4:30am to leave plenty of space for error. No one tells you that the station does not even open until 5am and the essential services are not available until some unspecified later time.
