Annecy, the Venice of the Alps

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Venice!  of the Alps!

I've never been to Venice in Italy, so I don't know what real Venice is like, but I sure do love this one in the Alps! We visited a lot of beautiful places in Europe during our time there, but Annecy is up there as one of the most charming ones we've seen!

It was a last minute addition to our trip, so it wasn't planned out at all.  Instead, we enjoyed walking, walking, and walking some more!

My iphone tells me that we walked around 8-9 miles a day during our time in Annecy, which is pretty impressive because this town is not that big at all!  haha.  But we did do a lot of walking back and forth from the beach to our airbnb as well as our signature getting lost/aimless wanderings that criss-crossed the town, so maybe that's why our mileage was so high!  

But I never minded the walking because I felt like I was in Beauty and the Beast!

I know there's a new movie starring Emma Watson, and this isn't exactly what the background looked like, but this place looks exactly like how I have imagined the little French town to look from my childhood.  

Maybe it's the pastel coloring of the buildings?  Anyone else feel that way?  haha

The most iconic building in Annecy has to be this chateau.  If you google Annecy, the first picture that will come up is probably their famous chateau on the canal.  Sadly, when we visited, it was under construction, probably so that it will be ready to flaunt its beauty come tourist season.  So that was a bit of a bummer, but we really enjoyed the calmer environment of Annecy during the off season, so we have no complaints! =)

Annecy is also famous for the lake, so we did go visit the beach.  However, as you can see here, the day was kind of overcast, and though it never rained as it was projected to do, it was still a bit too cold for us to go swimming.  We walked back to town proper, hoping to swim the next day!

And you know what happened?  As soon as we returned to town, it became super sunny!

Oh mountain weather  haha.

Instead of going back to the beach, we decided to explore the town more and leave the beach and the basilica for the next day.

Whenever we got tired, we took a gelato break, or a coffee break, or a crepe break, and we would highly recommend taking all three of these breaks!  We also learned that the traditional macarons do not have the filling in between to hold the two cookies together!  So interesting!  It made it much less sweet, and I actually kind of preferred the no-filling version  =)

Ahh, having the canal walkways almost to ourselves...  

This could never happen during the high tourist seasons of course, so even if it might be too cold to swim during the early part of June, it was definitely worth it for this beautifully serene atmosphere.

We walked around until the sun went down, did some grocery shopping, and came back to our Airbnb to cook dinner.

A perfect day in the French Alps, I must say  =)

We slept like babies, hoping that the weather would warm up so that we could enjoy one last dip in Europe before heading back to the states.

Stay tuned to see if we got to jump into this beautiful lake!  ;)

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

-Janny