Annecy; Sunday, 05 May, 2024

I’d booked a morning tour out of the city with the same people – in fact it was the same bus and driver – as the city tour to explore a little more of the nearby countryside. The tour heads out from Annecy two mornings a week (Sunday and Wednesday) to the small village of Lovagny home to two pretty impressive tourist sights.

The first stop on the tour is the Gorges du Fier, a 600m or so section of the Fier river that has carved its way through the mountains creating a spectacular and very deep gorge which someone late in the 19th century thought would make an excellent tourist site if you built a walkway bolted to the gorge wall a bit above the water line.

The first 300m of the walk are along this narrow walkway, made all the more impressive about halfway round where there is a marker showing the high-water marks of various floods over the years, from some which would have been scraping the bottom of the walkway, to some which were close to overtopping the gorge itself. The second part of the route is beyond the main cliffs of the gorge and the part where the water has carved a series of channels through the rock to create a labyrinth of passageways where the water churns away all the time, wearing more of the rock away, before shortly afterwards emerging into a gently flowing wide and shallow river as though the last 600m of turmoil and hydrological power had never existed.

From the Gorge it was a short drive up into the hills above to visit the Château de Montrottier. Originally a 12th century fortification the building passed through many hands before ending up as a pleasant manor house home in the ownership of Léon Marès a wealthy collector who, having no children of his own, left the castle and his collections to the Académie florimontane on the condition they kept the collection together, kept the castle open to the public so they could view the collection, and allowed for him to be buried in the grounds. Today the castle is still owned by the Académie florimontane and the public can still wander round the building – though to access the collections you must be on a tour, a private version of which was given to the bus tour.

After looking round the castle it was back onto the bus for the short 20 or so minute drive back into Annecy and after stopping off for lunch in the city centre, I headed back up to the Château d’Annecy to have a look around the museums located inside there. I had originally planned on visiting them on Saturday, but a quick check on the website for Annecy Museums showed that the first Sunday of the Month from October to May the museums were all free – so why pay an entrance fee on the Saturday when you can get in free the following day. The Château is home to two museums – one the art collection of the city and the second on the archaeology and ecology of the region with a focus on Lake Annecy as well as Lake Geneva and a couple of other of the lakes linked with the Rhône River. From up in the castle grounds there are also pretty good views over the city and the lake.

Next up it was down into the heart of the old town and one of the iconic buildings of the city – the Palais de I'Île. Located on an island in Le Thiou this triangular shaped building has spent much of it’s time as a prison, though in more recent years has become a museum dedicated to architecture, as well as open for tourists to explore the cells and dungeons of the building. Again, as part of the city museums it was free to look around today so I decided this would be a good time to visit.

Having taken in all of the historic museums in the city centre (the only other city museum dedicated to Animation isn’t open on the weekends) I had a bit more of a wander through the old town before heading back to the hotel to freshen up and then a little later going out for a wander to take some photos of the city at night and to grab a light bite to eat, given I was still pretty full from a big lunch.

Then it was back to the hotel just as the first drops of rain started to fall, a nightcap and bed.