On day two of our time in Annecy my wife and I, along with our dog, rode our bikes around the Lake.
This was our first time taking the bikes on a trip with us so we were pretty excited about the whole ordeal and I would even say that it was probably the highlight of our trip overall.
One nice thing was that the ride was pretty easy too, even for beginners like us. The path travels around the entire lake on a dedicated bike path and the terrain is mostly flat except for one large steep hill near the town of Talloires. That spot was a bit too much for us and we had to walk our bikes half way up the mountain. But we saw a few other people without electric bikes doing the same thing so we didn't feel too bad about it.
My wife keeps track of our trips on a biking app to measure our progress. Below are our stats for anyone who might be into that sort of thing. It also gives a bit of an idea of the difficulty of the route for those who may want to bike it themselves.
Children's Park
Our trip began at our hotel and brought us to our first point of interest - Parc aux Enfants, (or Children's Park). It's basically a large open field within the city next to the water. Here people gather to have picnics, play sports, or simply enjoy the sunshine.
At this point we were just starting our day and had only been biking for about 10 minutes or so. But we hadn't had breakfast yet so we got off our bikes to get a coffee and a breakfast sandwich "to go" at a local cafe.
The location in and around this area was beautiful and we weren't in a hurry so we took a few moments to explore the area.
Directly beside the field is a large "L" shaped canal called the Canal du Vasse. Here the boats and swans and ducks swim in the shade below a canopy of trees.
This spot was particularly nice so we sat down on one of the benches surrounding the canal to enjoy our breakfast. We watched the swans swimming in the water and gave the dog a moment to stretch his legs before being put back into his backpack for bike ride.
After our breakfast we walked our bikes across a narrow bridge called Pont des Amours (Lovers Bridge). Its a busy spot where friends and couples come to take photos of themselves looking out over the water.
As you can see in the photo below, the bridge does have a really great view. That day there were many people on the water on paddle boards and in small paddle boats.
The biking path continues on the other side of the bridge. It goes around another large park called Jardins de l'Europe (or Europe's Garden) which is filled with a variety of different trees including a few large Redwoods. There are also a few different art installations which are pretty cool.
Some of the artwork can be seen at night as well. For instance, in the picture below you can see a cluster of trees behind a brass monument.
The trees sit on a small island on the water.
At night a projector shines an image of a house onto that exact location. The result is a 3D projection of a house on the backdrop of trees. It's surprisingly realistic looking and very cool and hard to tell that its projected onto trees. I was quite impressed when we stumbled upon it one night.
Once we were finished exploring the park we made our way back onto the bike path and settled in for the second leg of our trip.
Duingt and Talloires
Duingt is a very small town located next to the water. Its a short drive from Annecy and took us about 40 minutes to get there on our bikes. I wouldn't say that there is a whole lot to do there but I was happy to take a quick stop to look around.
One thing that was pretty cool was the towns small castle. Its located on a peninsula connected to land and we had seen it the day before from the mountain side during our hike that first day. I was interested to see what it looked like up close.
There were also some pretty amazing views in and around the area as well, especially from the bridge in the photo below. The bridge looks out over the blue water and is a great place to take photos. Funny enough, one of our friends from back home actually recognized the spot when my wife posted a picture on her social media account. It turns out that the friend had taken a photo in that location a few years ago. Its a popular spot I suppose.
Below is a view of the other side of the castle taken from the bridge.
The next leg of our trip was the longest and definitely the most difficult . Things started to get a little more challenging when construction work took us away from the cycling path and onto the road among the traffic.
Once we got through that we came to the small town of Talloires where road got a bit more hilly and we had to walk our bikes. It didn't help that I was carrying a 7-8 kg dog on my back. We got some nice views going up the hill though.
We didn't take too many pictures of ourselves along the way but here is one of me and the dog. Surprisingly the dog quite likes it when we take him for bike rides. I guess for a dog a bike is the next best thing to sticking its head out of a car window.
In total we spent about 3.5 - 4 hours biking around the lake including our stops. It was a great way to get outside and explore the area and would highly recommend it for anyone visiting the area.
That’s it for now. Thanks for Reading
If you are interested in reading more about our trip you can view the previous post by clicking the link below.