Such a nice sleep in our chateau last night. It's very peaceful here.

Jeff went out for a walk early in the morning to take photos and ended up going for 5kms! He also came back with some breakfast - what a good boy . We had a selection of quiche, croissants, raisin scrolls, apple something and pain au chocolat to munch on while admiring the view of the chateau from our apartment window. Delish but it's a good thing we are leaving tomorrow or we'd all end up fat as pigs! He ordered all of this in French too – very impressive Monsieur!

On the road about 10:30am after doing a few things first. Annecy was a lot larger than we anticipated so we're all glad we didn't have to come all the way in here last night to find some dinner.

Headed for the Gare as usually they are located centrally to old towns or lake shores and yep, bingo we found the lake, the canal section and the tourism office. We're so good we even fluked parking in a carpark directly underneath the tourism office. Voila!

Tourism guy was really helpful and didn't sniff at us for not speaking French. Armed with a map of walking tours we walked along the first canal towards the lake . The water was so incredibly clear in the canal and we could see heaps of quite large poissons (fish) swimming around.

Within minutes we'd strayed away from our chosen walking tour to go "wow" at the lake. The water colour ... just phenomenal. Such a beautiful and vibrant turquoise blue - the colour reminded me a lot of Lake Louise except the water here was so much clearer.

So yes, we succumbed to the handsome tout spruiking a 1hr lake cruise (well I succumbed haha ... Jeff was immune to his charms).

They’re very protective of the environment around the lake here and it sure shows. Where we boarded the boat the lake was 8m deep, but the water was so clear it seemed much shallower than that.

Lac Annecy is fed by springs and streams with the site of the main spring being 45m below the surface. The deepest point in the lake is a whopping 82m! As we boated around we were told that one village on the lake shore here is the third most expensive place to buy real estate in all of France . Paris is first and Nice is second. Interesting and it makes me wonder if George might be looking to add another lakeside home to his portfolio?

After our cruise we continued on our walking tour and immediately fell in love with the canals and old town area of Annecy. Oh my, so very, very beautiful! And yes, touristy, but not with that frantic hunt for the dollar vibe that you feel in so many popular places. As with the lake, the water in the canals is as clear as a clear thing can be. It flows at a fair old rate too, around and between and sometimes even under the buildings. There's even a canal under the massive Notre Dame church here.

We had lunch of Croque Monsieurs for Jeff & I (essentially a ham and cheese toasty) and Bev had a huge chicken sandwich with a Cinderella cocktail. Ooh la lah!

Surprisingly (and disappointingly for Bev), there were not many souvenir shops here (lots of shops selling market style clothes though) and not too many tourists . For such a pretty place we expected it to be a little overrun but haven't seen a raised umbrella all day and the selfie stick count is at an all-time low of three!

When our eyes couldn’t take anymore of the pretty overload, we decided to go for a little drive around the lake. I cat napped and woke up to find Jeff had decided to “just see where that road goes…” and we were high up in the hills above Lake Annecy. The view was excellent and the lake looked very pretty, but now we don't smell very pretty (or at least the car doesn't) as we drove over some liquid cow poop a farmer was spraying on his field. Avis won't be happy tomorrow! Good thing we're returning the car to Geneva and not Paris or they might not accept it!

Went back into Annecy old town for dinner and this time Bev had a "Pussy" cocktail - she's getting into this the saucy minx!

After dinner we strolled the canals for another couple of hours. About 9:30pm by now and the sky was lit up with beautiful dusk colours. The water was flowing gently through the canals and lights were illuminating the old buildings. Cameras out and lots of photos taken! What a beautiful place to spend the last day of our trip. Annecy, you've delivered!

Tomorrow we fly out of Geneva. It’s been a wonderful trip and we’ve seen so many beautiful places and experienced so many amazing things.

Until the next time Europe, Auf Wiedersehen, Arrivederci and Au revoir. x