Tag Archives: Lake Annecy

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Fancy in Annecy… Our first look at Hotel Les Grillons, a hotel where food is the star attraction! part three

A staffer at Hotel Les Grillons met us at the door as we approached with some of our luggage.  An adorably pregnant young woman sat behind the reception desk and greeted us in perfect British English.  Actually, at first, I thought she sounded more like an Aussie than a Brit.  However, I soon realized that her French was just as perfect as her English was.  I don’t know if she was a product of parents from two countries or just had unusually good language training.  In any case, I got the sense that this was her hotel.  She handed us the key to room 25, which was on the third floor and had a nice view of the mountains and the lake.

By the front door…

 

The lovely young woman, whom I am going to assume was Aurelie Blanchin, advised us that the pool was unheated but available, as was the heated outdoor jacuzzi.  We booked the “half-board” option, which meant dinner was included in our rate.  The chef, Sébastien, makes a four course meal each night.  If there’s something on it you don’t like or can’t eat, you can let them know before 5:00pm and they will make substitutions.  I was delighted with the three dinners we had at the hotel.  We opted to go a more casual route last night.  More on that in a future post.

This was our humongous bed.  I was glad I brought an extra pillow, as I usually do here in Europe.  Bill wished he’d brought his, too.  This bed had a light duvet, one regular sized pillow, and one throw pillow.  Naturally, there is no air conditioning, but the window can be opened for a nice lake breeze.  There are also bugs, but they didn’t bother us too much.  The mattress was a little firm for me, but I’m used to sleeping on a feather bed.  I got used to it the firmer mattress after the first night.

These were our first views from our window.  They got better the next day, when the sun came out.

The bathroom, with nice herbal scented, wall-mounted toiletries.  I’m not a fan of those divider thingies, because they never keep the water off the floor.  Such was the case here, too, although the shower got great pressure.

Separate WC.

Large wardrobe with a safe.

 

Hotel Les Grillons has rooms that face the back of the hotel, as well as a few rooms on the second floor that have small balconies.  I happened to get the last room available for Saturday night– I think a large British tour group came through– otherwise, the other nights, the hotel was reasonably full, but not packed.

Every morning, the menu is placed in a framed easel in the lobby.  The above was what we were offered on our first night.  Drinks are not included in the half board rate, but they will give you a pitcher of tap water.  Not that we stuck with tap water, mind you.

Actually, we had a couple of big, French beers…

Bill soaks in the atmosphere as I watched the fish in the big aquarium next to where I was sitting.  My husband has come to love France.  Dinner service begins at 7:30pm and guests are invited to sit where they’d like between 7:30 and 8:30.

Bill chose a nice local red to go with dinner.  The wines were very reasonably priced.  In fact, I think they were a better deal than the beers.

First course… A carrot mousse, with fresh salad greens.  Every dinner also included a basket of fresh bread.

I made sure to get this wine on film so I can look for it locally.  It was a very pleasant, dry red that tasted of currants.

Next came perfectly cooked duck breast with cabbage, pears, and polenta…

Bill had a cheese course, which included a couple of local cheeses.  One was from a fromagerie just down the road from the hotel.  We passed it on our unplanned alternate route to the lake.

I had dessert, which Bill skipped.  It was a very light vanilla mousse with pineapple, whipped cream, and a fresh strawberry.

Once dinner was over, we were more than ready to call it a day.  And both of us were raving about how good the food and the service were.  It seemed odd not to tip anyone, but there’s really no way we could have.

Incidentally, during our first two nights, there was a family with two young children sitting near us.  The kids were well accommodated.  They even had a menu for them.

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Fancy in Annecy… but first, a little Swiss piss… part two

The weather on May 3rd, 2018 was looking kind of cold and dismal.  It was chilly enough in Germany, and it appeared that we might have some bad weather in France, too.  In fact, The Weather Channel was even predicting avalanches for the Annecy area.  Because I wasn’t sure what to expect, I packed clothes for every occasion.  I ended up bringing more than I really needed to, especially since after the first night, we had absolutely glorious weather.

A couple of weeks ago, Bill and I got stuck in a horrendous traffic jam on A81 when we decided to go to the ADAC office at Breuningerland in Sindelfingen to pick up a couple of Swiss vignettes.  For those who don’t know, here’s a brief explanation.  If you drive through Switzerland, you need a “vignette”, which is basically a sticker that proves you paid the yearly toll.  It costs 40 Swiss Francs or 35,75 euros.  The 2018 vignette is valid from December 1, 2017 until January 31st, 2019.  The stickers are available at the border, or you can order them and have them sent in the mail.  Most of the time, it’s very easy to just go to the mall and get them, although we may think twice about that next year!

Anyway, after Bill took the dogs to Max’s and put the sticker on my Mini Cooper convertible, we were ready to go.  The Mini Cooper is another reason why I wanted to leave the dogs in Germany.  Annecy is the kind of place that just begs for a convertible.  My car doesn’t get driven enough and it’s super fun to take it on the Autobahn, even if my husband’s RAV 4 is somewhat more comfortable and roomy.  When I saw the clouds in the sky on Thursday morning, I was afraid the trip might be wasted in my little car.  Luckily, as you’ll see as this series progresses, we had perfect convertible weather.

I guess these things had to come from somewhere.

Our trip south started off relatively uneventfully.  We headed down A81, passed the big phallic looking tower near Rottweil, and crossed into Switzerland.  I always get a kick out of the area near the border, since there’s a big Wunderbaum factory there.  Wunderbaum is the company that makes those “trees” you hang in your car to make it smell “fresh”.  Other than that, the Swiss/German border is a pretty boring place.  Actually, I was hoping for a beautiful drive like we had last year when we drove through Switzerland to get to Italy.  Unfortunately, the GPS sent us a different way.  Apparently, the main highway was closed for some reason.  Consequently, we went through some truly ugly parts of Switzerland… very industrial and not at all picturesque.

As the morning continued, I started getting hungry.  Bill agreed it was time for lunch.  He went into a town and then, inexplicably, decided that it wasn’t a suitable place to find food.  Time went on… I got hungrier.  Then I had to pee.  For some reason, Bill kept driving.  He was hoping to find a nice local restaurant, rather than a fast food place or highway restaurant.  Usually, when we travel with the dogs, we end up eating fast food.  Since we didn’t have them with us this time, he wanted to avoid that.  Good plan.  Except I get super bitchy when I’m hungry and have to pee.

Finally, as we got closer to Bern, I told Bill I didn’t care where he stopped, but I really needed to whiz.  At that point, I’d been holding it for a couple of hours.  It was also getting pretty late for lunch. Just as restaurants in Germany close for “pauses” between lunch and dinner, so do they in Switzerland and France.  It was about 1:30pm when he finally started searching for a place.  We passed an Italian restaurant that had parking out front and was curiously co-located with an Indian restaurant that also sold saris.  I kind of demanded that Bill stop there.  Drei Könige to the rescue!

Bill, being the sport he is, took the liberty of ordering a half carafe of house red while I took care of business.  Then, he took his turn.

See that look on Bill’s face?  I wasn’t the only one who needed to pee.

 

There was only one other guy in the restaurant when we visited and he was finishing up.  We had the waitress’s undivided attention as we decided on pasta dishes.

I had Spaghetti Carbonara, a dish I’d never had before I started dating Bill.  It’s pretty rich, since it’s made with egg, cream, and bacon.  The waitress brought me a huge serving, too.  It looked like they’d dumped a whole box of spaghetti into the pot.  I didn’t come close to finishing this and we couldn’t take it with us.  I will admit that it hit the spot, almost as well as the surprisingly good house red was. I don’t know what the house red was, but it was excellent.

Bill had spicy penne pasta that came in a more manageable size.  I liked his dish, with its sassy little peppery kick.

This was in both the men’s and ladies’ rooms.  It’s basically a natural aid for guys with large prostates.  I don’t know why this was in the ladies room, but I couldn’t resist sharing it.  I love this kind of stuff.

 

Switzerland is expensive.  This simple lunch set us back about 88 Swiss francs– that’s roughly akin to the same amount in US dollars.  However, the waitress was very kind to us and even mistook us for Germans.  I was surprised about that, since although we were speaking German, it was pretty terrible German.  She seemed genuinely surprised that Americans were dining in her restaurant.  She asked if I wanted to take the rest of the pasta, but it wasn’t feasible.  She agreed that it was a very large portion of pasta, even for a “truck” like me.  (“Truck” is a nickname a chef at a restaurant where I once waited tables gave me because I could carry up to nine entrees at a time.)

I snapped this photo as we were leaving…  just in time for them to take their “pause”.  Yes, I would eat there again.  The food was good, even if it was a bit too much in terms of quantity and price.

 

We got back on the road and promptly hit traffic as we approached the French border…

I was a little slow on the draw, but you can see we were nowhere near Paris.

This was a bummer…

But I got a kick out of the change kiosk.  They don’t have one of these fancy ones at the German border.

Yea!

 

Okay… so here’s about where Bill started getting really antsy for Annecy.  There was a lot of traffic.  We had to pay about 7 euros in tolls and Bill didn’t get close enough to the machine to collect his change.  Then, we were in one of many confusing traffic circles.  Some guy honked at Bill when he was trying to figure out which exit to take, causing him to take the wrong one.  He started cussing and I told him to chill out.  And then, blessedly, we got on the right road to Annecy, although it was not the most direct route.  I started to see why so many people fall in love with this area.  The scenery is just stunning.

Suddenly, I saw misty mountains by the crystal clear lake…

I snapped pictures while Bill pissed off all the people behind him, including one woman who was very animatedly showing how exasperated she was.

But I’m glad Bill slowed down so I could get a few shots.  This was our only totally cloudy day.  We only had a few clouds on Friday.

 

Talloires is a world away from Annecy, which is a true city in every sense of the word.  There are several hotels in this area, as well as a large campground and a place that appeared to rent “tiny” houses by the lake.  We didn’t take the time to explore the camping or tiny house options, but I wanted to mention it for those who are into that kind of thing.  Here’s a Web site for one place we noticed last night.

We pulled into the parking lot at Hotel Les Grillons at about 5:00pm… just in time to freshen up for dinner.

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Fancy in Annecy… part one

Some time ago, when I was messing around on my computer, I read an article about beautiful European cities that often go unnoticed.  I don’t remember any of the cities on that list now, except for one…  Annecy, France.  This gorgeous city is in southeastern France, next to crystalline Lake Annecy, in the Haute-Savoie Department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.  Annecy is not far at all from either the Italian or Swiss borders; Geneva is only about 20 miles or so north.  And yet, until I read about Annecy in a random travel article, I had never heard of the place.

Just one of the romantic scenes in Annecy…

For months, I tried to finagle a visit down there.  I knew we’d need an extra long weekend.  I thought we might need to bring our dogs with us, since our pet sitter is routinely booked solid when the weather gets nice.  I kept searching for pet friendly accommodations that would be suitable for us, but came up empty-handed.  Finally, Bill suggested that we take a short trip from May 3rd until May 7th.  Okay… originally, he only wanted to do three nights.  Then I reminded him of how long it takes to drive through Switzerland, which we would have to do to get to Annecy.  And I showed him some pictures of the city, which is very beautiful.  He asked for four nights and got them.  Fortunately, Max, the dog sitter, was able to take Zane and Arran.

Next, I went searching for a hotel.  Initially, I was very excited about booking a hotel instead of a pet friendly apartment or vacation home.  Once again, as I searched for suitable lodging, I kept running into issues that were dealbreakers.  Finally, thanks to Booking.com’s helpful location suggestions, I found us an unforgettable hotel called Hotel Les Grillons in the small hamlet of Talloires, which is about a twenty minute drive from Annecy.  Having now been to Annecy, I have to say that I am very glad I didn’t book a hotel in the city itself.  I’ll explain more about that later.

Yes, you can go boating… or parasailing… or just simply dream by the lakeside.

Suffice to say that we had four great nights at Hotel Les Grillons, a three star property next to the lake and boasting a beautiful pool area.  What really makes this hotel awesome, though, is the FOOD!  If you’re in my food and wine Facebook group, you may have already seen some of the pictures.  I was able to book half board, which included dinner every night.  Although we opted not to eat dinner at the hotel on the fourth night, we did enjoy three delicious multi-course meals.  A buffet breakfast was also included.  More on that, too, in a later post.

As usual, I’ll be breaking up my stories about this journey into several parts, so if this first post intrigues you, please be sure to follow along.  I took a lot of absolutely gorgeous pictures on this trip, which wasn’t hard to do.  Annecy and the surrounding area is just plain beautiful.

First thing’s first, though.  I had to learn how to pronounce “Annecy”.  Don’t make the mistake I made by called it “Ann-eh-cee”.  It’s two syllables and rhymes with “fancy” or “Nancy” (which is also a beautiful French city!).

There are videos out there, mostly made by Americans, pronouncing Annecy as if it has three syllables; but every French pronunciation I’ve heard, including within the actual city, sounds like the guy in this video.

Now that the introductions are out of the way, I shall commence to blogging.  I took the whole weekend off just so I could enjoy France properly.  Now that I’m home again, I’m ready to dish!

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