Aix-Les-Bains à Ladoix-Serrigny

A sculpture using an old tree

After breakfasting at the hotel, we went for a bit more of a wander around Aix-Les-Bains.  It is a spa town with hot baths to which Duchess of York has apparently visited.  It seems to be its one claim to fame.  It was a rather lovely place to wander in such brilliant sunny weather.  After a coffee we went down to the Port where there were boats to take trips on the lake.  On the lake there were lots of yachts racing or they seemed to be although some of the skills required for competitive racing were not in evidence.

Le dent du chat above the lake

Our first stop was to be Annecy which is about 60 kms from Aix-Les-Bains.  We decided to take a drive along the lakeshore to the top of the lake.  It was an interesting drive as we were well above the lake and it would make an interesting bike ride with some serious effort required.  I thought it would be a good idea to then go on to

Lac du Bourget

Annecy from there but decided that I needed some route guidance as I had no idea where we were in relation to Annecy. It was a good decision, as we had to backtrack a bit then go up the side of what was almost a cliff to a Col (high pass). It was very steep and scarily narrow. Amazingly, there were even a couple of bike riders on the road.  There were several times I had to pass cars and  narrowly missed scraping our car. In situations like this having a SUV is not a good option when driving on such narrow roads.  Eventually we go to the top but disappointingly,  there was nowhere close by to stop and look at the view. 

La fontaine - the name given to our street

We decided to take the back roads to Annecy and the intention was to stop there but it seemed that the nice weather had put every car on the road and into the car parks so unfortunately there was nowhere we could stop.  Instead we continued on.  Bev thought the place looked lovely and is now on a future itinerary.

We continued to avoid the motorways for about an hour and then had a break just before we joined the autoroute(if we had not it would have taken another couple of hours to get to our desitination).  It was nice to get out and stretch our legs.  The café we went into had a lot of Indian people there who we discerned must be on a tour because someone came and ushered them back to their bus using English which was cute given that most were speaking what I would assume was Hindi.

Relaxing after a day of driving at  Ladoix-Serrigny

I took Bev through the Chassagne-Montrachet and Meursault vineyard area before went through Beaune to our destination in Ladoix-Serrigny which is a cute little village about 6 kilometres north of Beaune.   Our studio apartment was surprisingly lovely with a gorgeous little outdoor setting with which to enjoy a drink and relax.  On  first impressions we would have happily come back and spend more time there.