Talloires

Everyone who visits Lac d’Annecy ends up talking about the town itself, the canals and the Palais de l’Île, and almost nobody I know back home mentions Talloires, a small village on the lake’s eastern shore about twenty minutes’ drive south. That’s a mistake, and it’s the kind of mistake I was happy to make myself, because it meant arriving with no expectations and leaving wondering why this side of the lake isn’t the one on every postcard.

Monks picked the view first

Talloires exists because of an abbey. Benedictine monks founded a priory here in the ninth century, drawn — according to the somewhat suspicious consistency of monastic real estate choices across the Alps — to a sheltered bay with good fishing and a view that would make anyone reconsider a vow of austerity. The Abbaye de Talloires still stands, much altered over the centuries and now partly a hotel, its stone facade facing directly onto the water. We walked the shoreline path below it in the early evening, past the small harbour where a handful of wooden boats sat moored, and the bay was so still it doubled the mountains behind it in the water without a ripple to break the reflection.

Eating at the water’s edge

Talloires has quietly been a serious food destination for over a century — the Auberge du Père Bise, right on the lakefront, held Michelin stars for decades and helped put lakeside French dining on the international map long before Annecy town became an Instagram staple. We didn’t book anywhere nearly that grand, just a small restaurant with a terrace a few metres from the water, and ate a whole grilled féra — the local whitefish that only really exists in this lake and Lac Léman — while the light went orange over the Roc de Chère nature reserve across the bay. Lia, who has strong opinions about fish being overcooked, declared it the best lake fish either of us had eaten in France, and I didn’t argue.

Beyond the eating, Talloires makes an excellent quiet base for walking — the Roc de Chère headland just south of the village has shaded trails that dip down to hidden coves along the lake, far calmer than the beaches near Annecy town in July, and Cézanne is said to have painted here for exactly the reason you’d guess: the light off the water does something to the colour of the hills that’s hard to describe and easy to want to paint.

When to go: June and September offer the best balance of warm swimmable water and manageable crowds. July and August bring the full French holiday crush to the lakefront restaurants, so book ahead if visiting in peak summer; the shoulder months let Talloires’s quieter charm actually show through.