Some fifteen kilometres long, Lake Annecy stretches between the Bauges massif to the west and the foothills of the Aravis to the east. At its northern tip, the old town lines up its ochre and pink façades along the Thiou and its canals, around the Palais de l'Isle, a 12th-century former prison set in the middle of the water. The rest of the lake belongs to its villages, Veyrier, Menthon, Talloires and Duingt, linked by cliff-top roads and by the boats of the lake's ferry company.
Golf here is played on the slope. The courses occupy hillsides, wooded plateaus and former farmland, with changes in elevation that call for careful club selection and greens that must be read with the general fall of the land in mind. The Talloires course overlooks the water, the one at Giez commands the plain south of the lake, and Esery looks out to the Mont Blanc range. None is especially long; all of them ask for accuracy rather than power.
The other reason to come is the table. Three houses on or above the lakeshore hold seven Michelin stars between them, and Savoyard cheese, from reblochon to beaufort, feeds the great kitchens as readily as the fondue pots of the old town. Three to five nights are enough to play all three courses, drive round the lake and keep an evening for a memorable dinner.
