After a day of rain, which I understand very much matches the weather in the UK, a day of walking ended with a rainbow!  This photo was taken on the balcony of the hotel where I’m staying, in the part of Annecy that was part of its expansion, to great fanfare, in the last 1950s and early 1960s.  Learning about Annecy in its two museums has been very interesting – in some ways, its creation and then its expansion in the 19th and 20th centuries mimic that of Bologna, where I was last week – both have harnessed the power of water as part of its industrial revolution, both were brought investment and property through the railway and improved transport links and both invested not just in tourism but manufacturing in the 1950s, meaning that the local economy has more than one strand to rely upon.  The industry in this part of France is fairly diverse, as in Bologna, and both are areas that value expertise as part of its quality and pride.  Local to here is one of the main church bell factories (for the whole world!) as well as manufacturing ski equipment (not a surprise – Mont Blanc is a short bus ride away), also the Gillette factory for France, and other specialisms.  There is currently an excellent exhibition in the Palais de l’ile museum on the subject, which, as you can tell, really caught my attention.

The museums here are interesting – counter-intuitively in respect of size, I found the Palais de l’ile the more interesting of the two, even though it is a tiny former prison and Court building at the head of the river as it flows in to Lake Annecy.  The castle was the former home of the Duke of Geneva round these parts – for 500 years, Annecy and this part of Savoy were part of the Dukedom of Geneva and were part of the Swiss canton in tradition.  In 1860, under the watch (he visited at the time to make sure it happened) of Napoleon III, this part of Savoy became part of France.  I’ve not been to this part of France before and found learning about Savoy culture and the links it maintains to Switzerland very interesting – including exciting news (for public transport fans – I am one!) of a literal link – yesterday, for the first time, a tram service ran between Switzerland and France.  The Swiss border is still something to be navigated on public transport going over the border but the test tram yesterday between Geneva and Annamasse just over the French border will hopefully make that a bit easier. 

It’s not difficult in the main – I’ve been over the Swiss border a number of times on trains and have become used to seeing Swiss border guards get on the train (with their guns) on the non-Swiss side, ask anybody not white for their passport (sophisticated profiling!), and get off the train on the Swiss side.  I’ve known this take a few minutes or up to an hour, depending on who is on the train and how thorough the border patrol is being, including around customs duties (some trains now leaving/departing from France have compulsory bag searches and customs forms completed, something I’m really not used to with Schengen). I’ve been on sleeper trains and ours has been a compartment chosen at 3 am to have torches shined within to make sure we are not harbouring a couple of additional people – this makes sense as both times we have booked a four-berth compartment but there have only been 2 names on the booking.  J has managed to sleep through this whole experience!  It will be very interesting to see how the border functions on a public tram service that will run several times an hour . . .

However, this was not meant to be a Treatise on Public Transport and border crossings (Brexit, you bastard, comes to mind).  Instead, here are some pictures from a walk today (moody skies and low cloud), a bicycle ride around the whole of Lake Annecy (blues of many hues) and a boat ride on the first evening here, with the most laid-back Capitain I’ve ever known.  I felt as much as one with the water as he did.  Tomorrow, onward to Lyon and, I hope, a lot of art.