Ice Cream in Annecy; Fondue in Geneva

    Here I am in our hotel in Geneva, after having had fondue for dinner, wishing I could have some ice cream from one of the fantastic ice cream shops in Annecy. On our last full day in Annecy we decided to do a comparison of some of the ice cream places in town.  There are ice cream shops all over the center of the town, as there were in the small town of Yvoire, where we had stayed last weekend.  When we spent a week in Annecy in April 2009, we visited one particular shop – Glacier des Alpes – several times, and never experimented with any others, because it was so good.  Amazingly, when we stopped at this shop this week, the proprietor came up to us and said hello and shook our hand, saying that he remembered us from last year.  Since this place is always swarming with business, I couldn’t believe that he remembered us.  And this afternoon, when we had an ice cream there after lunch just before leaving for Geneva, he did what he did last year on our final visit – he gave Ann her ice cream without charge; but not mine.
  Here's the shop before it opened for the day:

      Here's a view of it from our hotel window, at the end of the narrow street:

    In any event, we decided to try some other places to see how they compared with that shop. At first it was going to be a “scientific” test, comparing each shop’s Noisette (hazelnut) -- which is Ann’s favorite – and Cassis – which is one of my favorites.  However, several places didn’t have Noisette, so we couldn’t follow through on that.  Also, we found it impossible to try every place, since there were too many of them and we got full too fast.  The verdict – all were good, some better than others, but none were as good as Glacier des Alpes.  Below are some photos of a few other places.

  
               And across the canal from our hotel window:

   We did do more in Annecy than eat ice cream.  Like eat cheese and drink wine. And take walks around the lake.  Yesterday we took a bus along the lake to the town of Talloires, which we discovered in walking around the town, has a branch of Tufts University.  Here's are a couple of views of the lower part of Lake Annecy taken from the bus stop in Talloires:

   We didn't take any pictures in Geneva.  After the beauty of the rural countryside and medieval Annecy and its lake, Geneva was kind of a letdown. It's just a huge, bustling city of business.  And not a place to try to get by on a budget.  But we did have very good fondue and Swiss white wine for dinner, including wine from the Aigle region from the Chasselas grape, which had been recommended by a friend and also by a resident of Geneva whose sister is a good friend of ours.

  And tomorrow we return home, where I hope to finally post some photos from the last half of our week in the Jura.