Annecy

The lake is absurdly clean — clear enough to count the pebbles on the bottom from a boat, and clean enough that the town is proud to say so. Annecy, in the French Alps, wraps its old quarter around the canals that drain into it, pastel arcades and flower-hung bridges framing a medieval town where the water runs through the middle, and the mountains stand close enough to shadow the streets by late afternoon.

Lake Annecy is known as the purest lake in Europe, the result of half a century of protecting its water, and it fills a glacial trough between the Bauges and the Bornes with mountains rising straight from its shores. The old town sits where the lake drains into the River Thiou, and the Palais de l'Île — a fortified house from the twelfth century moored mid-stream like a stone ship — is the building everyone photographs first. A greenway on an old railway line runs some thirty-three kilometres up the western shore, flat and away from the road, with beaches to swim from along the way; the full forty-kilometre circuit adds a climb and a stretch of main road on the eastern side, and the cols above the water draw road cyclists to some of the best climbs in the northern Alps. The market mornings in the old town run to Reblochon and Tome des Bauges from the farms above the lake, eaten that evening on the quay.