Day 1, 2 & 3 Geneva, Switzerland; Chamonix, France;
Italy; & back to Geneva
Day 1
We arrived
in Geneva around 8 a.m. and then made our way directly to Chamonix. I had book our stay at Hotel le Faucigny in
Chamonix, France. The drive between
Geneva and Chamonix was beautiful.
Everything is so green and lush with the towering mountains surrounding
the valley. We arrived to perfect
weather in Chamonix. The sun was shining
and it was just right to have on a light sweatshirt. We dropped our luggage off at the hotel and
asked if we could get an early check-in as normally check-in isn’t until 3
p.m.
While we waited for them to prepare
our room, we wandered around town checking out all the shops and of course
taking tons of pictures of the scenery.
Chamonix is a huge tourist town in the summer and a huge ski resort town
in the winter. There are outdoor
sporting goods stores and tons of eateries and bars of all types. Mountain climbing, hiking and mountain biking
are big sports here along with paragliding/parapenting.
The hotel was able to get our room
ready by around 11:30, so we went back and got settled in the room and had a
nap before heading out for lunch. We had
lunch at a restaurant that was actually cantilevered over the L’Arve
river. We decided to have fondue for
lunch—which was very good.
After lunch we went back to our
room and relaxed for a while before heading out for dinner that evening. For dinner we went to a restaurant further up
the valley from Chamonix. Both of us
were still full from lunch but we could not pass up the amazing fresh food here
in France. We both had pasta for
dinner. Eric had penne with morel
mushrooms and I had mushroom risotto with crimini mushrooms and truffles. Needless to say, both were excellent and we ate
way too much. Fat and happy, we returned
to our hotel and walked around town a bit to try and wear off some of the food
before we went to bed. By the time we
got back to our room it was close to 11 p.m.
I think we finally got to bed
around 12:30 in the morning with the plan to get up early the next day to take
the teleferique (big cable car) up to Aiguille du Midi which is miles above
Chamonix. The weather forecast was a bit
sketchy and was predicting rain in the afternoon, so we wanted to get an early
start. We woke up at 6:30 a.m. and
looked out the window to see nothing but clouds surrounding the mountain. We decided to give it a go anyway. We got dressed and got all our layers of
clothes together to take with us and headed for the ticket booth.
We got to the ticket stand early
and they were not open yet, so we headed to the boulangerie to get something
for breakfast. After having our yummy
French pastries we headed back to wait for the ticket counter to open. The first cable car departs at 8:10 a.m. We bought our tickets and were on the first
car up the mountain. It is a very, and I
mean VERY, steep cable car ride up the side of the mountain. Once we got far enough up the mountain we
were actually above the clouds and the view was magnificent. We got off at the top and it was
FREEZING. We put on everything we had
with us and were still freezing. I had
four layers of clothing on my torso, heavy wool socks, an ear warmer, and two
pairs of gloves and my hands were still frozen.
We stayed outside as long as we could snapping pictures and then decided
to take another cable car from Aiguille du Midi across Mer de Glace (sea of
ice) to Helbronner Point in Italy.
We are very glad we took the
gondola to Italy. This is Europe’s
highest lift that offers spectacular views of Mont Blanc (Europe’s tallest
mountain at 15,771 ft. and the Alps’ highest point.) These private gondola cars sail across the
glaciers for three miles with no solid pylon.
They are propped by a suspended pylon that stretches between two peaks
1300 feet apart. It was a spectacular
ride and well worth the money.
After snapping around 200 pictures
we made the return journey from Italy back to Aiguille du Midi and then down
the mountain back to Chamonix. The cable
car wasn’t nearly as packed on the way down and the clouds had actually cleared
just enough that we could get a view of Chamonix as we came down from Aiguille
du Midi. We made our way back to the
hotel and then headed out to look for some lunch as it was predicted to start
raining in the afternoon. We found a
really good Italian restaurant with amazing pasta and again we ate way too much
food. After lunch we headed back to our
room as it was beginning to look like rain.
We had a relaxing afternoon in our
room napping and downloading pictures.
We were so full from lunch we did not even go out for dinner. We decided the next day we would just sleep
in and then get up and wander around town some more.
The next morning we got up and looked
out the window to see the sun shining and a perfectly clear view of the entire
mountain. It probably would have been a
better day to make the ride up to Aiguille du Midi, but it was still a great
experience even with some clouds the day before. We got busy and got all our luggage organized
and then wandered down to the boulangerie on the corner near our hotel to grab
something for breakfast. I had a
chocolate muffin that was amazing.
Everything looks so good it is hard not to order one of everything. If I lived here I would probably be 300
pounds very easily. After enjoying our
pastries, we walked back to the hotel to check out. Check-out was noon at the latest and we did
not need to head back to Geneva until around 3-4 in the afternoon. So the hotel stored our luggage while we
wandered around town some more.
We left Chamonix around 4 p.m. and
made the approximately 1 hour trip back to Geneva. We managed to find the hotel and get checked
in. Somehow we lucked out and got an
executive suite instead of a standard room. The room was about three times the size of our
room in France. We spent the next few
hours getting all our bicycle gear together to start the first leg of our four
days of riding the next morning. So far
the weather has been beautiful and I am hoping it will stay that way.
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