Residence Maeva L'Aiguille Chamonix

Destination 405

km197'555

Not entirely shure, if I spend my last day in a foreign country, I head towards north. A stopover at Novi Ligure provides me finally the opportunity to send a notification to all family and friends about my remaining itinerary before return back home. The date has been fixed to the 29.
The ride up to Vercelly in the low lands was not that exciting like the sighting of the mountain of Mont Blanc in the far. Since my ...

Rainy and cold has replaced sunny and warm in France but it has not curbed ambitions... Well, I guess any ambition to exercise has been exhausted but we saw that one coming.

Travel is still high priority. Last week the GEP cohort was treated to a day trip to Mt. Blanc in Chamonix. A three hour bus ride west took us into the steep peaked, deep valley-ed Rhône-Alpes. The landscapes only got more impressive as we wove through the valleys and eventually reached the base of Mt. Blanc. We ...

... and stopped in the room for a break and to catch up
on the blog. I headed out for a beer on the square and then found an
Italian place highly regarded in the guide books. I sat at the bar
and had a nice meal of bruschetta and a ham and mushroom pizza and a
nice Rhine Reisling to accompany them. Things are quite slow this
time of year and there were only a few people in the restaurant, but
the service was good and the meal was also. Back to the room as I
was ...

... 10 years. Great
to see he and Robin and their 2 boys. The next day on to Las Vegas
with 32 people, the tour was marred with a few problems and the group
was not as enjoyable as the one I just left. Upon returning from
Vegas, I had just 3 days to host a couple of buddies for the MSU
homecoming game and then on to Europe.



Monday 10-19



I left the house on Monday
morning for a noon flight to Detroit, Amsterdam and then on to
Geneva ...

... poorly marked. Half the streets in Europe are so narrow anyways; they all look like one ways. So this car pulls up behind up and blocks us in, sweet, it’s the cops. They tell us we went up a one way.... So we honestly tell them it was a mistake and we're trying to turn around. Then they ask us where we are coming from and how much have we had to drink? Here we go... We had 1 big bottle of beer each 2 hours ago, then split ...

... to be tight. We found ourselves in the centre of this ski town and on one way streets the wrong way. Tired and frustrated we headed out of town and found a campsite with reception closed and checking out the facilities found it was very basic and no restaurant . By this time it was after 9pm and wet we didn't fancy camping and then looking for food so we tried a few hotels nearby all full or very expensive. Nearly giving up we found a small hotel with an open restaurant for ...

... into the ice cave that they cut into it. It was called "grotte de la mer de glace". I think it kind of translates to "a hole in that glacier over there" They have been digging one every year to bring people to the glacier. Gotta say that its pretty impressive as a tourist attraction, and they did a great job with the coloured lights. Pity it was so small. We took a picture with a St. Bernard that was in there called Alaska. He was a very cute and tame ...

... downhill section of the hike was difficult for me as I prefer up rather than down. It`s just so ******* the old knees. By the end I was convinced that I would be a cripple for a week: As it turned out I was fine, albeit with some pretty sore calves for the next few days. All that pissin and moanin for nothin, hey Carm? Finally, off to Switzerland!

The reason I went to France was to go skiing at chamonix/Mont Blanc, which i did and it was fantastic and i will be doing again very soon before i get tied up.. while i was there i did the world famous ski run Valley de blanche you ski over a glacier. which is amazing, the veiws you get on theis run are spectacular. definately take a camera.
to start this run however you take a gondola up to the summit of Aguille de medie (i'm unsure of the correct ...

... the most experienced climber) quickly got off the wall. Woolie (a somewhat less experienced climber - sorry mate) wanted to finish his climb and took some convincing that perhaps it was best to just come down. Safe at the bottom, the skies opened up. I haven't seen this sort of rain for a long time and the cliff we were climing quickly turned into a collection of waterfalls. Unfortunately, we were lead climbing so all our ropes and equipment were still ...