Hotel Prieure Chamonix

Destination 405<br><br>km197'555<br><br>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.<br>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 ...

... pictures and updating my blog. The grading system here is tough compared to what I'm used to but I will adjust. The company I am consulting for is interested in expanding to the U.S. and has us conducting market research for key demographics. Its a nice change of pace from school work, there's little structure and its almost entirely self regulating. Its a welcomed increase of freedom as well as responsibility.<br><br>That's all I've got for now friends, until next time.<br><br>Eddie<br>

<br>Thursday<br><br><br><br>Thursday was a beautiful day<br>and I decided to head up into the mountains to check a few famous ski<br>resorts. I got in the car and worked my way down the valley on my<br>way to the ski resort of Megeve, according to the GPS, about an hour<br>drive away. I took the highway to the bottom of the valley and<br>found the road to Megeve. The map showed a thick yellow line meaning<br>a good road, I thought. I found a narrow two lane road in the trees,<br>winding ...

... quite enough to reach my goal. <br>The other inspiration was watching the Tour de France this summer as<br>one of the many legs was through the French Alps that I had visited<br>before and watching the race in HD TV, I thought of driving through<br>the areas that were so beautifully portrayed on TV this summer. I<br>had visited Chamonix twice in my travels and decided to hang out<br>there as a base and drive around the mountains before the snow season<br>begins .<br><br><br><br ...

... and that if he fails, he will have to spend the night in jail. Awesome... So I wait with the car for about 20 min thinking crazy thoughts in my head.... Jon finally comes back and had only blown 0.007. The cops finally admit that the balloon is never accurate and yes, the construction is blocking the sign, so they didn&#8217;t even give us a ticket and told us we were lucky they liked Canadians! Still, it wasn't a fun ...

... say though that the only reason I went there in the first place is that both the other guys had done it a couple of times before and also had all their climbing gear including 50meter ropes (just in case you fall down an ice crevasse!!), crampons, ice axes you name it they had it so i felt pretty safe. <br><br>And then onto the last day - we went over to Argentiere and skied the Grand Montets. It was a bit icy on the main slopes so didnt enjoy too ...

... size of it when we disembarked from the train at Montenvers. It is 14km long, 1800m wide and up to 400m deep. Apparently it moves at up to 90m per year in the centre. It is quite dirty to look at from the viewing station due to all the rock and debris that has fallen on top of it from the surrounding mountains. Once you get down close to it though, you are able to see the blue ice that is much more spectacular. You are able to catch a gondola down to ...

... people, a mix of English, Irish, Canadian and American. The trip consisted of 10 walking days with a couple of rest days mixed in, each day was between 10 and 20 km of walking and around 1,000m ascent and descent. In total it was 160km and 11,000m up and down! We had a great time, the first day was quite tough and we were worried about what we had gotten ourselves into! But we soon got into the ...

... du Glace, one of the worlds largest glaciers. Didn't look like much because it is covered in fallen rock and debris. The ice caves were neat though. The colour was gorgeous. The actual cave was carved out long ago, but new entrance tunnel has to be built every year because the glacier moves at 1 cm/hour. Decided to hike along the mountain and then down to Chamonix. Very pretty and only a little scary. The down was really long. Lots of steep switchbacks. Soaked my feet in a waterfall ...

... with there heavy packs, ice axes and crampons. I have to admit that a tiny part of me wanted to follow them, but my obvious lack of training and equipment kept me content with our planned hike at 7,000 feet. So we took the precarious cable car back to the mid-point of the mountain and began our 3 hour hike, first stopping to eat the picnic lunch we packed. We both took French in high school and can remember enough to get by. Hiking ...