Lacs Hotel Chamonix

... la première fois que le temps m'apparait aussi complexe: C'est dernier 3 mois et demi m'ont apparu comme étant éternelle, je me sens comme si ça fait déjà 1 ou 2 ans que je voyages et pourtant tout c'est dérouler si vite, si vif, si court, si peu de temps.

Tant d'amis,
tant de jeux.
on ne rit,
qu'avant de se dire adieu.

C'est vraiment une première expérience agréable en tant que vagabond des auberges. Je sais que je ...

... control recently has broken down, this was the perfect sign to follow, where I planed to cross the border to Switzerland.

Just arrived in late afternoon to Aosta, I was not only already entered to the italian part of the alps but also to the point of good bye. Here I decided not to spend another night in Italy and crossed the border to my homecountry Switzerland a hour later at Calle del Gran San Bernardo.

BIENVENUE EN SUISSE - WELCOME TO SWITZERLAND

... a glimpse of a massive glacier on our way to the mountain and later got a great view from a peak further down the ridge. I saw a glacier this summer in Montana's Glacier Nat'l Park but I have to say that despite the parks breathtaking views, its glaciers were hardly impressive compared to Chamonix. This was a legit, man eating, climber scaling, cavernous abyss kind of glacier. We were able to take a gondola that ascended the peak parallel to the glacier some 12,000 feet. After nearly ...

... br>Normally in Europe I don't eat lunch as after a large breakfast at
the hotel, I am good until dinner. In France, unlike the most of the
rest of Europe, breakfast is not included in the room rate. My hotel
wanted 15 euros ($23) for a croissant, juice and coffee, so I have
given up breakfast for this trip. I was looking for some soup and
the one place I looked had french onion soup for 11 euros ($17) so
once again I passed. So I did something I almost never do, I
Chamonix, Rhône-Alpes, France nedk

... The inspiration for this
trip was twofold. I have been a Northwest Airlines Platinum Elite
for the past 7 or 8 years. This means that I fly over 75,000 miles
during the calendar year, which affords me many perks when flying,
including upgrades to first class on domestic flights, double miles,
boarding first and other things that become enjoyable when flying a
lot. I needed about 13,000 miles to get to Platinum this year and
this will get me close, although ...

... room and its nice with a great view of Mont Blanc..the kind of view that you get only in postcards. We were going to have dinner at the hotel, but it wasn't open for dinner so we wander into town.
Town is a 3 min walk away and the main street is easy to find, there is many italian/fondue places, an asian restaurant and then other general/fondue places. Seems like a fondue is a fav here, so we pick Le Monchu..where you can have fondue, racelette at the table and other delights ...

... 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’t even give us a ticket and told us we were lucky they liked Canadians! Still, it wasn't a fun ...

... edge of the road, no guardrails and little tunnels gauged through the rock at intervals. We stopped in a cutting that was filled with mountain goats and as I tried to return to the car, was unable to get in my door as a mountain goat had taken up residence there in the shade. He wasn't budging but eventually we managed to scare him away so we could continue our journey. The rest of the drive was equally magnificent, as we drove around bends under huge pieces of overhanging rock and ...

... so bloody hard. I didn`t complete the climb (no-one else did either), but I did manage to completely exhaust every ounce of my upper body strength while trying. I then tried my hand at the 6a+ which Steve had now successfully lead. Bad idea - there was a tricky and very pumpy (requires upper body strength) move in the middle and my poor arms and back were just not up to it. The move was positioned about 2m above the last clip-in point and it was the sort of ...

... plan is to stay another day in Chamonix than we originally intended in order to ascend the mountain again tomorrow and get down to the glacier then. We had seen people walking down around there so we knew it was possible, and I have my heart set on it. We caught the last train back down the mountain, agreeing that tomorrow we would only buy a one-way ticket and take the 2 hour hike ...