Thursday 10.7.2010


Raising our Altitude


Happy Birthday to John! In honor of his Medicare birthday the sun is shining again this morning. John is excited to start the day off right and skips downstairs to the local Patisserie to load up on croissants and a fantastic little apple pastry sprinkled with powdered sugar (Chasson du Pomme). It's closed. John and an old French guy are standing on the sidewalk at 8:00 am with their noses pressed against the glass. The old French guy slowly turns his head to John and says, "Fermi?" John says, "Oui, Fermi." They both slowly turn and walk away, each with a tear on his cheek. Well, boo-hoo, let's get on with it.


We share the pain d'espice we bought at the market yesterday and finish up our bottle of orange juice. Pat has become a regular in the kitchen downstairs where she has found the supply of ice. We get packed up and are loading up the car before 10:00 am. We start on the same road we were on yesterday because we have a route in mind and want to program MMD when she has the best chance of finding it. We program an interim stop in LeCure, just north of Geneva, Switzerland and then our final destination of Chamonix in the French Alps.


We get going southeast and are out of grapes and into corn, sunflowers and other unknown crops almost immediately. The backroads do make for nice, if long, drives as we meander through small villages, each more quaint and picturesque than the last. As we get past noon the elevation kicks up a notch and we are out of flat farms and into heavily rolling woodlands. Going through Morez we see the first of perhaps many Roman Aqueducts built a couple thousand years ago.


We get to LeCure at 1:00 in hopes of lunch, but apparently this is some sort of treatment center (the cure?) so we backtrack a couple miles to Les Rousses. There is a little sandwich shop with a couple tables in the sun and a pleasant young fellow with a bit of English whips up three tuna and egg sandwiches. While we are eating we see the people next to us are having wings and fries. We check out the menu board again and see “Ailerons ala Tex-Mex.” How could we have missed that? This is apparently a resort village and we march up to the church after lunch and find a big lake down the hill on the other side. Reminds us of home.


After lunch we decide we have enough time to go straight through Geneva and what a good choice. MMD takes us right through the middle of the city and eventually down to Lake Geneva. There are huge marinas, sprawling beaches, grand hotels, towering fountains and hundreds of Swiss lolling about on a sunny warm Thursday afternoon. The city is as spotless as one might expect and we are grateful for a quick peek. And we thought the Swiss worked all the time.


It is about 75 kilometers from Geneva to Chamonix which becomes a series of rising steps taking us up to the 3500 foot elevation of the Arve River valley. The Arve river runs through the middle of the valley with the village of Chamonix wrapped around both sides like a bun around a hot dog. On both sides of the village are mountain ranges soaring straight up limiting sunlight on the valley floor to about four hours a day. This is all topped by Mont Blanc, arguably the tallest mountain in the Alps and Europe at a nosebleed elevation of 15,771 feet.


We arrive at our Hotel de l’Arve, a nifty little Alpine place in the middle of the village, at about 5:30. John and Mary have a river/mountain view room on the third floor (with elevator) and Pat is hanging over the river in a room with a balcony on the second floor also with a mountain view. First step is to explore the village and it is just what you would expect. Very alpine, neat as a pin, and loaded with touristy bars and restaurants. It is an older and perhaps grander version of (take your pick) Vail, Aspen and Whistler. Chamonix hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924 so it has had a glitzy, glamorous ski reputation for a long time. We check out the gondola experience for tomorrow if we have the nerve and there is some question about that.

Dinner is at the charming La Caleche, a very Bavarian place loaded with an array of doodads from cuckoo clocks, to stuffed critters, to copper pots, to every version of Alpine knick-knack. Our server is a Belgian who has recently spent 6-months in Australia so her English is an odd sounding Aussie-Euro blend that works very well for us. M and J both have the roast chicken with all the fixins while Pat digs into a pot of beef stew loaded with potatoes and carrots. We’re all happy, and we all take turns at the bathroom so we can look at all the stuff in the rest of the place.


The mountain air is turning nippy as we walk back to the hotel and make our plans for tomorrow.

Today’s weather: Clear and sunny, low 38 (this evening), high 75.