Bonnieux to Chamonix

---

Saturday morning arrived and we packed up and headed to Chamonix. A funny thing about travel directions: after we got directions from one of the hotels we stayed from the Michelin site, we’ve been using the site ever since. At the little Internet café in Bonnieux, after laboriously copying the directions Bonnieux to Chamonix, the owner said “Quoi?” Mais c’est facile—Bonnieux—Avignon—Geneve—Chamonix. Easy for him to say. My complicated directions told us more or less the same thing, and we got here in about 5 hours including about an hour of breaks.

I had seen the Canadian Rockies—maybe I had the same reaction then—but my first view of the Alps took my breath away. Good thing Kevin had already been here because he wasn’t able to enjoy the view while driving. This trip was one of the easiest most of the way; I thought this would be the first trip where nothing went wrong (mostly because we had prepared) except after arriving into the village of Chamonix, we had took about an hour to find our hotel. Eh bien! The rest of Saturday was spent walking around and having supper in a Thai—Vietnamese—Chinese restaurant.

Sunday. We decided to sleep in a bit as it was quite noisy last night. Chamonix is quite a contrast to Bonnieux: here it’s a younger, touristy town, while there, most of the people were older than us and in bed by 9. We had to close our window to shut out the noise, but luckily it wasn’t too stuffy or warm.

In the morning we went up in the cable car to the top of Mont Blanc. It cost 37 Euros each (about $100 for the two of us) to go, but we figured it was worth it. The car was really jam-packed, and once we got off, both Kevin and I felt the altitude. I was dizzy and a bit nauseous, and Kevin got a headache. Once we gave ourselves a couple of minutes, we were OK. It’s too bad that today wasn’t as clear as yesterday. I was watching some paragliders yesterday and thought it might be fun to try the tandem trip. However, since the weather’s not perfect…(that’s my excuse). It did look like a super experience, though.

---

Photos

Optical Illusion
Panning in on Kevin makes Chamonix appear to be just below him. In reality, it's probably a couple of miles down.

Tombstone
If you look close at the writing on the monument, the fellow was lost in an avalanche sometime in the 1800's, and his body was recovered 31 years later.

View from hotel balcony
This was one of the views from our hotel room in downtown Chamonix.