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Published: September 26th 2008
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Chamonix was THE town in France that I was looking forward too. In all the travel books I got my hands on, and Google pictures that I saw I was prepared to be amazed. It is a mountain town located in the Alps next to the highest peak, Mount Blanc. No big deal, right? Its supposed sister town is Aspen in Colorado, but Alps vs. Rockies… Alps win.
Before arriving in Chamonix from Annecy we were all doing a little inner turmoil over the amount of money to be spent in taking a lift over the Alps into Italy. As the train brought us closer and closer we made our decision to bite the bullet. If it looked this beautiful from the ground it was sure to be mind blowing from the top, and that was an expense I was willing to endure.
Arriving in Chamonix we discovered we had quite a trek in front of us to in order to get to our booked hostel and as luck would have it the bus had just stopped running. Perfect. My 135th tidbit of random advice is this: find out where exactly your lodging is located, and how you need
to get there from the train station. This will prove to save you time, headache, and much unneeded hassle. We discovered that our very cheap hostel was located outside of Chamonix and had the pleasure of walking through Chamonix in order to find it. The Hostel itself really was very nice, considering it was the cheapest sleeping accommodation we’ve spent so far. We decided to make the most of our night by playing cards and drinking wine (mmm…mmm…mmmm good!)
Waking up we were met with the worst weather we’ve seen so far. Nothing but fog stretching down from the mountain peaks. I tried to keep an optimistic attitude about taking our lift through the Alps, but arriving in town that soon bit me in the buttocks. We got a nice shot of the tallest station, and realized that it was a 5 ft. radius view. Not worth the money if all we got to see was each other in a lift. SO DISAPPOINTING!! If you were to talk to Johnson, or Joshua they would tell you that my attitude dropped exponentially and I was a glum the rest of the day. All we had to show we saw the
Alp’s were stupid pictures from inside the train and bus rides. Plus our transfer from France to Italy was spent in a dark, dreary tunnel underneath the most amazing view in Europe. AAGH! Stupid trains and stupid unknown train schedules, and stupid public transportation… all I wanted to do was hike around the Alps! (If you are my mom you would be telling me “Well, all that means is you have to go back!” (sorry mom, I just realized I’ve been making fun of you a lot, but I do really love you and enjoy our conversations, really!))
So from Chamonix we went to Milan. This is best described by Rick Steve’s - (paraphrasing) If you want to see yesterday’s Italy then you’re in the wrong place, but if you want to see today’s Italy then Milan is thriving in the forward thinking, tech savvy, fashionable European style only evident in Italia. Basically another big city, with a lot of very fancy people, and I myself don’t care about fashion. (This should be very clear when comparing me to my lovely sister Emily… she is a wonderful, lovable, funny, pretty girl, and I obviously grew up with a brother
as a side-kick my whole life.)
In Milan we did get to see some pretty neat sites, such as the Duomo and Galleria Victorio Emanuele. Joshua described this supposed amazing site as if the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame were located on the same block. The Duomo was very grand and had over a thousand spires reaching toward Heaven, and intricate statues surrounding it. We even got a chance to walk on the roof, which led to some great pictures, people watching, and catching pick-pocketers in action. We even had a brief encounter with some scam artists. They literally came up from behind you, grabbed your hand, and put bird seed in it. Then they would whistle for pigeons to come land all over you. They did this to me and my mind was racing trying to watch every single pocket that had something of value in it, and wondering if something where to happen if I could throw the pigeons at the culprits. Thankfully all they wanted was money from the birdseed we used. We just did the “I don’t speak Italian,” walk away move - works every time. Inside Galleria Victorio Emanuele is every high priced designer
you can think of, and then some. We unfortunately ate at McD’s but we all needed a little greasy meat by this time in our trip. Then we grabbed some gelato - my first experience, and walked around the designer streets of Milan. After spinning on the Bull’s balls for good luck we decided to call it a night.
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