It's not so pleasant to see a cable-car closed :-)

---

And the Israelis are welcome to sing it to the music of “gan sagoor” - of the “16th Sheep”... So what happened? After the hard day we had yesterday, Dana and I decided to take the cable-car up. It was anyway a rather short day, so we got up late, and by 9am Ron started to walk, while we went to the supermarket, very happy and relaxed. After filling our bags with goods for the next 2 days we continued to the cable-car station just to discover it was closed the entire summer season. Unbelievable that the girl in the info center even explained to us how to get there, how she could not know it didn’t work... Well after the little shock and some minutes to recover, we started really late, after 10am, walking all 750m up to Col Checroui and the lovely Maison Vieille (a really nice hut, beautiful location), and then all the rest of the planned day.
The second part of the day we walked on the mountain side looking at the Mont Blanc massif all the time, and looking at the Mont Blanc itself. It was very impressive. It's beautiful to see the two glaciers coming down from it, Glacier de Brouillard on the left and Glacier de Freney on the right, hugging Aiguille Croux in the middle. Looking at it you can't help thinking of those who actually climbed this. I know they climb from Chamonix side. Do they also climb from here? Where do they go through? Do they climb on the glaciers or on the rocks? I’m really curious.

The last part of the day we had to go down 500m to the valley, and 250m up to our chalet for the night, famous Refuge Elisabetta. It wasn't easy to climb at that late time and at some point it started to rain but luckily only for a few minutes.
At dinner we had a nice surprise: a rather old couple that was sitting with us was Israeli. We saw many walkers at surprising age but never expected to see Israelis. Anna and her husband were carrying their own bugs, taking as little as possible (Anna's bag weighs 6 kgs, the husband carries 9kgs), and planning to do almost the entire tour, skipping just a part they did in the past. As we say back home: 'kavod' (honour).

---

Photos

Le Fauteuil des Allemands
The armchair of the Germans - I wonder why this place got the name. Do the ItaliansqFrench consider the Germans to be giants??

The twin glaciers
Coming down from the Mont Blanc

Maison Vieille at Col Checroui
We really fancied lunch over there but were a bit short of time due to the morning's events. Seems like a nice place to stay in fact

The shoes room at Refuge Elisabetta
And those weren't all... I thought it was funny :-)