Our Hotel de L'Arve
The Arve:
Fast, cold, and filled with sediment.
It runs like this from April until December while the glaciers melt
Yes, Virginia, it is foie gras.
In Chamonix you can get your lymphs drained
The Aiguille du Midi...
A tram sucks you up to this pinnacle next to Mont Blanc.
12,500' - Nice views
I was performing near Chamonix in 1981 and decided to do this.
Gaston Rebuffat was one of the greatest French mountaineers and made first-ascents
The Grandes Jorasses
One of the three great North Faces of the Alps
Mont Blanc
The Bossons is one of the fastest Glaciers in the Alps.
Also one reaching the lowest.
It comes almost down almost to Chamonix
The knife ridge connecting the tram to the Mer de Glace and Vallée Blanche
You have to make your way down this track to ski the glacier.
This guy seems to be retreating.
I rented skis, but it was May and I had no hat or gloves, so I skied the Vallée Blanche with socks on my hands and a pair of cotton underwear on my head.
The Aguille is one of the main routes up Mont Blanc. It's usually a two-day trip
with a sleep-over at this refuge.
See the climbers?
on some of the most difficult faces in the Alps.
The English climbers didn't like him and called him
Ghastly Rubberfat.
Cold
Its north face is one of the most difficult big wall climbs in the Alps
This is a typical breakfast with an acceptable pain au raisin.
Susan enjoyed her slabs of salmon tartar.
On the way down we stopped to drink a beer
and walk around on the moraines
Followed signs to Le Lac Bleu
Later that afternoon we walked up the other side of the valley to a chalet and drank another beer
The host's border collie like to stand in the drinking water
which gurgled from a wooden spout into this hollowed log
The narrower peak on the right is the Petit Dru
We ate twice at a cozy bistro specializing in Savoyard cuisine. We had onion soup and foie gras - seriously - but everything else was cheese.
The pyramidal apparatus in this photo...
... is a cheese melter, and the triangular block under its coils is 2 lbs of raclette.
We watched this girl, without a break - eat her half on 9 potatoes - we counted. With some ham.
This is a typical breakfast with an acceptable pain au raisin.
They are absolutely ubiquitous. We watched kids on bikes pulling them out
of their pockets to munch while they scattered pigeons.
Our last stop was Provins, a town of 9000 almost entirely composed of medieval half-timbered houses.
One would imagine it to be touristy and fake, but it was a living, bustling little burg with lots of normal commerce and, on one corner, a pair of dueling Italian bistros.
We ate in the one with the green awning. No foie gras. The Italian waiter spoke neither English nor French, but delivered enormous portions.
I worked my way through the burratas...
And that's it. We'll be home, inshallah, later today
