OAT made the right decision to start this adventure in Chamonix! Our hotel, the Lykke, was ideally located. We could walk to the many restaurants, bars, trails and attractions. And we DID.
Not only that, but if you needed down time, the hotel’s pool/ whirlpool /sauna complex was the ideal spot to relax and recharge. I visited there twice during my four day stay.
The MAIN attraction of Chamonix, however is the mountains in general, and Mont Blanc in particular. During our stay, we rode the classic cog train to view the glacier which either starts or ends at Mont Blanc. I forget. But really, who cares?
Unfortunately, the gondola was not accepting passengers, but we saw its practice run.
We were SUPPOSED to ride the gondola to an ice cave, but because of climate change, the cave was closed. A new ice cave had to be built nearer to the glacier. Because the pace of warming is escalating, our guide told us over the last few years, a new ice cave had to be constructed every year.
I find it hard to understand how someone cannot “believe” in global warming and climate change. Yes, I know, our planet has been through ice ages and warming trends, but those changes took centuries to occur, not years. But enough on that topic. For those of you who will never visit Chamonix, here’s what you would have seen.
And if you were lucky enough to get Luca as your guide and Francois as the local guide, this is who you would have seen it with.
It wasn’t a problem that we missed out on the gondola ride, because the next day, we rode two huge gondolas to get to the Mont Blanc viewing platform.
The photos can’t possibly capture the grandeur of the mountains. But those of you who have been following this blog know I’m going to try!
Yes, those ARE clouds in the photo below. That’s how high we were.
Although WE rode the gondolas, others chose a different method for getting to the top.
None of us had a death wish, so that’s why we chose the safer, more boring option. We DID manage to walk through an ice cave, AND we made it to BOTH viewing platforms shown in the header of this post, which required us to mount several flights of stairs.
If we wanted, we could stand in line for about an hour to step into “the void”, which was a transparent cube that allowed you to see to the bottom of the mountain. I imagine that on one’s instagram feed, it would look like the poster was suspended in mid air. The photo taking was undoubtedly why the wait to enter the cube was so long!
Since none of us have an instagram feed, we skipped that experience.
Instead, we used our eyes to take in the spectacular views.
Before we leave Chamonix, one last photo of almost all of the single ladies at dinner at the Rose du Pont
Although we ended up in Brielle, like most OAT trips, our bus ride was broken up by a stop in Aosta, a charming town along the way. Mike would have LOVED Aosta, because it was chock full of ancient Roman ruins. Back then, it was called Augusta Praetoria, shorten over the ages to Aosta.
The original arches are 32 steps below the surface of the modern city. I don’t recall why or how they were preserved, but I’ll bet you don’t care either.
After sharing a half a bottle of this
with my new friend Sarah, I decided to press send without proof reading.
Biella deserves its own post, and once I sober up, I’ll get to it. But until then, happy reading and thanks for coming along.
Destination NOW 