Travel Days: Portland, Oregon to Chamonix, France (Tuesday, August 20th & Wednesday, August 21st)

We had easy flights from Portland to Geneva, however at one point on the PDXto  AMS leg Suzanne looked at the flight data information – notice the reported range of the aircraft we were on……….

versus the total distance……..

 

Hmmm.......


Since Geneva is in Switzerland and we knew that we would need some Swiss Francs, we stopped at an ATM in the Geneva airport and got some cash. We had previously arranged our transportation to Chamonix via the Alpybus, and after a pretty easy ride to Chamonix - Suzanne slept the entire way and Brad watched as the van driver worked his way along tiny roads with cars parked on both sides - we arrived at our hotel for the next three nights, Hotel de L’Arve.

As it was about 2pm, our room wasn’t ready yet, so we left our luggage with the front desk and wandered around the quaint town of Chamonix, France where we got some euros from a ATM, stopped by the Tourist Office to get some information and idea of what to do for the next two days, and basically walked around town getting our bearings. We eventually had a late lunch at a place called Irish Coffee (yeah, we know) and had great salads! Brad ordered the Salade Savoyarde (pictured left) and Suzanne had the Salade de Chevre Chaud au Miel (pictured right). These were probably a couple of the best salads we had for the entire three weeks we were in Switzerland and Paris.

We walked around town some more and simply marveled at how close and how high the mountains were – in fact, this is the town closest to Mont Blanc on the France side (although Mont Blanc is not visible from the town itself). 

 

As we continued walking, we passed a lot of bakeries, and decided that it was time to try our first “must have” – French Macarons! They were very sweet and quite filling!

We made our way back to the hotel and were finally able to check into our room – it was a bit small (we would learn quickly that most hotel rooms in Switzerland are small) and everything was super low – Suzanne felt really tall! 

We unpacked, organized, and called it a day.