We woke at 5:30am so we could enjoy the Aiguille du Midi, a 3842m (12,600ft) peak in the Mont Blanc massif of the French Alps - this is the closest you can get to the summit of Mont-Blanc without hiking or climbing. We were told that the lines could be hours-long, so we wanted to grab an early cable car, thus less lines and less people. We were so early that there were just a few tourists in line – it was mostly ice climbers, which was way cool. (You can actually take a series of cable cars over the mountains and work your way into Italy then take a train back to Chamonix, France, but we just took the first two cable cars and stayed in France figuring that we’d have some amazing views on our upcoming hikes.)
We took the cable car to the top, but since we hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since our late afternoon salads and macaroons the day prior, our first stop was breakfast on the mountain, which was a disappointing lukewarm tea, instant coffee, a croissant, and a chocolate croissant. Once we were (somewhat) fed, we spent about an hour wandering around the tunnels, open areas, and buildings, looking at the amazing views.
This is Mont Blanc!
The town of Chamonix is below this cloud bank........
There were some people camping on the snow (brrr….)
And quite a few different climbers working their way to
their next climb…………
More cool pics...........
We walked through lots of person-made tunnels....
Whereas the climbers had to dig their own tunnel.........
There were multiple buildings……….this is the North Tower
With a tube connecting parts of the building.........
(At times Brad was more interested and awed by the physical structure of the buildings
than the amazing views.)
The building had
a “Step into the Void” section where it is all glass around you…..
Close-up of "Step into the Void"
And we stepped!
This is the Central Tower
This is the building at the end of the first leg (to the Plan de l'Aiguille)
where we stopped just to look around a bit.
After spending a couple hours exploring the two segments and
taking multiple pictures, we descended via cable car to Chamonix, where there
were long lines, so we were super glad that we went up so early. It was still
early, however, so it took a while to find an open restaurant for breakfast and
we finally settled on Chum Café where we had omelets with cheese and “bacon” (which
ended up being European Style ham) – it was pretty good and super filling.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Chamonix
and enjoying the views – some pictures…………..
After all the walking, it was no surprise that Brad was hungry
again (I mean really, when isn’t Brad hungry?), so we had a late lunch at
Elevation 1905 – he had a BLT on some awesome bread and Suzanne had a vegetable
soup. Okay, so we thought that vegetable soup would be chunks of vegetables in
a broth – nope. It was a pureed vegetable soup with cream. Yummy, sure, but not
what Suzanne was expecting. Oh, and one
thing we loved in all of our restaurant meals, bread is always served on the
side, and this was no exception. And if you’re keeping count, this is the third
meal in a row Brad had with ham! 😊
After relaxing for a bit at the hotel, we had dinner at a
wine bar we had seen earlier that day called Vin sur Vin. It was small and quaint
with a sommelier – we told him what kind of wines each of us liked and he
brought out bottles for each of us to try until we settled on which one we each
liked (think of it as shoe shopping in a nice department store). We also had
some cheese and bread (now there’s a surprise) and totally enjoyed the atmosphere
of watching people ordering different wines and various small plates.
We walked around a bit more and shared a scoop of caramel
ice cream – super rich and yummy – and eventually called it a night.
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