When you travel, in your home country or abroad, how open are you to others all around you? Do you notice them? Smile encouragingly? Say hi when you enter, and bye when you leave, and pardon or some such when you bump into them? At the risk of really setting off those who hate country stereotypes, I would say that some nations produce many more people who are outies (my word for those who recognize and acknowledge the presence of others) and other nations -- more innies. Italy, Spain -- outies. Japan and Russia these days -- innies. Try catching the eye of a Russian traveler. Go ahead, just try. You wont succeed. [Where do Americans fall on this continuum? I think we are mostly outies. I find most traveling Americans to be both friendly and curious about their neighbor.]
* * *
Good morning to yet another beautiful day in the mountains! Frighteningly so: it will reach 50F (10C) today, under sunny skies. They do say that by the end of the week the cold and the snow showers will return. Or maybe it's that they need to feel that optimism (as do we all)!
Breakfast -- let me just pan the camera over some buffet items that are simply irresistible.
Voila! I could just make a meal of their bread product, but no, I have to add the cheeses and fruits and yogurts and eggs and smoked trout and honey... Hmm, maybe I should have a sportive day?
* * *
I go over to the Tourist Office to see if they have additional suggestions for walks in or around Chamonix. I tell them I already did the one to Le Chapeau. She looks at me with a frown on her face:
We don't recommend that one at this time.
Why, what's wrong with it?
We dont know the conditions there.
I can tell you the conditions there -- they are fine!
Still, we cannot tell for sure...
I have to think it's the presence of an avalanche alley that cuts into the trail: might there still be snow up above that could let loose and tumble down? Or is it simply that the Tourist Office prefers to steer you to groomed places, manicured toward their intended use?
Okay, let's not discuss what was, but what can still be. What do you recommend? She mentions Le Tour. Done that. Then she suggests a forested walk just up the valley from Les Tines (a village accessible by train). Maybe... And if I want sunshine and glorious views, I should definitely go to Les Praz, from where I can take the telecabine to the first summit. You will need snowshoes for the hike there, but it is very nice.
With good conditions? Enough snow for snowshoes?
She answers in that "isn't it obvious" way that implies the question is silly. Of course there is snow. People ski there. You need snowshoes though. You can rent them in Les Praz.
I opt to take the train further up to Les Tines and do the forested walk today. I only have the morning for it. Tomorrow I'll go all out and do the telecabine in Les Praz up to those snowshoe trails.
I hurry to the train station. 6 minutes? No prob! And as the train pulls away and the sun trickles into the car, an urge takes hold and like a magnet pulls me to the door as we approach the first stop -- Les Praz. A walk up high, in the sunshine! Seems fabulous! For today!
(at Les Praza, passing a house with a beehive... sympathetic to the Ukraine...)
The telecabine lift up the mountain is just a short walk from the station. The gondola-like lift is nearly empty now. Any serious skier would have gone up to the top where there are ski runs a long time ago. The attendant admires my camera, we chat about the virtues of Fuji, the doors shut. One thousand meters later, I am out, looking around me for the snow shoe trails. I do not have snow shoes, but are they really necessary? I put on my spikes and start the "snowshoe" loop.
Two comments here: the views are just fabulous! Do you see the tele-cabine, passing by?
The glacier Mer de Glace...
With Mont Blanc and all its sister peaks staring right at me. Really grand, all of it!
My second comment is about the snow shoe trail. True, you dont really need snowshoes if you have boot cleats. It's a packed strip of snow. You're not going to sink in. But my oh my is it a work out! Up and down, in a loop, except that it is such a challenge that I cut it in half and retreat before finishing it. I wont have time to catch my targeted train if I do the whole thing. These French people sure expect a lot of sportive effort in their mountains!
Just before the telecabine ride down, I pass an eating place with a few swingback chairs for the weary. Ha, for me! I sit down for a few minutes, then thank my stars that I put on enough sun screen back at the hotel.
(Always the young and crazy up there on the slopes!)
(my shoes and cleats served me well today...)
And now I am at the train station (along with a few others, except they are going in the opposite direction. No one wants to head back this early to Chamonix).
Me, I'm in a bit of a rush because I have a meeting -- a last one -- with Teresa the walking partner-photographer-Chamonix resident, and I still need to eat a lunch. Well, "need" is a bit of an overstatement. I've been eating plenty here. If I skipped ten meals in a row, I'd still be okay.
I'd asked at the hotel which bakery was their favorite and they all shouted out "Richard!"
So I stop in there and pick up too many treats that will be my lunch. The important ones: a mushroom quiche and a blueberry tart.
Teresa comes at 1:30. This time she turns the car in the other direction and we drive down toward Les Touches in the southwestern edge of the valley. There she navigates the car up a winding road, reaching hamlets that I think may all fall under the name of Le Coupeau.
We leave the car behind near the top and head out on foot.
It's a fascinating corner of the greater Chamonix valley. Many of the chalets, farmhouses, granaries are authentically old. They may not be used for farming these days -- most have abandoned that cause in favor of tourism -- but the houses were once constructed to accommodate a farmer's needs.
And they are beautiful to see here, at a time when more convenient housing has sprung up closer to town, and these places, so full of character and beauty, have been left to whatever fate the owners bestow on them. Luckily, on this mountain, the owners have vowed to keep their authenticity in place. Sure, they've been updated inside. But on the outside -- they look perhaps as they did several hundred years back.
(By the way, in the afternoon photos, all the ones where I make an appearance, were done by Teresa with my camera, then minimally modified by me.)
There's much to say about this quiet corner of the greater Chamonix area, but I have even more to show with the photos I took. It is a magical place! The chalets, sure -- lovely. But the view is what really brings home to you the power of the Mont Blanc range. It is in your face, surrounding you in its embrace.
Likely to been one of the best of great mountain views that I have ben privileged to see.
(Teresa has brought some tea and cakes and we pause here to eat these treats...)
We do a hiking loop, past pastures and bogs, then through a forest (mostly pine, but larch as well -- that wood that was once used in so much of the housing up here)..
Past more farmhouses and granaries, now used by homeowners for storage..
It really is a fabulous walk.
I feel like today I met the criteria for a sportive day!
* * *
I eat dinner at Atmosphere. This is a very lovely little restaurant in the center of town, overlooking the river that runs through Chamonix. It was nearly impossible to get a table, even booking as I did several weeks ago. I can see why -- the food is good and if you take the set menu, the prices are extraordinarily reasonable.
I eat home made foie gras (when in France...) and then duck breast, finished off by a Savoie apple tart on a very thin layer of crust. With salted caramel ice cream. Which do you want to see? Okay! (Everyone always wants to see the dessert!)
The one thing that did happen at dinner is that I lost my love for restaurant lobsters. I did not order lobster. It would be a ridiculous choice: Canadian lobster in Savoie, France? Totally not right. However, my table was next to the lobster tank. And I saw some pretty unhappy lobsters in it. I know this is a bit nuanced, but I will feel okay about eating seafood that's not tortured before it hits my plate. Eat it when you're near a place where it has been fished, or eat it from someone who does the job of freezing it until it gets to your table. What I can't see myself doing is eating a lobster out of a tank of our local seafood center. Those unhappy lobsters really got to me!
And now I must sleep! Athletes and mountain hikers need their head-on-pillow time.
With love...
