There are two things that everyone does when they come to Chamonix. First, they all take the cable car to Aiguille du Midi ("Needle at Noon"). You actually take two aerial lifts and you end up at an elevation of 3842m (12605 ft) -- the highest access point by cable car anywhere. From there you can see basically the world, and specifically -- Mt Blanc up close and personal. This I did when I was in my twenties and I never want to do it again. My head does funny things at sudden shifts in elevations (don't even ask how many nose bleeds I get in the mountains, and even in the valleys of mountains!) and the last thing I want to do is ride in a packed cable car (Covid!) to then stand at heights that trigger every instinct in me to get out and get down. Funny that I love the mountains so much given that great heights inspire in me holy terror. [I was only a little tempted to do it anyway, because you can, since 2015, take another cable car from up there to Courmayeur in Italy. I love that small town and haven't been there since I was a very young solo traveler. So -- tiny flickers of temptation, but not enough to push me to do this trip.]
The second must-do in Chamonix is to get up close to the Mer de Glace glacier. It's by far the largest glacier in France (7 km) and the ride to it is just as beautiful as the view once you get there: you take a 20 minute cog rail car (funicular) to Montenvers and from there, you ride a brief telecabine, and finally you take some 500-plus steps down, and that puts you not only face to face with the glacier but actually right inside the glacier.
This I plan to do today.
After I greet the mountains.
They will be under cloud cover later, but at daybreak, I can still see them and feel humbled. Chamonix is such a complicated and touristed place and yet, the mountains are always there to remind you that they rule here. You are just a mere passerby.
Breakfast? I finally figured out (took me a while) that I do not need a large morning meal if I'm going to eat lunch a few hours later. Yes, I know breakfast is included in my room price, but still, "free" is not an invitation to wolf down more than you can handle. So, let's get back to fruit, yogurt and a croissant. Fine, and a stick of tomme de Savoie for protein!
I'm still unnerved by the whole skiing-Russians thing but perhaps this merely shows our utter isolation back on the other side of the ocean. Hearing Russian in the U.S. merely means that you've come across a community of immigrants. Not tourists, visiting while we're exchanging missiles over the Ukraine. Europe is different. Russians have bought up real estate here, parked their boats here, and routinely have played on Europe's playgrounds. In the past, I never gave this an ounce of thought. People travel, power to them. But of course, this year, it's different. In my mind, you can't party in Europe and wage war against its member state. Maybe it's just me. Poles have a deeply ingrained belief that Russia is always on the brink of destroying borders. Today it's Ukraine -- that's miserable enough -- tomorrow it's Poland.
Alright: do an about face -- away from the breakfast room and onto the cog rail station. The train itself is not new -- it was completed in 1909, though at first it was powered by a locomotive. (It was electrified the year I was born -- 1953). I purchased a ticket online to avoid a wait (totally unnecessary as the ticket windows were without lines), then worried a little as there was a line forming to get on the first train out (at 10:05). In the end they send two little red trains, one right after the other and all those who waited got on and found a seat.
teach your children well...
We spill out at Montenvers, having climbed some 1000m up the mountain.
And immediately I walk over to get on the small telecabine that takes us down, way down to the glacier.
the glacier
Well, this is what it did when the telecabine was constructed in 1988: you got out of the little cabin and the glacier was before you. Over the years, the glacier has melted and receded so much, that steps have had to be constructed further down to take you to it. Each year, more steps are added. From zero just a few decades ago, to 520 today. That's how fast it is melting.
From a physical stamina standpoint, that is one hefty descent, and of course, an ascent coming back. Pregnant women and seniors are warned: take it easy, take pauses.
I smile a little at these warnings. Some fifty years ago, I would have been sure to sprint down fast, passing anyone I could. As I am nearly 70, I don't race. Though it's not the lack of stamina that holds me back, it is, of course, the knee that's supposed to be replaced this spring. But, I've given it a workout in Chamonix and it's been more or less cooperating.
Down I go.
Those in Chamonix have long figured out that visitors love to go inside the glacier and so they have excavated caves and short tunnels for you to do just that: walk into a field of blue ice (why blue? as I understand it, water, both liquid and solid, doesn't absorb the white light of the sun in the same way that air does; the bigger the brick of ice, or the body of water, the more blue it will appear). I don't think they realized that these caves have to be dug out anew each year as the glacier recedes.
It's quite beautiful inside a glacier. Who knew!!
I turn around and head back up those many many stairs, sometimes dragging my wounded knee, but mostly managing just fine. And I do pause to admire the sunshine trying hard to push through the hazy skies, and, too, I study the visitors -- families with small children, small groups of friends, not many seniors and no pregnant women!
And after making it up to the train station, I feel I deserve a reward. There is a sweet little gift shop. How about a wee sized Mont Blanc crystal? Maybe a magnet? My needs are small.
Teresa, my Chamonix walking companion, had suggested I eat lunch up here, at the old Refuge de Montenvers. It was built in 1880 for mountain climbers and visitors to the Mer de Glace. Granite on the outside, knotty pine on the inside -- it exudes a strong and warm protection against mountain fury.
I booked a lunch on the veranda and I was delighted to see little wisps of sunlight coming in from all sides in the big dining space. Happy chatter abounds. The views are, of course, fabulous.
I would have been happy with even a hiker's meal of bread and cheese, but these people put together a small menu of local favorites that is unusually good, beyond expectation. I didn't hesitate: I choose the one important Savoyard dish I hadn't had -- the tartiflette, which has potatoes with a few onions and ham bits, smothered with strips of melted Reblechon cheese from the Chamonix valley.
I love Reblechon and used to sneak it into my suitcase way back when, because it was impossible to get it in the U.S. Now of course we are flooded with cheese choices at home and so it's silly to take anything back at all. Still, I wont forget this lunch for a long time.
Oh, and yes, I did opt for dessert: a "blueberry finger" with pieces of meringue "snow." I will always think of wild blueberries as being a very Alpine fruit.
Outside again, I see that some people just like to eat lunch on the edge!
And now it's time to go back down to Chamonix. With a bunch of skiers!
I ask them -- where the heck do you ski here? They tell me they go up to Aiguille du Midi by cable car and from there, they ski off piste to the glacier. Steep incline, varying snow conditions and 23 kilometers of skiing. Now that's nerve! I tell them they are my definition of adventurous. The young guy retorts -- oh but I am sure you are adventurous as well! My age must have lead him to think that. But am I? At home, I was taught to be cautious. That danger lurks. Much as I wanted to plunge into adventurous stuff, I couldn't. Someone always put a hand out to stop me. And eventually, my sense of adventure fizzled. Sure, one would argue that moving to a different country when you're young and have no money is adventurous. That agreeing to teach law to Japanese students in Kyoto for a month is adventurous. That moonlighting in a restaurant after your day job is adventurous. As is kayaking with Ed and hitchhiking in Sicily, and doing a bunch of naughty things that hadn't quite made it to Ocean (yet). But at a deeper level, I know I could never have skied down off piste for 26 kilometers like these young people do routinely. And yes, in snowy years some get buried in avalanches (they all had avalanche equipment, I noticed), but most don't. As Ed would say -- you're more likely to crash in a car coming up here.
So, I admire their spirit and smile at their enthusiasm. And notice their utter tiredness.
(note the sticker on his ski... Is he a cheesemaker?)
In Chamonix again I do some light shopping for the kids. Very light. So light it doesn't even count.
And then I have someone knead my back one last time and I take out my suitcase to begin the chore of packing, while outside, the clouds roll in.
Evening. It's my last dinner in Chamonix. I leave very early tomorrow (very early!), so you could say it's my last full meal, period. I chose La Maison Carrier for it. This is a sister restaurant (well, more like the poor cousin) to the only Michelin starred place in Chamonix -- Albert 1er. Both are run by I think the fourth generation of the same family and both are part of this town's luxurious hotel. All this is irrelevant. The thing is, La Maison Carrier may be a second fiddle of the bunch, but its food reputation is stellar. And its prices are in line with those of other dining establishments around town (which honestly are up there in Paris territory: my fixed price 3 course meals, service charge included, tend to be between 40 and 50 Euros here, which is currently right around $40 - $50; in Paris I often eat below that price point).
This is the only restaurant that requires me to walk to another corner of town. And it is the first and only time for me to feel the wetness of a light rain. I didn't take an umbrella -- I have a hood on my jacket, but it does make me wonder: what would have I done had it rained the whole time I was here? (Actually, I guess I know: I would have stayed in my hotel and read a lot of books!)
The restaurant is very farm-like in decor.
The food? Oh, it is very very good, but it doesn't cut through to the top three, or even four. The execution is great, the setting -- lovely, and they have a dessert table where you could help yourself to anything and everything you wanted. But the menu is otherwise (in my view) uninspired and if you want something not terribly heavy, you are stuck with lightly cured salmon for starters and a Lake Geneva fish for a main course. I order both and they are really fine, but what is missing is some excitement!
(Salmon in a delicious lentil puree)
(Dessert? you pick your own from a round table!)
... Or is it that I am feeling the drag of having to then go back to the hotel, in the rain, and start packing? Knowing that I have to send my suitcase through, because of those creams and kid trinkets. It's just too heavy to take on the flight with me. And knowing, too, that we are having an ice storm back in Madison right now. The airport is officially closed. The weather probably wont affect my travel, but there may well be staggering delays as airlines try to catch up.
But that's not what I was thinking about as I walked into the hotel Mont Blanc at night. I was thinking instead about how special this place is, with its 40 rooms spread over a five floors. Indeed, as I closed the door behind me in my room and faced my suitcase, there was a knock on the door. One of the staff brought a handwritten message thanking me for my stay and along with it, a beautiful bound notebook, as a small gift. They do such stuff here. Earlier, the person who was stomping on my back asked me if I liked taking pictures in Chamonix. How did she know that I took pictures here? Somehow, they know.
As usual, it's late. I don't mind being tired tomorrow. All I have to do is sit, all day long. And catch my connections. And write some words here, for you.
with love...
