Annecy and Chamonix

 

Every hotel has had a different shower. It has been a challenge figuring them out. This one had a button you had to hold to turn the hot water on so that it would go to the shower instead of the tub. 

For breakfast they had a cook-your-own soft or hard boiled egg station. That was another challenge. I made a mess of my sot boiled eggs.

8 am downstairs for those of us going to Chamonix.  There were 19 of us. Sharon and Kris stayed in Annecy. It was about a 1 1/2 hour bus drive to Chamonix to the entry of the Aiguille du Midi (The cable car to the top of the mountain.)

Sunrise along the way

Some of the trees are starting to turn.

We got to the Aiguille du Midi by 10 am.  Most of us were at ticket #41 (at 11:11 am)  to enter and they were at #30.  They let us in early.     

Starting on the cable car.  They really packed us in.

This was the half way point but we were going on up. 

Jeanne and I were anxious about having enough time to do the panorama tour on the gondola to Italy, so we scurried along the way.  Once we found the location we found that we had missed the last ride by 2 days.  The season ended September 27th.  Darn!! Oh well.  We had more time to enjoy the scenery around Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc 

We took a lunch break.  We ate at the 3842 Summit Sandwich Shop.  It is called that because it is at 3,842 meters altitude.  We split the grilled cheese sandwich and we each had the butternut squash soup. We had been told that there was a liqueur to help counter altitude problems.

I don't think that this was it.

We checked out all of the various levels.

Cables to go to Italy with no gondolas on them.

There is Italy off in the distance.

We took the elevator up to the peak.

When we came up to this level we saw a lot of alpine choughs (pronounced chuffs).  They look like crows but they have yellow beaks.

This peak is Mont Blanc.

We headed down.  We stopped at Bar Plan de l'Aiguille, the halfway point, for a cup of hot chocolate. It was at 2,317 meters.

It was no longer cold.

There were a lot of hang gliders out.  It must have been a perfect day for it.

We headed down the rest of the way.  

View of Chamonix

We met up with others of our group while we waited for the bus to go home. 

We watched many hang gliders.

Time to head home at 3:30 pm.  We got a couple of pictures from Kris.  I guess that they had a great day in Annecy. They did a few things with Darlene.  Darlene's husband was on the bus with us to Chamonix.

Once we got back we had a short time to relax before it was time for our happy hour with Steve.

We went through a lot of bottles of wine.  Steve also provided a good cheese, sundried tomatoes, and potato chips.

Then we headed to find a place for dinner.  

La Haie d'honneur (guard of honor)  by Bob Versscueren

 I am not sure that I understand this piece of art.

  We had gone to a place recommended by Rick Steves but it was full and we did not have a reservation.  We ask the person at the desk of our hotel and he recommended a place. We ended out at Brasserie Brunet.  It was his recommendation.

We had a difficult time ordering because the menu was in French and our waiter did not speak English. 

Butternut squash soup that was way better than what I had  for lunch.

Some onion dish

Zucchini dish

We ended with a complimentary slice of a delicious cake.  We ended out being very happy with our choices even though we had no idea what we were getting.

Their wine room.

The restaurant was very close to the hotel.  We told the concierge that we liked his recommendation.  We were all pretty tired by then.