Switzerland 7: Chamonix

Saturday, September 22

Here we defer a little from the Swiss themed itinerary, with our final night planned in Chamonix, Mont Blanc. On yet another early morning, we found ourselves leaving Montreux for our final destination. We had a leisurely paced drive to Chamonix, in eastern France, at the base of the iconic Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc, the Alps

Travelling at the edge of the peak summer season, we'd experienced some good and bad weather for our journey. Most days were still sunny and warm, but we occasionally hit some mountain rain. Today was no exception - it was time for the fall weather to catch up with us.

Top of Mont Blanc (2009)

Due to some rather torrential rain, we went to the only indoor place we could find - the marketplace. There were few shops open in the mall, so we geared up with rainproof attire to face the damp outdoors. We hovered from shop to shop down the main street of town, and when the rain had cleared temporarily we stopped by the fresh food market for some strawberries on our way back to the car. They were the good kind of strawberries - small, sweet, freshly picked, with nary a bruise and clearly not genetically modified like the ones in North America. (I'm not on the pure organic locally produced wheat-free etc etc bandwagon, but I don't like the giganticised and starchy texture of genetically modified fruit).

Chamonix town centre

With check-in time finally upon us, we arrived at our hotel, which was about 5 minutes walk from the town centre. This hotel felt luxurious compared to the B&B accommodations we'd been staying in previously, and perfect for a good nights sleep before our flight home.

Since we had just walked around the town, we drove out of town to see what there was to do in the area. If the weather was better, we'd have taken a gondola to the mountain top. We thought we'd try to drive to Val-d'lsere, because Mike had heard it was a nice town to visit. We hesitated when the road turned up a toll road tunnel, of unknown length, with an estimated over 30 minutes wait for traffic to enter the tunnel. This wasn't what we were expecting, so we turned back to Chamonix. Somewhere along this route, we stopped at a tourist sign for a waterfall. Apologies that I can't for the life of me remember the name of the falls, or exactly where along this route, nor can I find it online to show you. It was a short uphill hike to see the falls, but the path was blocked part way up for maintenance, so we didn't see the entire thing either.

Mont Blanc

Back in Chamonix, we researched places to go for dinner and reviews, then got disappointed when our two top picks (both a 5 minute drive from town) were closed. We decided to try our luck in town parked right next to the restaurant we ended up going to. After wandering and browsing menus unproductively, we decided to return to the car, and discovered the right restaurant to top off our gourmet culinary tour of Europe. They had a price fix menu that was perfect for what we wanted. Right down to the chocolate souffle dessert. This was the kind of restaurant to bring a small appetiser before the first course, and a cheese plate before dessert. Even with all of the good food we'd enjoyed on our trip, the Panier des 4 Saisons still managed to impress us.

With that, we settled in for the night. The following morning we departed via Geneva Airport.

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