We stopped at a rest stop after an hour or so. Chris and I got out to use the facilities and check out the view of the mountains. As we returned to the car, the girls were still sitting in the backseat. Chris had activated the child safety locks and locked the car and they couldn’t get out. Made for a good laugh.
Chamonix was packed with people. We figured it was almost the unofficial first day of summer, it was a Friday, and the weather was improved from earlier in the week. We parked close to the base of the ski resort. Chris got in line for tickets for the funicular up the mountainside and the girls and I looked for lunch food. We found a bakery for bread and chocolate-filled beignets as a special surprise for Chris and then a grocery store for sliced deli meat. We wandered in to a butcher shop and quickly exited when we realized they didn’t have cooked meat and it was stinky!
We found a cute city center where Misha and Kristen bought some postcards and art, lucky for Misha, the art fit in the back pocket of my backpack. We met up with Chris as he finished purchasing the very spendy tickets for the funicular and headed up the mountain to enjoy a picnic lunch. Unfortunately, the ice cave, Mer de Glacé, was closed for the day along with the gondola.
It was a little cool in some spots, but not as cold as we thought it was going to be. We brought our puffy jackets but ended up not needing them at all. Likely if we had gone in to the ice caves we would have appreciated them, now we just tied them around our waists.
We enjoyed the lunch that was becoming our daily habit—bread, cheese, drinks, and sliced meet. We enlisted Misha’s new knife (much to her chagrin) to slice apples and spread cheese, but it cut like a charm. The beignets were a new favorite treat for all of us.
I had no idea that a hotel sat at the top of the mountain.
Would have been a cool place to stay. We toured a small museum on crystals and watched a short film about glaciers and how they are receding. Amy bought a cap in the souvenir shop before we set off on a hike down the mountain. As we hiked, we watched the gondolas going up and down as workers tried to fix them. We were pleasantly surprised upon reaching the bottom when the staff were allowing guests to ride the gondola back up the hillside. My feet were particularly grateful. While the cortisone shot made a huge difference, they were still tender and I did my best to stretch them as often as possible.
We marveled at the hang gliders so high in the sky. Not my cup of tea, but Amy and Chris both expressed an interest in trying hang gliding some day.
We boarded the return train to Chamonix and enjoyed some ice cream on our arrival. We had debated about driving to Aosta, Italy just so Amy could say she had been to Italy, but the Tourist Info lady recommended against it because of the line of cars waiting to go through the tunnel to Italy.
Chris wanted to drive back to Evian via Martigny, Switzerland. It ended up adding a lot of extra time to the drive. The road from Chamonix was full of twists and turns and hairpin curves. I was ready to be down the mountain when all was said and done.
The traffic onto the freeway was quite backed up and soon emergency vehicles were trying to make their way around all of the cars. Turns out a car in the tunnel lost its entire wheel on the driver’s side.
Misha opted to return to the hotel for some quiet time while the rest of us drove about the town of Evian towards Thonon-les-Bains to find a place for dinner. We found a kabob shop which we could have found just as easily in Evian, but the view of sunset was a nice bonus.
We were leaving Evian in the morning for Vienna, Austria and packed up from our enjoyable stay at the Hilton in Evian.