France 3 - Chamonix

Welcome to our 3rd post on our trip to France. In this section of our trip to France, we took the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse - which means "high speed train"), which was amazing. In 2007, one of the TGV trains was clocked at just over 350 mph. I don't thinnk we went that fast, but it was very fast. We took the TGV from Paris to Lyon, and then picked up normal trains up to the Chamonix area.

It was pretty cold and wet in Chamonix, as this trip was late September-early October. However, the clouds gave a beautiful atmosphere to the town. It is a definite "Alps" town with the appropriate architecture. We had a great room in a little "chalet", and just walked around the town. We went to a restaurant and had a fondue dinner, with raclette cheese which tripled our cholesterol numbers! It was so good, but so fattening!

Chamonix is nestled in a narrow valley between huge mountains on both sides of the valley. As you look down the valley, you see mountain after mountain fading off in the distance.

Another view of Chamonix in its valley.

We took a cable care up to the Aguille du Midi, about 3840 meters up. You could actually take a cable car all the way to Italy, across the top of the Mont Blanc Massif.

The Aguille du Midi.

If you go up to the top of the Aguille du Midi and look back at where the above picture was taken from, you see the picture below. The Alps are rugged!

NOTE: The picture below is NOT ours! I copied it from the Wikipedia article on Chamonix. So give credit where credit is due. It is a freely available picture taken by Paul Nash in March 2005. Thanks to Paul for making this photo available for the free use of anyone!

However, I wanted people to see what the valley of Chamonix looks like when the weather is nicer.

Thanks for reading. In our next blog, we go to Provence and the French Riviera.