“I want to go there,” Erika said, pointing at a picture on her friend Celia’s Instagram feed. It was of a beautiful Alpine landscape, in Chamonix, France.

And as simple as that, thus began the transformation of our Switzerland trip from a brief visit of Geneva and Zurich, into a two-week tour of the Alps along with those two cities. So much for getting out of Switzerland as cheaply as possible.

I’m glad that transformation happened. Because, though it wasn’t cheap, the next week that we’d spend in the Alps–covered by this blog post and the one to follow–turned out to be one of my absolute favorite parts of our entire world trip.

Getting There

To get to the Chamonix valley, we headed back to Geneva airport again. Not to fly… no no no, we’re in Europe now, and for the next few months we’ll thankfully have very, very few flights. No, the airport is just where it’s easy to catch buses and shuttles to Chamonix.

At the airport, we found the ticket counter, and I approached, ready with my best French.

“Je cherche un billet de bus pour Chamonix,” j’ai dit.

I (barely) managed to keep up as we went back and forth in French, and he gave me directions to where I needed to go to purchase the tickets. I thought I had it all, but asked him to repeat, to make sure I didn’t get lost.

“In English?” he asked.

I smiled bashfully and said sure.

“But your French was very good,” he added.

Dear Sir at the bus counter in the Geneva airport, thank you, you have made my year.

Les Houches

The shuttle to Chamonix valley was (relatively) cheap, and quick–in just over an hour, we were there.

We weren’t actually staying in the town of Chamonix, we were staying just up the road, in a village called Les Houches. It was lucky, but this turned out to be an inspired decision, and was the first in a series titled “Erika and John stay just outside of where they want to be, but that turns out to be exactly where they want to be.”

We only stayed there because Chamonix was expensive, but Les Houches was perfect–a quiet, calm, peaceful, beautiful village, whereas Chamonix was busy and crowded with tourists (but no less beautiful, that’s for sure). Even better, our hotel came with free Cartes d’hôte, which gave us access to all the public transit in the valley, making it easy to get back and forth from Chamonix when we wanted.

But why get on a bus or a train for Chamonix when you have views like this off your terrace?

Because… well, wait till you see the pictures later on, that’s why.

But, we loved our place in Les Houches, and with our perfect, pleasant terrace, it had a strong magnetism that threatened to hold us in place. For instance, we were walking around town right after we got there, checking out restaurants, looking for a place for lunch. Everywhere was kind of expensive (#europe), kind of more than we wanted to pay.

“Why don’t we to go the Carrefour and get some cheese and bread and meats and Rosé and have a picnic on our terrace?” Erika, in a stroke of pure genius, suggested.

Friends, behold!

Still, to this day, one of my favorite meals all trip. Delicious, fairly inexpensive, incredible scenery, and the best company possible.

Just Some Housework

One of the first things we needed to do in Les Houches was finally catch up on our laundry. We were in crisis mode! As I mentioned in the last post, I did some hand washing in the sink of our hotel because we were out of clothes!

Fortunately, there was a good laundromat a short walk from our place, so we could get our laundry done easily.

Sigh. That all our chores could be done with that damn backdrop.

Chamonix

With our cartes d’hôte, getting to Chamonix village was easy. We walked the 10-minutes to the train station, and took the train another 15 to the heart of Chamonix.

From there, Chamonix is a beautiful, busy, walkable, tourist-filled town. It’s gorgeous in summer, with flowers all around town, and the stream fueled by glacier run-off coursing through the middle. All the while, the tallest mountain in the Alps, and all of western Europe–Mont Blanc–creates a picturesque background to this lovely ski town.

We loved it in summer, and yearned to come back and see it in winter, armed with our skis and snowboards.

And like with our time in Geneva, our plan was to just stroll the town and experience it. Slowly wending through the crowds, looking at the beautiful facades and churches, peeking into expensive ski shops, enjoying the French café scene.

Eventually, we chose one of those cafés to grab a coffee and some macarons at.

We got all we wanted out of our afternoon there, so we headed back to Les Houches, to find dinner and hopefully get to bed early. We had a day of hiking ahead of us!

Le Grand Balcon Sud

One thing we definitely wanted to do in Chamonix valley was go for a day hike. There are a lot to choose from! The Tour de Mont Blanc–a 110 mile circuit around Mont Blanc, that travels through three countries–comes through the area. There are plenty of day hikes that can be carved out of that circuit. The entire thing wasn’t in the cards this trip, obviously.

In our travel planning division of labor, hikes are my job. I’m responsible for finding hikes to take, figuring out how to get there, etc. After plenty of research, I decided on the Grand Balcon Sud. It’s a 6 kilometer one-way hike, high above Chamonix village, that provides stunning views of the entire Mont Blanc range across the valley.

Look: this is one of the greatest hikes of all time. If you’re ever in Chamonix area looking for a hike, you can do a bunch of research looking into all the options. Or you can just scrap all that and go do this hike, and have one of the best days ever. Take my word for it. Or don’t: take our pictures’ word for it!

And in a mark of how spoiled we are: this isn’t even the best hike we took in the Alps! That’ll come next blog post!

Getting Started

The hike is easily accessible by public transit. We took the train to just north-east of Chamonix, where you can take the Flégère gondola up to where the hike begins high above.

This was the only remotely unpleasant part of the hike: the wait for the lift. Many trails start from the top of the Flégère lift, including ours, and they’re all quite popular. We got started a little late (just before lunch), so the crowds had grown.

But it wasn’t bad. From the top, you walk down the hill a short ways, following the signs, to the beginning of the Grand Balcon Sud.

The Hike

The hike is gently rolling, with very little ascending to do. It generally winds along the mountain side from north-east of Chamonix until you’re right over top of the village. Most of the trail is right on the edge of the mountain (hence, Grand Balcon), and out of the trees, which means two things:

1. You have spectacular views almost 100% of the time, and
2. The sun is very intense and extremely hot!

Fortunately, what you also get are nice breezes and the occasional chill from the massive glaciers across the valley atop Mont Blanc.

A Little Vertigo

As I said, most of the trail is on the edge of the mountain, with the rising mountain on your right, and steep drops on your left. I’m not trying to make it sound intense–it’s really not. The trail is very wide and comfortable, and there’s really very little reason to fear falling or anything.

Unless you already have very bad vertigo, like one dude we ran into on the trail.

“I… I can’t do it!” a dude up in front of us nervously said, as he hastily backtracked toward us, wiping the sweat off his forehead. The area he was stuck at was indeed more narrow, and because so it had something of a safety barrier along the edge.

“Can you see her?” he asked, motioning further up the trail. “Can you see my wife?”

We stepped up the trail a little ways, to be able to see around the corner of rock. There, we saw a woman plastered against the rock, slowly making her way forward. I guess she doesn’t care much for the heights either.

“Yes, she’s almost to the end of this narrow section,” we told him.

We tried to encourage him to get through the section, and he tried going forward again. But, again, he exclaimed in fear and exasperation that he couldn’t.

“Tell my wife I’m taking the road, I can’t do it! Tell her I’ll meet her on the other side.” Just behind us a little ways, there was a cut off to a dirt road that would bypass this particularly scenic, particularly vertigo inducing section.

Boule de Neige

Late in the hike, we came through a dip between hills, and found a bunch of snow from the previous season that had not yet melted. This is in August, mind you.

As I’m standing, taking in the increasingly ridiculous views of Mont Blanc, out of the corner of my eye I see something down at ground level.

“What was that?” I ask, wheeling around to look at Erika, who is currently sitting in the snow.

She grins. “…snowball?”

We proceed to have a short, but hilarious, snowball fight on the Grand Balcon Sud.

La Pièce de Résistance!

You can walk the Grand Balcon Sud in either direction. Most sources on the internet suggest taking it the direction we did, because of how it finishes: with a panorama of mountain and snow as suddenly Mont Blanc, seemingly close enough to touch, takes up the horizon in front of you.

In the last stages of the hike, you turn a corner as you near Planpraz, where it ends. Somehow, it’s like the last little bit of hiking has covered miles and miles, because while Mont Blanc was always scenic throughout the hike, it suddenly feels like you’re right on top of it. It takes the breath away, and is an amazing reward for completing an amazing hike.

This is also a prime area for paragliders to launch from. All around Chamonix, you can look up at most times and see paragliders, sometimes thousands and thousands of feet overhead, slowly cruising like eagles on the wind. And a lot of them start their flights, right here, at Planpraz.

Erika and I sat in the grass, enjoying the scenery, and taking some time to watch some of the paragliders fly away.

Eventually, we managed to drag ourselves away, to take the gondola back down to Chamonix village, and find the bus back to Les Houches.

Festival in Les Houches

We got back to Les Houches that evening in time for the street festival that was happening. There was one bit of Savoy cuisine that we wanted to try while we were in the area, and the street festival provided us the perfect opportunity.

Tartiflette.

What is tartiflette? Tartiflette is melted cheese, with potato and onion mixed in. It is a gastrointestinal disaster, and it is a delicious one. And a place just up the street from our hotel was making a truly massive amount of it in the street.

If I remember correctly, we paid 5 euros each for a set that came with a bowl of tartiflette, a fruit tart dessert, and a glass of rosé. That’s a good deal in a lot of places! In France it’s a steal!

Later that evening, as we were packing our things in our room, we started to hear the explosions of fireworks outside. Like, right outside. We rushed downstairs, and found they were launching fireworks from the town square right outside our building.

We watched the beautiful and lengthy fireworks display, turning to each other and smiling contentedly. It was such a lovely, perfect send off as we reluctantly got ready to move on to our next stop.

À bientôt, Les Houches. We absolutely can’t wait to come back, to buy our vacation property.

What’s Next?

The Alpine adventure continues, but it does so back in Switzerland. We cross the border again to see what the Alps look like in Switzerland, heading to Zermatt, the home of one of the most recognizable and imposing mountains on earth: The Matterhorn.

It’s a ridiculously scenic portion of our world travels, and you really do not want to miss the pictures, so come back to check it out!