Charmonix Mt Blanc

10 June - Day 86

The plan was to go up Mt Blanc sometime this week. I knew that it would not be worthwhile going up Mt Blanc if the visibility was poor. This Sunday was very sunny, though not as sunny and clear as Thursday to come - but I didn't know this then.

I'd run into a guy from Bombay the night before, and he sold me a couple of his multi-pass smart card for Mt Blanc for 6 euros (the value of refund if you return the smart card). This pass allows you to recharge for the incremental cost of about 12 euros per extra day once the initial 52 euros for day one was paid. He said he only used one of the two days as well, so I thought how fortuitous.

So at 11am we were down at the Charmonix Telecabin (cable car) station.

At the gate, we waved our cards at the reader panel on the left but it didn't work. The attendent tried too but no go. He suggested they might have expired. So back out to the ticket office for a cheap recharge. The lady at the office said we could only recharge an unexpired card, so we had to do that last night. So after all that we had to stump up the 55 euros each. The good thing though about the multi-pass is that you can use it all day (or however many days you buy) on all the cable cars and mountain train in Charmonix without having to queue for tickets and pay all the single ride fares.

The highest point of this route is the cable car station Aiguille du Midi at 3,842 metres. The trip take 2 stages, from Charmonix (already 1,035m) to Plan De L'aiguille (2,317m) then Aiguille du Midi.

Once on top, there are multiple viewing areas and platforms. I think we did all of them. The air up here is thinner, so I did feel a bit light headed and was breathless when we ran up some steps.

There was a whole bunch of Japanese guys singing loudly in the cafe. I guess the beers they were drinking and lack of oxygen may have produced the spontaneous karaoke.

You can see Charmonix in the valley below.

The clouds are below us.

We managed to find a seat in the cafe near the window.

There were plenty of hikers walking around the mountain top carrying their very dangerous looking pick axes, crampons, tampons and croutons.

The Aiguille is one of the few places in Europe that is dog free, because no dogs are allowed in the cable car. So if you are blind, you will have to walk up with your guide dog. The cable car are packed quite tight especially when the paragliders bring their parachutes into the cabin.

The pylons are very far apart, and in some places the cable is almost vertical. Here is a shot of the cable disappearing into the clouds.

From Aiguille, you can, for extra cost, take another Panoramic Telecabin to the Helbronner peak on the Italian side of Mt Blanc. It would have been a 40 min ride, but it was closed for maintenance. From Helbronner, there are two more cable cars taking you down to Courmayer, in Italy. Maybe next trip.

After Aiguille on the way down, we stopped at Plan de Aiguille and walked around a bit. You can actually walk down to Charmonix from here if you are geared up for it. The cable car trip down was a bit spooky when we were at the vertical cable bit. We were standing by the window on the downward side. I guess you could say Mt Blanc is the high point of our trip.

Upon disembarking in Charmonix, I was determined to fully utilise our day pass. We then walked the 500 metres down the road to the Montenvers-Mer de Glace station to take the train to Montenvers where the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) is supposed to be.

The train itself is rather interesting. The gradient is too steep for normal traction, so they have put the drive wheel under the train called a rack and pinion system. This wheel claws the train up the hill along a third rail of gear teeth running along the middle of the track.

The seats in the train are more inclined than normal to stop you sliding off. The views on the way up were pretty good. It was a 30 min ride up.

At Montenvers, all we could see was a huge valley carved up by the glacier, but no glacier. The tourist information also claims that there is an ice cave excavated into the glacier. The cave is there but with no glacier around it.

We took the 20 min walk down anyway just to get a closer view of the glacier valley. And a bit longer back up. Along the way, there were three plates indicating the position of the glacier in 1820, 1860 and 1920. Even the French can't avoid global warming. I looked for the 2012 plate, but we didn't get to the bottom of the valley. Hope it comes back in winter.

The authorities must take this off-season time to do maintenance. The cable car that would have taken us down to the former glacier was closed "for maintenance". I'd rather think it was closed for economic reasons.

It started raining, so we quickly took the rack and pinion train back to Charmonix.

 

14 June - Day 90

It rained (Wellington type rain, drip drip drip), so we slept late, ate breakfast slowly, took our time doing abolutions and were not ready for action till about 3pm, for 3 days.

I need a break from planning exciting adventures every day anyway.

Yesterday was another GPS merry go round day. I'd booked an apartment for us near Geneva, but in France a small village called Segny. 14 km outside Geneva, heaps cheaper than staying in Switzerland. And we can use Park and Ride, you park the car and ride into the city on a bus or train. As it was raining, we decided to take a drive there for a recce. This is a 100km drive each way on the A40 which cost 12 euros in tolls return.

On the way to Segny (or so we thought), I stopped to pick up a hitch-hiker. He was a high school teenager from Charmonix needing a ride back to school about 10km outside Charmonix. Turns out, his mother is from Dunedin, yes NZ. He speaks French with dad and English with mum. Been to NZ 4 times to visit grand parents and has kiwi and euro passports. Mum named him Liam, and she is not even Irish. He gets a hard time about his name, cause the French don't understand and can't pronounce Liam.

So the GPS decided to take us through 4 border crossings, through Suisse, then France, and on the way back France then Suisse. Forget it, I asked the Swiss Police to send me back to France, and he said go ahead and turn gauche (left).

Home and Marcus cooked dinner under supervision.

Getting on to today, this is the Thursday I mentioned above. The weather was perfect, we were both in shorts. Marcus was wearing his last undies. So we find ourselves in a familiar place, laundromat.

After that, making the most of the perfect weather. We walked around Charmonix.

They have a glacier, des Bossons.

A river, l'Arve.

Shopping streets, including an Ice Breaker shop.

Expensive real estate 1.4M euro for a 5 bedroom place with a 48 sq m deck (hah! mine is 100 sq m - big deck!!).

A shopping mall with a Supermarche.

Statues, plazas and fountains.

A leisure park with luges, kiddy rides and so on. It appears to be open in the weekends only.

As in most cities in Europe, there is no house rubbish collections. You have to put rubbish and recycling into these roadside bins.

We then went to Super U for 1.2kg of chicken and 500g of beans for dinner - to be cooked that is.

TV in the evening was Un Gars Une Fille, very funny despite missing 86% of the spoken content. This is about a French couple learning English, visiting Hong Kong etc and getting into funny situations because of language and cultural differences. Hmm feels familiar.

 

Dijon, France

6 June - Day 82


Today we drove out to the outlet shopping city of Metzinger, where they have a large number of outlet shops. Among the brands there were Armani, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, Swatch, Samsonite and the usual Nike, Puma and Adidas.

I (this is Marcus by the way) got a suit from Hugo Boss and that was awesome. Apart from that, the only other thing we bought was some bad Chinese food. We had kebabs for dinner though, those were almost as awesome as the suit.

7 June - Day 83

We left Stuttgart this morning to head back into France, specifically to Dijon.

We then arrived in Dijon, checked into our hotel, did laundry and bought groceries. Exciting stuff.

8 June - Day 84

We only had one full day in Dijon so today we went into the city to explore. We went to the tourist office and bought a map for the owl tour, a self guided tour around the city. The owl is symbolic of the city. I don't why though, you'll have to Google that one.

Dijon is a nice enough city. It's got churches and statues and libraries and buildings and things like that. I think it was also home to an artist called Francois Rude who my dad probably wants me to mention so he can put up a picture of a nude statue.

It's also a bit messy at the moment, as they are busy building a brand new tram system. All the roads and roundabouts they dug up did a good job of confusing our car's GPS.

I guess Dijon would have been an impressive city if we hadn't already been to Paris. And Bordeaux. And Toulouse. And Barcelona. And Krakow. And Budapest. It's much better than Keszthely though, Keszthely kinda sucked.

And no, we didn't eat any mustard.

 

9 June - 85

Having left Dijon, we drove for about 4 hours to our next destination, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. Chamonix is situated in a valley at the foot of Mt Blanc as you may or may not have guessed.

It's a bit of a ski resort town and it's very nice. There are good views of the mountains everywhere you walk and the town itself is pretty good looking. While eating lunch, we saw a woman with a huge dog taking a drink out of the town square fountain (the dog, not the woman) and that was pretty funny. We are here for a week so expect more riveting stories like this one.

 

Stuttgart

4 June - Day 81


On Mondays, museum across Europe are closed. When I picked up Stuttgart's city map from the info centre across from the main railway station the very nice lady reminded me, but I can still visit the cathedrals she said.

Stuttgart is a newer looking city compared to all the elderly places we have been. It is famous as the home of Porsche and Mercedes Benz. Despite this, the vehicular traffic is very free flowing, I have yet to see a traffic jam. The public transport is very comprehensive with connections to every conceivable corner of the greater Stuttgart. It combines metros (U-Bahn), light rail (S-Bahn) and buses. The lower population here means the connections are 9 mins apart rather than 3 mins in the denser cities.

The autobahn are the best roads in this entire trip, they are fast, smooth and very well planned. We drove from Fussen to Stuttgart on a one stretch 240km long, the A7. And no tolls or vignette either.

Marcus thinks German is the funniest language to far, and I must say it is not the most elegent. Compare Bon Voyage to Gut Fahrt, urinals are piossoirs. According to Michael Palin, they even have names for men who pee standing up vs sitting down. Take a guess - standen piossoirs and sitzen piossoirs. They don't bleep out the naughty words on TV interviews because they sound like regular German words anyway.

Outside of the two car manufacturers, 80% of Stuttgarts attractions are around Koenigstrasse, the main shoping drag and city centre. So we checked out the main square, Schlossplatz (Castle Square) and the gardens adjacent. It started raining and so after lunch we went home.

 

5 June - Day 82

It took a U-bahn and S-bahn to get to the Mercedes Museum. The head office, central showroom, one assembly plant and head office are also here.

The museum looks pretty cool, all 7 levels of it. It cost 8 euros for me and 4 for Marcus, being a student. You start the tour from level 7 and the exhibits are organised in a spiral down to the ground floor.

Then you move to the adjoining building where are the new cars are displayed for purchase along-side key chains, T-shirts etc. So they cater for all budgets from 5 -167,000 euros.

On the outside wall, there is a chronological posters of world events and the displays in the centre align with this timeline. Even Edmund Hilary got a mention.

Aside from chronology, the exhibits were also clustered around themes.

There is a celebrity one. The Pope mobile, Princess Diana's SL500, which she had to give back after the British manufacturers kicked-up a fuss, the off-roaders from Jurassic Park.

There are concept cars that never made production. Some using drive by wire using joysticks.

There is their racing heritage, and innovations that kept them ahead like the supercharger.

From vintage racing till today.

The owner of this custom made car had Carl Benz name the car after his daughter, Mercedes, and after that the name took off.

We also used the simulator which put us in the drivers seat of various F1 drivers, the last one being Lewis Hamilton when he became the youngest world champ by 1 point.

There is a display of the entire SL series over the last 60 years.

Then at the bottom level across to the next building, we were given the opportunity to purchase a Mercedes from the A series to the SL series.

A quick shot of HQ, and back onto the S-Bahn for lunch in town.

We went to a pub near the railway station which claimed to have the best steak. I ordered the lunch steak and Macus a hamburger. They delivered the meals from the next table, and we tucked in thinking that this is how they present burgers in Stuttgart.

Soon the waiteress came over and apologised and said we could carry-on eating (hah, like she could say anything else). I remarked 15 minutes later the people at the next table have ordered the same meal we'd just eaten. We were billed what we ordered, not what we ate.

 

Bavarian Castles

31 May and 1 June - Days 77 and 78

 

Went to see Men in Black 3. Left Prague and drove to Fussen in Germany. Yeah, that was pretty much it.

 

2 June - Day 79

Today we woke up early and went to visit the castles Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, the castles occupied by the Bavarian monarchy until they all died and everything got turned into museums.

We first visited Hohenschangau, the older of the two. You're only allowed to visit the castles with a guided tour so we did that. That one was pretty nice looking.

The area around the castles is also very picturesque, if a little bit touristy. The lake was very clear and there were some good views.

 

We had a two hour gap in between our tour of the two castles so we walked up the hill to Neuschwanstein and looked at the scenery they have up there, like the Marion bridge and a waterfall.

Neuschwanstein is the cooler of the two castles both inside and out, although it is still under construction. It started being built in the 19th century but the king at the time (I think it was Ludwig, or Otto, or maybe Leopold, I don't really know) died.

According to our guide, it was built in a gothic style. Or maybe classical. Or renaissance (again, I have no idea). Regardless, it was very impressive and very stylish. Highlights include the king's extremely ornate bed canopy and also his toilet, which was just a leather armchair with a hole cut in the bottom.

Also, Wagner used to hang out there a lot so there was also a singing hall and plenty of pianos. They had a phone there too, which looked really out of place but was used by the king everyday to call his mum.

Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take photos inside the castle itself so here are some photos of swanlings.

Although we were allowed to take photos of the royal kitchen, which was pretty neat.

After finishing up at the castles, we went to Tegelberg which is a tall mountain nearby. It's used by skiiers in the winter and hang gliders and paragliders in summer, so we watched a couple of them jump off the edge. People also do lots of hiking there.

The cable car ride up takes about 10 minutes, so it's pretty high up. Dad left me behind on the way down so he had to wait around at the bottom. Ha.

3 June - Day 80

Left Fussen and headed towards Stuttgart via Rothenberg.

 

Rothenberg is a small medieval town and looks a bit like this.

We didn't do too much there and then we left.

After a bit more driving, we arrived in Stuttgart, went for lunch and then walked to the Porsche museum.

The museum was cool. They had a lot of car stuff there and the history of the whole Porsche thing.

I've been also told to mention that the Porsche 911 was originally to be named the 901 but Peugeot already had dibs on the X0X naming format so Porsche decided to change into the United States emergency number instead.

Afterwards, we crossed the road to look at the Porsche showroom, which I guess is kinda like the gift shop if you have 150,000 Euros to spend on souvenirs.