24 Hours: Chamonix (Terri and Finn’s European Adventure Day 13)
The weather showed a chance of rain which would have been a complete bummer since we we’d purchased 4PM tickets earlier in the day (See Day 12) to catch the Aiguille du Midi cable car to the top of Aiguille du Midi, a 3,842 meter (12,605 feet) tall mountain in the Mont Blanc massif (mountain range) in the French Alps.
I watched a few YouTube videos prior to our trip to get a sense of what we should do in Chamonix and this was the number one suggested activity. There are two options: go to the first platform or go all the way to the top on a second cable car. We opted for the latter.
We took a quick picture after the 20 minute ride to the first platform (Plan de l’Aiguille) at 1,035 meters/3,400 feet). We enjoyed the view before boarding the second cable car along with 60 other people. Notice that I am in a tank top at this point.
We got a closer look at Glacier Rond from the first platform.
We got off the second cable car and walked around, astounded by the view. It was definitely chillier at the higher elevation and we were very glad that we’d brought our puffy jackets and our sunglasses. It was cold, windy, and very bright.
The views were beyond breathtaking.
We appreciated the signs that gave us a sense of what we were seeing.
We attempted to line up what we were seeing in real life against the signs to get a sense of what was what.
We were confused about which peak was the real Mont-Blanc.
We matched up these two so that we could look to the right to find Mont-Blanc.
But the clouds decided to mess with us and I think this might have been Mont-Blanc behind the clouds. We stood on one of the platforms for a while waiting for the clouds to clear so we could get the perfect shot. The weather did not cooperate.
Finn nearly threw themselves off one of the platforms to try to climb this rock.
This gives a better sense of the scale of this big boulder.
We saw folks hiking on the ice which was an activity option that we did not choose. I had no interest in doing it and fortunately, we didn’t have enough time.
There are multiple levels to walk around at this higher level. At one point we were walking through the rock of the mountain. It was very cool and a little drippy.
After visiting the gift shop, we got on the cable car to descend to the first platform. We had a specified time to get on the cable car to go up but no set time to get down the mountain so the wait to go down was a bit longer than the wait to go up.
At the first platform, we got off to walk around and view the valley from a different vantage point.
This picture gives a sense of the valley and the other mountain ranges in the area. Chamonix is at the bottom of this mountain.
It was getting close to dinner time when we got off the second cable car and walked back to our hotel to get cleaned up. We walked around town looking for a place to eat and found one that I won’t bother mentioning because it was expensive and not very good.
I recall that it was a strange situation in that we were the last ones seated and there only 3 other occupied tables. Everyone else was told there were no tables available. Maybe it was a staffing issue.
The next morning, we woke up to a power outage in the hotel. We packed up and carried our bags down the stairs since the elevators weren’t working. We were so happy to be on the first floor. We left our keys at the front desk to check out and then packed up the car.
I’d been nervous that we were parked in a public lot that didn’t allow for overnight parking. This wasn’t an issue. But for folks parked in the hotel parking lot in the building, they were stuck for a few hours.
Folks attempting to get out of the parking lot were struggling so I went over, pulled up the crossbar, and folks were able to leave. It was a simple solution.
We walked toward the other side of the valley to the gondola that was going to take us to the paragliding takeoff point.
I loved this building (didn’t write down the name) which was right on the river we’d seen the day before. We walked by it on our way to the gondola.
We found a small cafe near the gondola to enjoy an espresso while we waited for our reservation. We were very early largely because we had to check out by 11 and I didn’t want to be late. I didn’t know how long it would take to walk there and what the meeting situation was going to be like.
More about our (attempted) paragliding (parapente) experience in Day 14.
Terri Hanson Mead is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, Managing Partner of Solutions2Projects, LLC, and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and this blog. Terri is the mother of two college aged kids, is based in Redwood City, CA and in her spare time, loves to travel, cook, play tennis, and fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge.
