France - Chamonix

Chamonix Town at the foot of Mt Blanc 4807m

The train from Geneve to Chamonix was awesome. It started by following Lake Geneve around to Martigny, we then changed to a slow hill climber train with a cog driving mechanism used to take the train up the steep incline. We climbed up over a high pass before dropping down to the Chamonix Valley.

Mt Blanc from the Brevent Walking Track

Chamonix is a base for many awesome hikes, the first one I did was up to Brevent, a 2500m high peak directly across the valley from Mt Blanc. It was a steep 1500m climb but the views were fantastic.

A small lake near the top of Brevent

After reaching the top I strolled down to a small lake half an hour below the summit. It was a scorching day so I jumped in and went for a swim. There is a cable car that runs from Chamonix up to the Brevent, I succumed to temptation and caught it back down to the village.

Downtown Chamonix


Top spot for a picnic

Next day I walked up to the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) with Emily (Em), a french student from London who was working at the youth hostel during the university holidays. We climbed up and got some great views down on the second largest glacier in Europe. On the way back to Chamonix we got caught in some late afternoon thunder showers, and had to find shelter under trees / rocks from the heavy showers.

Bastille Day fireworks
Bastille Day is France's national day and everyone comes out to party! The night started with a few drinks at the hostel then Bittina, Em, Emma and I hit the town. There were tents and stages set up around town with different bands / DJ's doing their thing. It was a fun night and if you are lucky enough to be in France on the 14th of July you're in for a treat.

A band cranking out the french sound


Bíttina and I having a go


Emma loving the Euro Pop
Most of the music was good but some of it was pretty shocking. There was one DJ who was cranking out the worst Euro Pop ever made.

Lac Blanc living up to its name

Em and I went for another good walk. We caught the cable car up to La Flegere and hiked up to Lac Blanc. It was a nice lake but a bit chilly for a swim so we moved on..

Nice spot for a dip
We found a nice little lake for a very welcome swim. It was a majic spot and the views were primo.

Sunshine at the top of the Aiguille de Midi

Emma, Em and I headed up the most famous cable car in the Valley. The Aiguille du Midi takes you up to a elevation of 3842m, higher than Mt Cook in NZ. It is expensive but the views from the top are fantastic, be careful if you go because the temp can be 30 degrees in the village but drop only 5 degrees (and often a lot less) at the top.

Stopping for a snowball fight on the way to Lac Blue

On the way back down we stopped for a side trip to Lac Blue, we found a patch of snow and had a snowball fight.

Another wicked spot for a swim

As my mission was to swim in every lake in the Valley I could not resist Lac Blue. It was deep and the coldest so far, I only lasted about 10 mins but it had a cool rock in the middle I swam out to and climbed up. Emma was pretty brave and she jumped in too far a few refreshing minutes. Em decided she would rather stay on shore and play photographer.

Emma and Em at Lac Blue

The girls soaking up the sun after the cold dip. While we were there we could hear small rockfalls from the peaks near by. They were small but really loud and all you could see was the dust in the distance.

Les Bussons Glacier
Only a 40 min walk from the hostel was Les Bussons Glacier. It was riddled with crevasses and so very impressive to look at. It was a steep glacier so it travelled twice as fast as Mer de Glace, 2cm per hour.

Karin from Sweeden, Emma and I at the Luge

On my last day in Chamonix a goup from the Hostel went out to the luge. You get a chairlift up from the centre of town and then race back down the 600m track. It was the longest luge I had been on but it was only single file on the track so you could not overtake.

Taking the chairlift up to the top of the Luge

I had a great time in Chamonix, originally I was only planning to spend 2 days there but ended up staying 8. There was still plenty of good things to do when I left so it is one place I will be sure to return. There are lots of fully serviced lodges high up in the mountains in great postions (like lac Blanc) where you get all your meals and accomodation for as little as €40, so that would be a goer.

Switzerland - Geneve, July 06

TGV's stacked up at Gare de Lyon

After Paris I decided to check out the Swiss town of Geneve, famous for being the European headquarters of the United Nations and also the Red Cross. I jumped on a TGV, the legendary high speed French trains. These things are awesome, they wind up to over 300 km/h, so sit back and watch the country side flash past the window! You really know how fast you are going when the tracks run parallel to a motorway and you leave the cars for dust.

My Lakeside camp site at Geneve

Hostels in Geneve were really expensive but luckily there is a great lakeside campsite only 15mins by bus from town. The first day I arrived at the campsite I just lounged round in the sun and swim in the lake. Nice.

The United Nations Headquarters

Geneve has great deal where you can use bikes for free.. All you need is a passport and a 50 franc deposit, and you get the use of a good bike for the day. It was an incentive from the city to encourage the good health and exercise among residents and tourists. I got a bike and cruised out to the UN headquarters a 20 min ride out along the lake. You need to remember to bring you passport because security is tight, but once inside you get a great tour of the complex.

Geneve Waterfront


Lake Geneve and one grunty fountain

Geneve is a nice town on the shores of Lake Geneve (Western Europe's largest lake). It also has one hell of a fountain, Jet d'Eau fires a plume of water up 140m high in the air. Geneve is expensive though so don't stay to long if you are short of funds.

France - Paris

Bones and more bones in the Catacombes

Of all the sights in Paris, my favorite was the Catacombes. If you are scared of ghosts don't go here. What do you do when the graveyards in your city fill up and there is nowhere to bury people?? You exhume the old bones and stack them in disused mine tunnels under Paris, and charge tourists good money to visit them. This is the fate of millions of Parisians and you can walk for half an hour seeing nothing but bones stacked to the ceiling. Also being cool and damp down there it was a great releif from the 30 degree heat up on the street.

Gargoyles at Notre Dame

After the Catacombes I walked down to Notre Dame Cathedral, I climbed up the bell tower to check out the hunch back but he was not home... Guess he got sick of all the tourists. There were plenty of Gargoyles around though and they had a great view over Paris.

The icon of Paris at night

The time to see the Eiffel tower is at night, during the day it looks drab but at night it looks awesome. I watched the France vs Spain game at a bar nearby which France won 3-1, a result no one expected. Paris went into party mode!

Mont Martre, the home of the artists

I stayed in a hostel in Mont Martre which is famous for being the red light and artistic area of Paris, it is the home of Moulin Rouge. It was a good place to be and really cranked at night.

Sacre Coeur, the place we hangout at night

It was only a 15min walk up to the Sacre Coeur which was on the top of Mont Martre hill. It was a great place at night as it had brilliant views over the lights of Paris. It drew a lot of people and had a real party atmosphere with buskers cranking out the songs. Every night we went up there from the hostel and had a few beers.

The Seine with the Louvre on the left bank

I had a good couple of days in Paris but I was also glad to move on. Paris is a great city but it was choked with traffic and tourist congestion. I saw the craziest driving of my life in Paris and whilst I was at the Arc de Triomphe (20min) I saw 3 separate car crashes. I guess its not really suprising when you have a roundabout with 8 lanes and no lane markings! It is officially the worlds largest roundabout.. Looking around there were not many cars in Paris unscratched.

France - Brittany

Nantes Music festival

After Le Mans I had a week with Stig who was working in Nantes for a couple of weeks. We ate at a lot of nice restaurants and spent almost every night watching World Cup soccer matches in the pub. Our favorite match was England vs Sweeden as we were in an Irish pub which was half full of English people supporting their team the rest was French people supporting Sweden. Funny. One night we went to the Nantes Music festival which was awesome. The inner city was packed with bands playing all sorts of music from Country to Jazz and Heavy Metal to Brazilian Drums. We walked around into the small hours checking out all the different acts..

The little fishing Village of Auray

When Stig knocked off work on Friday afternoon we jumped in the car and hit the road. We headed for Brittany and stopped for a beer in the little fishing village of Auray. We then carried on to Quiberon where we stayed for the next two nights. There was a great little pub across the square from the hotel where we watched more World Cup action, including a French game which brought all the locals out in force.

Cote Sauvage, The Savage Coast not looking too savage


Stig could not get enough of the topless mermaid statue


Surfin Brittany

We were in luck, we had small clean waves and offshore winds. We scored a couple of surf boards (Malibu's) and hit it, we had a couple of great hours until the winds swung onshore and chopped the waves up.

Ohhh great sea food!!

After Quiberon we checked out Mont St Michel which was really awesome but full of tourists. We had some great food on the trip but we noticed one thing about eating in Brittany, if you don't like crepes you are in trouble. After driving around and seeing nothing but Creperies we were inspired to start the "Crepe's are Crap" campagn.