Day 14 -- The (Ugg!) Drive to Chamonix

How oh how do I even begin to describe this day? LONG is probably the best one word summary I can muster. Like really long.

Thankfully Isla slept through the night for the first time in three nights but unfortunately I didn't (why is it that mothers waste precious night hours awake, anticipating the cries of their little ones?) Graham set the alarm for 6:22 AM so we could get an early start given the estimated length of our days' journey (5 hr and 2 min per Google maps but probably closer to 8 given our history).

The view from our room at the Eden Hotel

We again had the very traditional (and maybe starting to feel a little monotonous) French breakfast of baguette, croissant, fixings and coffee in the courtyard. We were on the road by 8 AM but had to make a quick stop at the beach in attempts to capture a photo of Isla's first visit to the Mediterranean since our camera battery had run out the day before. She was not amused and absolutely would not look at the camera or smile. What happened to our camera-loving child? She was not in the mood for the paparazzi.

The beach pictured was not technically "open" as it was a stretch of sand in front of one of the restaurants. In the later hours, you could rent a plot of sand, complete with umbrella and chair but we really were probably not supposed to be standing on the sand without offering payment. We flashed friendly smiles to the man who was raking the sand (seriously, who rakes sand!?) and took a photo anyway. When we finally gave up and hit the road, tt took us an extra half hour to get on the main autoroute leaving Juan-Les-Pins due to one wrong turn. But no harm done since we got such an early start.

There are not a lot of direct routes from the riviera to the Alps and surprisingly the quickest is through Italy. We got to enjoy the beautiful coastline and admire the cliffhanging colorful villages.

Finally, she smiles!

We decided we'd pick one of the coastal towns to explore and grab a quick pasta lunch in a cute setting--how hard could that be? Because we had no Italy guidebook and had not done any research prior to our trip, we has to pick our exit completely knowing nothing. The challenging part was that most of the exits were located prior to the village so we couldn't tell beforehand whether it was going to be cute or industrial. Finally we settled on Finale because it was on the tiny bit of Italy that was pictured on Rick Steves map of France. If he chose to put it on the map, odds are that it's good, right?

We parked almost immediately after entering the city. It looked good! There was an old walled fortress surrounding cute streets like we'd hoped. Now, to find our way to a trattoria for waterfront dining...We walked and walked and walked probably for 30-40 min.

So much for the quick stop but certainly the restaurant we'd happen upon would make it all worthwhile! Not so. Turns out the waterfront portion of this town was a beachy resort crammed with tourists and lacking all things quaint and romantic. Oh yeah, and it was only 11 AM and Europe seems to have very, very specific hours for dining and 11 AM was not one of them which meant nothing was open.

So we trekked back to the old town as fast as our feet could carry us. Graham decides gelato would fix everything and he was right. Redemption! We shared a delicious cone with dark chocolate, coconut and some other amazing, chunk-filled flavor. Sigh. Now this was Italy!

By this time 2 hours had passed so back on the road we went. We drove for a couple hours until around 3 PM when my growling stomach could no longer handle the lack of lunch. Too bad when were in the middle of nowhere (beautiful nowhere though, the Piedmont region I believe). Finally we saw a sign for a Risterante. Glorious! Let's stop there! But it turned out to be only a gas station that also served food. We pass more food signs but they turn out to be gas stations as well. Graham tells me "I refuse to eat at a gas station while it Italy!" My head agrees but my stomach does not.

At long last there are signs for a TOWN with food!!! Hooray! We pull off the autoroute and drive through a completely shut down town. Once again, we are seeking food at an inappropriate European hour (dinner isn't served until close to 7 or later). We keep driving from town to town and end up about 40 minutes off the autoroute. Everything is closed; it's siesta time in Italy. The thought of a McDonalds is starting to make my mouth water. At this point, I'd take anything! The only reason we kept going the way we did was because we'd spotted a sign for a grocery store (which we somehow managed to drive by without knowing it). We were getting frustrated and were passing ugly warehouse after ugly warehouse so we pulled over and proceeded to burst out laughing to break up the tense air.

We came to a city with a hillside fortress and decided to park and walk toward the castle to look for food since it seemed to be a more touristy area. At long last we found a sleezy bar with pre-made sandwiches and decided to cut our losses, buy a tomato/mozzarella sandwich and give up our romantic dreams of a pasta lunch in Italy. Oh well. Italy, it was nice seeing you again, even though you were a disappointment (for those of you who already attacked my Facebook status update, it was Graham who said we found the Tukwila of Italy). :o) Moral of the story, do the research ahead of time if you hope to find a cool town.

We got back on the road and were pleased to discover our wanderings had actually taken us in the right direction via the side roads. Now we were driving through beautiful villages in the valley of the huge mountains that had come into view. They even terrace the hillsides with vineyards!

As we gained elevation, we seemed to spend more time in tunnels than out as we drove through the mountains. Isla didn't like the tunnels very much--I think she thought we kept turning off the lights, trying to get her to sleep. Our final tunnel cost us a pretty penny. 35 euros to drive the 7 mile long tunnel from Italy to France! Too bad it was cloudy and so we were unable to see the looming Mont Blanc.

It was 6:30 PM by the time we drove into Chamonix. Isla was crying and we couldn't find our hotel. I think all of us had pretty much had it. Our room was quaint with "appealing wood paneling" per Rick Steves (personally I'm not sure who finds it appealing). We even had a mountain view, if only we could see the mountain through the clouds.


Dinner! What we needed was a good meal! I am happy to report we were successful at this one thing today. We ordered a traditional fondue that came with bread to dip and potatoes and local meats to eat on the side. We illegally dipped the potato in the cheese too. Why not? We sipped a white savoy wine which went great with our huge pot-o-cheese. The meal was pricey but we justified it by the fact that we'd hardly had lunch. Isla enjoyed her first white potato and loved the cheesy bread.

We all literally collapsed into bed. I awoke sometime in the middle of the night and realized I'd never actually made it under the covers...I was that tired.