May 21st, 2010 
Sheila Simkin There are fabulous views from our hotel of the Mount Blanc massif. What a sight! If a person has only one chance to visit one mountain area in Europe, there are three that I would recommend in the following order. Mont Blanc, Chamonix France – Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland – and the Jungfrau region, again in Switzerland. They are the most popular, breath-taking areas, and the first two are the most expensive to visit. No one is giving away anything on the mountains. A two-star hotel will run considerably more than a two-star hotel in, let’s say, Au, Austria but it’s location…location…location. You’ll get more for your money by staying in smaller, less expensive areas and just making day trips to the “Big Three.”
It’s supposed to get warmer each day but, right now, the weather is ideal for hiking. Another short walk to the Plan Praz/Le Brevant lift at 1,035m/3,395′. The hiking sign said three hours to the top of Plan Praz at 1,999m/6,558′, and an additional 1-1/2 hours to Le Brevant, 2,525m/8,284′. Seemed like a doable up hill to Plan Praz (forget the top of Le Brevant. I am “tetched in the head” but still have a few sane marbles left) and off we went. There were just two scary areas, one crossing over a little stream and the other on rocks. Other than that, not bad with the exception of looking out for mountain bikers flying down the same trails that made me nervous going up!
At the top in only five more additional minutes than the estimated time (not bad for two people in their upper ’60′s). Plan Praz is a big take off spot for parasailing parapente and it was fun watching person after person float off into the air. As for us, flashed passes and jumped into the gondola instead of walking downhill for two hours…View image. Walking downhill is so boring!
There are large posters all around the Tourist Office Square showing Mont Blanc history. The first discoverers, cartographers…View image, important personages (Alexander Dumas visited) and trivia. Extremely interesting and there is a cinema in the same square with the most lifelike paintings on the wall. You’d swear real people are up there filming and watching…and each time we walked by, I did a double-take.
We didn’t consider a day in Chamonix a day well spent without walking the crowded streets, through the souvenir shops, sport shops and patisseries. Columbia, North Face, Patagonia, and Arc’teryx are just a few of the big brand stores represented here. A sad sign of the world’s economy is that every shop has a solde (sale) sign in its window. There was a time one never saw a sale sign in France outside of late July and January.
What would a vacation in Europe be without yummy pastries, an excellent bowl of mussels for dinner and a help-yourself cheese buffet? The Hotel d’Arve cheese buffet is what takes our stomachs from still hungry to satisfied.
Lonely Planet France Guidebooks
BestRates at Best Western – even when it is last minute
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