Today is La Fete de la Mere. Mothers Day in France. This year, Bill had two chances to remember Mother’s Day… the American one and this one. He forgot both. About half way through the day he said hey, we went to Chamonix for Mother’s Day! I wondered if he’d ever realize he could use that.
I was just thrilled to be in a place with stores open on Sunday. You can only go to so many garden stores, especially when you don’t garden. Those are the only stores open around us on Sundays. Naturally, I didn’t want to let on about my retail excitement. So I played it cool. Ok, I stopped and bought Kaitlyn a pair of shoes just minutes after leaving the hotel. But I didn’t even propose dividing up so I could shop until after we did the tourist stop of the day.
Defying death is a hard act to follow… so today we went for the no dangling in the air sightseeing options. Well, mostly.
We rode the train to the Mer de Glace which translates to the sea of ice. It’s a giant glacier that winds its way through the mountains by Mont Blanc. The train ride up to it is pretty steep, but provides some great views down onto the town.
Each year, an ice cave is carved at the end of the glacier. (I’d have said they carve the cave but I have no idea who they would be.) It has to be re-done each year because the glacier moves so far each year. We didn’t get to go in. The sign just said it would be closed until further notice while safety work is done to it. The lower platform where we could see down onto the end of the glacier we of course had to get to in yet another telepherique (tiny gondola hanging from a cable) And what we could see sure looked like an awful lot of work is yet to be done. There is still no way to get to the entrance, if there even is an entrance. There were several openings into the ice, but we couldn’t tell if they were from previous years. One opening looked like some ice and rocks collapsed in front of it; Bill thinks that is this year’s cave. Kaitlyn was more interested in the gift shop than in the glacier.
After lunch, Bill and Kaitlyn returned to the summer luge, while I did a little shopping. It turned out to be very little, because we may have finished lunch but the shopkeepers hadn’t. A lot of the stores were closed for lunch. (Most closed for a good three hours!) Still, I managed to pick up a couple of souvenirs and a gift. Not too shabby.
On the drive home, Bill and I agreed we both were charmed by Chamonix. Now we need to check out Zurmatt to see how it stacks up.