Day Five: Hiking Grande Chenalette

As my alarm sounded this morning I rolled over in bed and opened my eyes against the harsh dawn light. My gaze drifted lazily towards the small north-easterly window in our hotel room and my eyes adjusted slowly to take in the morning view. Outside the window a mountain stretched into the sky, its peak disappearing in the low hanging clouds. After yesterday's fog and rain the clear blue sky looked dazzling in the early morning light.

"I bet we could climb that," I murmured, off hand to Dave still half asleep.

And so we did.

We checked out of our hotel room promptly at 11:00 am. After which, we asked the friendly receptionist to hold our bags for a few hours, stopped into a local store for last minute supplies, and then found the trail head behind the monastery. Twenty minutes later we were on our way hiking up the Grande Chenalette.

The Grande Chenalette trail head in Bourg St. Pierre

Switzerland ranks all mountain and alpine hikes on a T1-T6 difficulty scale, with T1 equating to valley hikes, and T6 meaning difficult alpine hikes. The first 3/4 of the hike up Grande Chenalette, to the initial lookout, was ranked as a T2. It was a gentle incline, with lots of switchbacks and wide gravel trails, which made adjusting to the higher altitude easier. By the time we reached the rest area we were feeling pretty good and eager to keep going.

The next section of the hike was classified as T4, and was definitely a bigger test of our wits and our alpine skills. We had to grip, climb, slide and hop along cables, ladders and bolted in chains. At one pass, that stretched nearly vertical along the mountainside, I clung to the mountain and took deep breaths, willing myself not to look down. This was all made ten times scarier during the descent that would follow, but I think you get the picture.

Bolted-in-cables for hand holds

One of the ladders that assisted with our climb

All our hard work payed off minutes later when we reached the summit of Grande Chenalette at 9,500 feet. Twin Swiss and Italian flags marked the summit and the divide between both countries. The Swiss Alps stretched before us in every direction, looking postcard perfect with snow capped peaks. A blustery alpine wind swept into the valley and brought a hoard of clouds that swirled around us before evaporating in the noon sun. Here are some of my favourite photos from the summit:

The Swiss flag marks the highest point on the mountain: 2,900 metres (9,500 feet)

Thanks to the family at the summit who snapped this photo for us!

The Swiss-Italian border in the sky

Happy but exhausted hikers at the peak!

Descending down the mountain was a treacherous feat. Both Dave and I had to psych ourselves up to maneuver backwards down a metal ladder that protruded outwardly from the cliff face. As our fragile bodies clung to the metal rungs I told myself over and over again that the bolted on ladders would hold steadfast to the rock. 

The journey down wasn't all glum. Part-way down we spotted this gorgeous creature, apparently called an alpine ibex, and native to the Swiss alps region. We got within ten feet of him and he didn't scare or spook.

The alpine ibex, spotted during our descent

We made it back to our hotel in the early afternoon, and caught a bus down the southern side of the mountain to the small city of Aosta, Italy shortly after. This evening in Aosta we got our first true taste of Italian culture. Dave obsessed about the bidet in our hotel room, watching many how-to videos before daring me to test it out—I declined. For dinner we feasted on a delicious meal of bruschetta, pizza, and pasta on a small outdoor patio, steps from the city square. 

Bruschetta with bocconcini, tomatoes and fresh oregano

Gnocchi with tomato sauce for me, and bacon pizza for Dave

Tomorrow morning we head to Breuil-Cervinia for a two night stay in the shadow of the Matterhorn.

Until then,

Heather

Day Four: Great St. Bernard's Pass

This blog post is coming to you from 8,114 ft.

We're bundled up in quiet hotel, adjacent to a monastery on the Swiss-Italian boarder. Clouds are racing past our window as they blow through Bourg-St-Pierre into the Aosta valley to the south. It's 2 degrees out, we've got a "sweater weather" playlist running through Apple Music, and I'm desperately craving a mug of hot chocolate and my fleece pullover. It's hard to believe that less than 48 hours ago we were in muggy London, cursing the lack of AC in our hotel.

Dave turned to me today and asked if there was any place in the world that was consistently this climate. So you can imagine how he's adapting, with his super pale skin and aversion to sunlight. Switzerland has been a joy, and I'm a little sad to be leaving it tomorrow.

We woke up this morning at a reasonable time (meaning Dave slept for nearly 14 hours straight) and decided to explore the town of Martigny. We crossed town in 30 minutes, and climbed up a series of switch-backs to an old fort that overlooked the valley. Here are some photos from the summit:

The view from the Château de la Batiaz Martigny

Our hotel was the small blue building in the centre of the photo

Tired but smiling faces!

Afterwards, we headed to McDonald's for coffee and breakfast. Dave has decided he's going to visit a McDonald's in each country. The interaction today, though, was less than stellar. An awkward French conversation with the cashier led to Dave ordering a quinoa- curry burger, which was predictably vegetarian. He still ate it, but was less than impressed.

The infamous quinoa-curry burger from McDonald's, Switzerland

After breakfast we headed back to the Martigny train station and boarded the red and white St. Bernard's Express, which took us up the mountainside to Orsières where we hopped on a connecting bus that took us the rest of the way up the pass.

Boarding the train in Martigny

The road up to Great Saint Bernard's Pass

The bus ride felt slightly treacherous: our Swiss bus driver sped up the mountain along precarious cliff sides, not seeming fussed about the lack of guard rails to prevent us from plunging off the road. I took this opportunity to divert my eyes from the road and catch up on some work, keeping my attention focused squarely in front of me.

50 minutes later, we arrived at the Pass: 8,114 feet above sea level. The hotel and monastery are connected, and overlook a small lake surrounded by mountains on all sides. It was raining a bit when we arrived, and windy. Big gusts of wind kept sweeping clouds into the valley and we stood and watched for a couple minutes as they floated and drifted across the lake.

We made it!

Looking back at our hotel from the road

The view from our hotel, overlooking the lake

After checking into our hotel we went searching for the famous St. Bernard dogs! The monastery kennels keep 20-30 of them here in the summer, as an homage to ancient times when St. Bernards were trained as rescue dogs to lead travelers through the snowy pass to the monastery.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which came highly recommended on Trip Advisor. Dave opted for cheese fondue (again) whereas I chose the vegetarian burger. My burger turned out to be literally grilled vegetables, in between two potato patties—which was absolutely delicious—but was not what I expected. Now I can't stop wondering if the Swiss think a veggie burger is just vegetables arranged into a burger shape? If anyone has any insight, please comment below!

When in Switzerland do as the Swiss do: eat and eat fondue

Honestly. This is not a veggie burger.

Pistachio ice cream for dessert, yum!

After dinner we retreated to our room, to warm up under blankets and do some quiet reading.

I'll leave it here for today: we have an early morning planned to explore more of the pass.

Cheers,
Heather

Day Three: Switzerland

Our day started out early: 6:00 am.

We awoke to a clear London morning, not-so-bright-eyed and not-so-bushy-tailed, and made our way on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow airport. After speeding through airport security in less than twenty minutes (top marks to Heathrow for that one, though if I'd known I might have slept in a bit more) we waited around to board our Swiss Air flight to Geneva a little before 9:00 am.

Swiss Air pros: They served us awesome fresh croissants and Swiss chocolate for breakfast.
Swiss Air cons: The airline has this weird policy where you can't close the window blind during take off and landing. The nervous flyer (me) was not pleased about before forced to watch as we were launched into the sky at totally unnatural speeds. Alas, I recovered.

We touched down in Geneva at 11:30 after losing another hour to European time zones and decided to forgo any walking about the city, in favour of catching our train directly to Martigny. I know this was a slightly blasphemous decision, as there are some seriously dedicated Geneva fans reading this blog (hi Allison!), but by that point in the day 6:00 am was wearing us down, and I was starting to feel a bit like a hunchback from lugging my too-heavy backpack around with me all morning.

Geneva to Martigny by train

The train from Geneva to Martigny was gorgeous: the first half followed the outer rim of Lac Leman, giving way to stunning views of crystal blue waters and quaint Swiss towns. The second half, diverging south-east from Montreux, plunged us straight into the heart of the Swiss Alps; everywhere you looked, seemed like it had been sculpted straight out of a Disney movie.

Here are some of my favourite shots from the journey:

Loved the quintessentially European countryside views

Lac Leman from the train window

The Swiss Alps emerging in the distance

Dave enjoyed this train ride in his usual manner: fast asleep.

Final stop: Martigny, Switzerland

After checking into our hotel, we showered, unpacked and then ventured into town in search of food. I took a few minutes to look up some restaurants on trip advisor, and had the perfect treat in mind to celebrate our arrival in Switzerland: Fondue!!!!

Cafe Du Midi in Martigny is known for it's extensive fondue selection

Cafe Du Midi, was a restaurant totally dedicated to fresh cheese and meats (from what we could tell) and was just a short walk from our hotel. After stumbling through some messy French with the waiter (a process, during which, Dave was completely useless—insisting my verb tenses were wrong), we found a table on the small patio out front, overlooking the town square.

Now for the good part: the food! Dave ordered a cheese fondue flavoured with herbs de montagne, which our waited translated to herbs from the mountain, while I settled on the house salad, which came topped with a massive amounts of prosciutto (that I promptly picked off—the vegetarians' loss was Dave's win).

Fondue and a house salad topped with prosciutto

Cheese fondue with herbs from the mountain in action

We also ordered Italian "white" beers, which helped beat the heat

After dinner we headed back to the hotel: I had some work to catch up on, and Dave was suffering from too much time-zone hopping. Early to bed tonight, and the onward to Great. St. Bernard Pass tomorrow morning!

Fast asleep at 8:00 pm.

Cheers,
Heather

Hemingway and Us

When this European adventure was first conceived off, months and months ago (before talk of Australia and Melbourne and well before the notion of a year abroad was even on the table) I knew I wanted to hike across the Swiss-Italian boarder.

You see, I read this book. Well actually, my best friend Christina read it first, and then insisted I do the same. I was fresh out of university at the time, and still overly idealistic. So, soon after Christina pushed The Paris Wife into my hands I became slightly obsessed with Ernst Hemingway and the 1920's in Paris. You see, in this book (and in life), Hemingway spent the first decade after World War I living in Paris in this tiny apartment beside a saw mill with his first wife Hadley Richardson. And that's when he decided he was going to make it as a writer.

Hemingway and Hadley spent the 20's dirt poor, but rich in love and wine and words. They moved through social circles full of famous ex-pats who escaped America for Paris at the height of prohibition. Characters making regular appearances in The Paris Wife include: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford... to name a few.

Anyway, I'm getting off track, but it's important to convey just how excited I am about this next leg of our European journey.

So the two are living a modest life in Paris when Hemingway decides to give writing a go. Soon after he begins working as a foreign corespondent. It's hard work but he's got steady money coming in for the first time since the war, so when he gets his first paycheck he does what every 20-something does with their first big pay: he whisks Hadley off to Italy to celebrate. They take the train from Paris to Chamby-sur-Montreux and decide to hike over St. Bernard's Pass from Switzerland to Aosta, just beyond the boarder. It's June, and the snow in the Alps has far from thawed, but Hemingway is an adventurer at heart and far from deterred.

Writing to Gertrude Stein from Milan on June 11th, Hemingway bragged that he hiked 57 kilometers in two days, and that "it was a great trek because the pass wasn't even open yet". Apparently it took Hemingway "a shot of cognac every two hundred yards" to propel himself up the last snow-covered part of the ascent. Hadley, who wore low-cut oxfords, developed substantial blisters during the two days of hiking through snow, and could barely walk by the time they reached Aosta.

How romantic!

No but really, I realize this story is far from ideal, but something about it has stuck with me. I began Googling madly, everything I could find about Great St. Bernard's Pass, and was determined to one day follow in Hadley and Hem's footsteps, if I ever found myself a reason to go to Switzerland.

Flash forward to today: a regular Thursday evening, except I'm sitting in a hotel room in Martigny, Switzerland (just south of Montreux where Hemingway and Hadley embarked on their journey) ready to make the trek. We head out tomorrow morning: first by train to Orsières, and then making our ascent through tiny Swiss towns until we reach our evening accommodation at Auberge de l'Hospice on the Col de Grand St. Bernard, smack dab on the boarder of Switzerland and Italy.

To follow in Hemingway's footsteps, and Napoleon's before him, and Charlemagne's way before that, is really a dream come true. My inner history-geek will be squealing all the way up the mountain tomorrow. Now here's hoping for no rain!

Until then...

Cheers,
Heather

Day Two: London

 

Our second day in London started out pretty rough. After a midnight delivery of our suitcases (yay!) we slept in to kick our jet lag, and then accepted it was time to face the music. London is our European home base. We chose it with purpose: a place to store our 50 pound suitcases, full of a year's worth of Australian supplies, while we traipse across Europe for the next month.

A family friend was kind enough to store them for us: All we had to do was drop them off at his flat. Easy, right?

Wrong. We're only two days into this trip, but I promise you, lugging massive suitcases across central London on the Tube (including two stops with no elevator access) was one of the worst experiences of my life. The combination of cobblestone streets, weak upper arms and massive crowds on the London underground led to a rather traumatic experience. The only high point was watching Dave try (and fail) to push his bag through the Tube station turnstile as it got caught in the slightly smaller gateway. A local Londoner and I laughed out loud watching Dave crouch down and heave the suitcase through.

The good news is, now that that errand is done, I feel physically and mentally lighter! See you on the flip side, suitcases.

By the River Thames in Hammersmith, London

After dropping off our suitcases, we perched on the side of a busy road in Hammersmith to eat McDonald's. We've had some requests for more food photos on the blog, so this picture is for you:

"It's comforting that, no matter where you are, you can get a Big Mac." - Dave

Full to the brim with salty snacks, we were finally ready to take on the day. First stop: Hyde Park Corner and Buckingham Palace to say "hi" to the Queen! Dave enjoyed my many facts about the British royal family, and the advantages of having a Head of State, as we strolled along Birdcage Walk.

Outside Buckingham Palace

Dave's wearing a different blue shirt from yesterday, I swear

What a view!

From Buckingham Palace we walked east along the Thames, dodging crowds of tourists along the way. How anyone local can get around in this city during tourist season with the mass of crowds I'll never understand. We walked all the way to Tower Bridge. Sights seen along the way: the historic Globe Theatre, the Tower of London, and London Bridge.

A snack along the way - caramelized peanuts and almonds

On our way back into central London we stopped at St. Paul Cathedral. It's such a beautiful church, and one of my favourite landmarks in London. Dave declared it wasn't as pretty as Westminster Abbey: different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

The stunning St. Paul's Cathedral... and some okay looking guy ;)

The cherry on top of an already wonderful day was meeting my friend, Ashley, and her boyfriend Andrew for drinks in Piccadilly Circus. Ashley and I worked together years ago, and have enjoyed many nights out together in Toronto since. I remember talking with her over tacos last summer, about the possibility of her moving to London in the fall... less than a year later it was amazing to see her here, in London, totally thriving, and with an expanded British vocabulary to boot!

After drinks in Piccadilly, we ventured east to Adventure Bar in Covent Gardens (a place I remembered from a previous trip to London, when much fun was had), and then onward to Wahaca for Mexican eats to cap off the evening.

Ashley and I at Wahaca for dinner

London, you've been perfect. Next up: Switzerland!

Day One: London

 

And we're off!

After a weekend of tearful goodbyes with friends and family, it was almost a relief when the time came to board our plane on Monday evening. Dave and I have been talking about leaving for so long, it felt good to finally take action after so much time spent planning and packing and saying goodbye.

Our flight departed Toronto a little after 7:00 pm (local time) and connected via Glasgow to London-Gatwick 6.5 hours later. When we arrived in Glasgow (sleep deprived but excited none-the-less!) Dave took once glance at the European Isles as our plane descended through the thick cloud cover and declared: "I think Scotland is my country!"

His reasons were as follows: (1) Everyone is pale. (2) It's not very sunny. (3) There are lots of gingers. He has since admitted that he might have been suffering from sleep exhausted, and was more enamored by the Scottish family sitting to our right on the place (particularly their awesome accents), and was not in the best state of mind to make big sweeping judgements about entire countries. Nonetheless, there it is.

After a quick breakfast in the Glasgow airport (porridge and eggs) we continued on our way to London, and touched down a little after 11:00 am (local time). In the least surprising chain of events ever, although we arrived in London safe and sound, our luggage did not. However, both Dave and I were too exhausted to argue with the British Airways attendant when he assured us our bags would "come down on the next flight and be delivered to the hotel today." It's now almost midnight and they have still yet to show. As a victim of lost luggage in the past, I'm skeptical about their claimed-promptness when it comes to this process. But, thankfully, we took this setback in stride.

And so, exhausted, lacking luggage, and forced to cram into a packed Southern train bound for Victoria Station, we made our way from Gatwick airport in search of our hotel (and a shower and a nap!). Here's a photo of Dave, enjoying his very first experience on a European high-speed train earlier today:

The good news upon arriving at our hotel was that our room was ready! So, we made a quick stop at Sainsbury across the street for missing supplies (i.e. toothpaste) and snacks (i.e. all the interesting chip flavours Dave could dream of trying), unpacked our meager possessions in our room, took a shower and then gave into the exhaustion and napped.

We woke up around dinnertime, clearheaded, starving, and eager to explore! Here are some photos from the rest of the day:

London "Eye" see you!

Aboard the London Eye! Dave was mocking my fear of heights in this photo.

Taken on the Golden Jubilee Bridge, on our way to dinner.

Dinner: Pizza from Union Jacks! A restaurant by Jamie Oliver in Covent Gardens, London.

On the docket for tomorrow: Buckingham's Palace, the Tower of London, Hyde Park, and more!

Until next time,

Heather