Chamonix: "Remote, serene, and inaccessible"

When Eve decided to join me on this France part of my adventures, she had very few requests.  However, one of those was to see the French Alps at some point during our trip.  So I looked at the map and picked Chamonix, thinking that it looked kind of close to Lyon and not really much further away from Nice than Lyon was in the first place, and said that we'd do two nights in Chamonix between Lyon and Nice.  I made this decision without actually checking on any relevant facts whatsoever, such as, for example, how much it would cost to go between said cities or what kinds of hostels were available there.  So our last night in Lyon, we looked at the train schedules and discovered that getting to Chamonix is not exactly easy or inexpensive. But we were committed, so we packed our bags and prepared for our three separate trains that would take us into the mountains, and which incidentally had 11-minute connections.

But hey.  We made it.  The walk to the hostel was freaking loooooong, but we were never actually technically lost, just amazed that we weren't there yet.  But it wasn't all bad, because as we walked we got to stare at this:

Mountain High Hostel is pretty basic, but we were put up in a three-bed room with an en-suite full bath and no roommate, so that was kind of awesome.  We dropped off our packs and headed back out into town for exploring and dinner.  Eventually picked the Jekyll and Hyde bar because they had actual jalapeno poppers on the menu, and enjoyed some really excellent comfort food along with plentifully flowing drinks.  Eve discovered a fruity lambic beer that she kind of fell in love with a little.

Went in and got seats at the bar when it started getting dark, and made a bit of a night of it.  Good times all around, although it did end with my ("somehow") headbutting a stone wall and our not being able to get back into the hostel until some kind souls heard our frantic knocking and let us in.  Hooray.

The next day started a wee bit late, but eventually we caught the cable car up to the top of the Aguile du Midi, which is hands-down one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Riding the cable car with my forehead injury, and a hangover.

Up at the top, we were greeted with THIS amazing sight:

Mont Blanc is to the right!

Out with the Serious Business climbers.  For just a sec.

The cable car stops halfway up and down the mountain, so on our way back we got off here to do a little hiking of our own.  Not quite as extreme as up above, maybe, but still pretty breathtaking.

Then, us two responsible adults humped it back to the hostel and had ourselves an early night.

Chamonix was tremendous, and totally worth the aggravation of the travel time it took to get there (but especially to get out again!).  We loved the mountains, and I really wish we had maybe extended another day.  But Nice was waiting for us, and how crazy awesome is it to go from snow-capped mountains of the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea?