The highlight of the week (for the grown ups) was the Aguille du Midi cable car to the summit on Mont Blanc.
Some stats: It’s one of the worlds highest cable cars, and still holds the record as the worlds highest vertical ascent cable car. It takes 2 cable cars to get to the summit, which is 3842m. The second part of the cable car ascent doesn’t have any support pillars.
Some non stats: It’s amazing. For the last part of the ascent it feels almost as though you are going completely vertical, hugging the rock face. The air is much thinner, and a few of us actually had some dizziness walking around the viewing platform. There are amazing views over across of the Alps, and you could see the peak of the Matterhorn in the distance. The town of Chamonix is a tiny, tiny speck down below. And it is COLD. Liam was not loving the cold! But the cafe and gift shop were nice and warm! 🙂
It was worth every penny of the cost of the lift ticket. We are grateful that this day trip was such a big deal to Ross, and that he persevered to get us all here.
We also managed to make it into Geneva for the day… mostly so we could say ‘we went to Switzerland for lunch’… but Geneva has some lovely parts and daddy and Liam had never been. It was a nice, chilled out day out. And we brought home a new family member… Wabby the Wab. Liam’s new favourite cuddly toy from Switzerland. Hunny Bunny is trying hard to not feel put out….
And of course we had to get back to the Accrobranche course one last time, at the request of all the kids. (fortunately for us, there is an Accrobranche course close to Nice… but unfortunately it just closed for the season and won’t reopen until February. We’ll wait!)
On Saturday morning we all had to head our separate ways. Sarah, Ross & Meg had to head out early to get to Lyon airport for their final trip to Istanbul before heading home to New Zealand. Dan, Elaine, Scarlett and Isobel had to get back to Geneva for their flight back to London. And we had a long car ride in front of us… about 6 hours to get back to Nice.
We had heard wonderful things about Annecy, so we decided to make a stop there on the way back, and we’re so glad we did. It was absolutely postcard pretty, and we’ve found another ‘must go back to’ towns to add to our list!
It was a great week, and one that we’ll all remember. We’re talking about doing it again in 5 years, and meeting somewhere halfway from all of us. California? Vancouver? Can’t wait! Until then we’ll just have to rely on good old Skype.
