TMB Day 0 - Chamonix

Our first destination on this trip is Chamonix.  We started at 6am on Sunday, September 1, to catch a Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles, then a noon flight direct to Paris.  The day before I received a call from Delta Airlines asking if I would like to switch our flight with a stopover in Salt Lake City to a direct flight from LAX to Paris.  Of course I would!

So we arrived in Paris at 7am after a 9 1/2 hour flight.  It's not exactly very long but long enough to watch a movie, a couple of documentaries, listen to some classical music, and manage to doze off a couple of times for very short naps.  At the Immigration checkpoint at Paris' CDG airport, it was mayhem.  Apparently, several flights landed at about the same time and the line was insanely long and confusing.  It took us almost two hours to get through Immigration, then claimed our luggage.

Our flight to Geneva was at 3pm so I went to check with Air France if we could change it to an earlier noon flight.  Yes, you can but it'd costs €270, or almost $300!  No thanks, I said.  We'll wait another 3 hours.  So it was a tough 5-hour wait for our flight to Geneva.  The only nice part of it was we found a Marks & Spencer mini-mart and bought two fresh tasty genuine Parisian croissants.  We finally arrived at about 4:30pm and called our driver from Mountain Drop-offs.  He gave us directions on how to find him.  Well, the confusing part about Geneva airport is that there is a French side and a Swiss side.  We thought we were supposed to go to the French side.  Finally, after some back and forth we found Patrick, our driver.  He said, don't feel bad; this happens every day.  It took about an hour to get to our hotel, Auberge du Manor in Chamonix.

Knowing that we'd need to make phone calls and download some information while on this trip, we bought a SIM card from a company called travSIM through Amazon for about $20.  The card gives us 3,000 minutes talk, 3,000 texts and 12GB data for 30 days.  It fits us well because our TMB hike is only about 2 weeks.  We may need to call Alpine Exploratory, our tour company, for help when we need to, and the hotels and mountain huts if we are late.  Here is the SIM card information on Amazon.  However, it may not be available by the time you read this blog.

SIM card from travSIM

We arrived in Chamonix at about 7pm to a beautiful hotel.  It's a 5-minute walk to the city center with views of the mountains all around.  Chamonix is in a valley.  After a quick shower we took a walk through the main street.  The town definitely has the feel of a mountain resort town, just like Telluride in Colorado.  Lots of activities in the summer and winter sports in the winter months.

Signs pointing to different locations on the trail

The old starting point in Les Houches

Main Street in Chamonix

Auberge du Manor with views of the mountain

Statue of the first climbers of Mont Blanc

View of mountains from Main Street in Chamonix

Start of the TMB - Le Fouilly in Les Houches

Fondue dinner

We start our hike tomorrow in Les Houches, about a 30-minute bus ride from Chamonix.  We looked for the trail head today because we don't want to be lost while carrying our backpacks.  It was not easy to find but with the notes from Alpine, we were able to locate it.

Over the next 12 days we'll be in the mountains.  I won't be carrying my laptop with me so I will wait until I finish the hike to update this blog.