DAY 2 Paris: We Score a Touchdown At Our Lady of Paris **Becauseitzthere is typically a hiking and outdoor adventure blog. But from time to time we will feature other sorts of travel and leisure on these pages. In other words…fu fu travel. And it don’t get no more fu than Paris.** Day Two was perhaps our favorite day in […]
The City of Light in Four Days, Part One
Paris in Four Days **Becauseitzthere is typically a hiking and outdoor adventure blog. But from time to time we will feature other sorts of travel and leisure on these pages. In other words…fu fu travel. And it don’t get no more fu than Paris. After completing the grueling challenge of the Tour Du Mont Blanc we thought we’d end the […]
Charm-on-ee…The Cradle of Alpine Mountaineering
Chamonix: Post Hike Day One. ***The Tour du Mont Blanc is obviously not for everyone. But even for non-hikers, Sylvia and I very strongly recommend a visit (if you can afford one) to the two major cities on the Tour…The French Alpine outdoor hub of Chamonix, France, and its alter ego on the Italian side, Courmayeur. We might be tempted […]
Can We Top the Tour du Mont Blanc?
Sylvia and I live for the BIG adventures. The Tour Du Mont Blanc was a big adventure — they don’t come much bigger — and it was great success. But how do we top that? What to do next? There are many choices. Our Bucket List is currently full of uncompleted items. These are some of the best hikes in […]
The UTMB gets underway!
The Ultra Tour du Mont Blanc Less than a month ago, Sylvia and I completed the Tour du Mont Blanc, Alpine Europe’s premier walking route. It was an amazing journey. We thought it was pretty challenging, and are proud of our accomplishment. However, this weekend another journey is about to start, one that puts our — and in fact, […]
Tour du Mont Blanc: Our Buddy, Monte Bianco!
TMB Rest Day One: Courmayeur After four days of hiking we were more than ready for a rest. So what better thing to do on our rest day then head up to 11,000 feet for a close look at Our Buddy, Mont Blanc? Our Monte Bianco, as it is called on the Italian side. Fortunately, today we DID finally have […]
Tour du Mont Blanc: The Hard Button
TMB Day 4: Rifugio Elisabetta to Courmayeur *The Tour du Mont Blanc is the most famous and celebrated hike in Alpine Europe and is the fifth Bucket List Hike that Brian and Sylvia have completed together. It is also our first hike together of any kind in Europe.* After a very satisfying breakfast we said goodbye to the friends we […]
Tour du Mont Blanc: Uphill Both Ways…or, the Circle Begins!
TMB Day One: Les Houches to Refuge de Truc *The Tour du Mont Blanc is the most famous and celebrated hike in Alpine Europe and is the fifth Bucket List Hike that Brian and Sylvia have completed together. It is also our first hike together of any kind in Europe.* Despite a long and difficult day of travel we were […]
Tour du Mont Blanc: À la montagne, monsieur le chef de train!
TMB: A Travel Lesson It is ironic that the longest single part of the voyage – the 4,035 mile transatlantic flight to Paris – was also the most uneventful, even quite scenic…including my first glimpse of Ireland, lying green, resplendent and out of reach just thirty thousand feet below. It seemed the closer we got to our destination the more […]
Tour du Mont Blanc: Oops, Mind the First Step!
Planning for the TMB Before we could hike the Tour du Mont Blanc, we had to get there, ‘there’ being the alpine hinterlands where France, Italy and Switzerland come together in a knife’s edge rampart of high granite. Events would show this to be no easy thing in itself. The TMB begins in the popular ski resort city of Chamonix, […]