nacken

Our second day, also the day we would return to Torino.

Thanks to the sun shining through our curtains, we woke up fairly early. We had breakfast (check my review on tripadvisor.com) and then we packed and checked out. We headed to the train station to catch a ride on the rack railway train up to the “mer de glace” (sea of ice). The train ride is nice and one gets great views of Chamonix as the train ascends from 1000m to 1913m above sea level.

The glacier that forms the sea of ice is not a very pretty sight in summer. It looks more like an unfinished highway through the mountain. I read also that over the last few decades, thanks to global warming, the glacier level has dropped quite some.

Julius fell asleep on the train, so he also missed the gondola ride down to nearly glacier level where we were headed to visit the ice cave. So we let him rest a bit more on a bench and then I gently woke him up and he was fascinated about the sights and kept saying ‘ice’.

The walkway down to the gave is a bit strenous … especially the way up again (and sure enough Julius wanted to be carried). The cave itself is nice, but cannot compare with the caves we had visited last year in saas fee. There was some mountain guy with his huge St. Bernhard dog to take pics of the dog with tourists willing to pay 6€ for that privilege. We declined.

We took the train down again and stopped by one of the most fancy McDonalds I have ever seen (They had to redo the place so that it blends in with the city, so you will not see any huge yellow neon M dangling outside. In fact, you could easily miss it when walking by). I tried the new McOriental, which was pretty cool. Ritsu had the Chicken Mythic and Julius enjoyed his cheeseburger.

With enough food in our tummies, we hopped in the car and returned to Turin.

Since our first visit to Chamonix last year, we have always wanted to return. And it is only 2:15h away by car and this time we had a good reason:

One of Ritsu’s old professors was visiting his son who is opening a hotel in France’s version of Aspen. As soon as we had arrived we got a phone call from them and shortly after met them to get up to their very cozy and beautiful chalet where we had a very nice informal lunch with lots of small talk and lots of hunting for Julius, as he was not in his best behavioral mode. But the setting was excellent and the weather could not have been better. We learnt that it was inter-season in Chamonix, the reason why the restaurant I had tried to phone before (Munchies) was not picking up the phone and that the streets were not as crowded as last time.

We returned to the hotel and set out for a stroll but Julius made it very cumbersome, when we said come, he would stay, when we said stop, he would walk .. and too often he just wanted to be carried and often enough I had to carry him against his will. And he has gotten heavy and strong.

While Ritsu was taking a nap later I tried again and had a bit more success with Julius, until he found a tiny glass shard that must have looked like a diamond to him and it was close to impossible to talk him out of it.

For dinner we checked 2 places our reception lady recommended and ended up at “La Calèche” … and it was very nice indeed. We had raw tuna tartar as a shared appetizer (of which Julius ate a lot) and then we ordered a mix of beef, turkey and duck meat slices to grill on a hot stone. The sauces that came with that were all very mayonnaise-y .. but the meat was so flavorful that we did not even need them. The gratin potatoes were great, too, and once again, Julius ate more than either me or Ritsu, which let us to believe that his current tantrum phase might be based on growths spurt. The pana cotta desert was nice, but we have had better in Italy.

It was already close to 10 pm when we finished, so no wonder that Julius fell asleep in my arms on the way back and the mountain air had a similar sedating effect on us, too.

Today was our last day visiting .. and we went to a nearby mall for some last minute shopping … then it was all about packing, jumping on grandpa’s back and then getting to the airport.

It appears that Julius really loves pretzels … while he ate quite some of the yummy manti that Merih made, he was up for some more carbs at the airport.

Check in and security were no issue and Julius behaved fairly well, we just had the ongoing topic of ‘everyone needs to be buckled up’ .. the FA lady was really nice and brought Julius some coloring stuff later. I found it most amazing that on this short flight there was not even a bag of nuts .. BUT .. a second round of drinks …

The flight was fine and all our luggage arrived and we were home by 7:15 PM

We got up early this morning to drive to Bonn to pick up Ritsu. Julius fell asleep just before we arrived and boy was he surprised that when later he woke up his mom was sitting net to him …

Then we drove on to Bobbard to check the schedule of boats doing the up and down cruises on the river and found that we could possibly catch the nostalgic steam paddle wheel ship ‘Goethe‘ at St. Goars … so we raced and we did.

Julius enjoyed the cruise a lot … especially that he was able to watch the engine doing its thing, he kept calling the engine ‘robot’.

After a bit more than an hour we arrived in Bacharach (yep, spelling exactly as the famous songwriter / composer) and met again with my Dad and Merih .. and they have scouted out the place ahead and we found this very lovely courtyard restaurant ‘Post Hof’ where we had lunch. Great place and good food. They even have some toys and books and drawing stuff out for kids .. very nice touch. But some of the rising toys and the fact that the courtyard opened to a street .. with cars .. the kind that kill people, just kept me very jumpy.