Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Courmayeur, Aosta, Turin

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25. Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Courmayeur, Aosta, Turin

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This morning I was really worried, as the forecast had been ominous again and I was afraid I'd have to change my plans for getting to Italy (or even if not, that I wouldn't see anything along the way). This was my least carefully scheduled day, because it was quite difficult to find detailed information about the trip beforehand — I just knew that I somehow had to end up in Turin by 21:00. In the event, I got lucky; the storm cleared out early and it was beautiful all the way to the Italian border. When I got to the cable car for the Aguille du Midi at 9:00, they were not sure whether it would run all the way to Hellbronner. This was clearly not due to the weather, but perhaps because it was so far off season that there weren't enough tourists to justify running the service. Indeed, the guide books say you'll be waiting two or three hours in line just to get on the car to Aguille du Midi! In August, perhaps. In late September, you just literally walk right up and get on the thing. I spoke with a nice woman from Chicago (now New York) and we rode over to Hellbronner together, where she turned around.

This was definitely my favorite means of getting between two points — one of the absolute highlights of the trip. At the Aguille du Midi cable car stop, you have an incredible view out over the glacier to the summit and Hellbronner, across to the high Swiss alps including the Matterhorn in the distance, and northwest across the ridges sloping down into France. At this point, you change to tiny four-person gondolas, which float several kilometers horizontally over the vast glaciers at 4000m in packs of three to the Italian border station at Hellbronner. A handful of climbers, so far down they looked like ants, slowly made their way across the glaciers, and a number of tracks crisscrossed the snow. Large holes and crevasses had opened up in the ice, so even a stroll here must require some nerve. Right before the border, we soared into the clouds and it was socked in, but until that point it had been fantastically clear. At the border, another cable car drops down the southern face of the Alps into the Aosta valley at Courmayeur. I got here by 13:00, and I had spent plenty of time enjoying the view at the Aguille and sipping hot chocolate in the clouds at Hellbronner. So things were going very well.

Just a short walk around the curve in the road from the cable car is an orange bus which takes you to the bus terminal in Courmayeur. From here, there is another bus to Aosta for €3 which takes about one hour. I walked around Aosta for about an hour, enjoying the Italian sunshine, and had lunch on the lovely main square amidst the old American tourists, all of whom seemed to be from New York or LA. The young Italians are beautiful, and very well dressed — they almost seem to be preening all the time. Frequent trains go from here to Turin, where I arrived around 17:00. The trains were a bit of a shock in Italy — they were actually crowded. I never made reservations except on the ones where I was required to, but I took a few trains in Italy on which I wouldn't have gotten a seat if they had been the slightest bit more crowded, even in first class.

Turin was a bit disappointing; all the grand piazzas were completely fenced off and were being reconstructed. Language began to worry me here; the train station workers seemed to speak no English at all. So, I eventually picked out my phrase book and learned deposito bagaglio (left luggage). Well, there isn't one at Porta Susa — I have to take my suitcase with me to the central station of Porta Nuova and leave it there. From here I walked along Via Roma to the palazzos and the Duomo, in which I saw a copy of the Turin Shroud (the original is kept locked up). Then I walked east over to the river, longing for the abundant WCs of northern Europe, which are wholly absent here. I stopped at Café Florio, which has an opulent velvety interior and amazing ice cream, but little else on the menu (so I had very tiny pre-made sandwiches for dinner).

Back to the train station for my 21:17 night train departure to Barcelona — first of two night trains I will try on this trip. I'm not that good at sleeping in funny places, and the night trains don't really work out that well. The Milan - Barcelona route is also very hard to book in other countries; I tried several stations which couldn't do it before finally succeeding in Munich. Next time I'd probably fly, since it's pretty cheap. The train lets you save on hotel costs, but it does have a €60 supplement even when you have a rail pass (and actually, I asked the Italians what they paid, and they said €60! Some discount). Since this was the only train I was trying to sleep on, it was of course by far the bumpiest. Really not a smooth ride at all. I was in a cramped four-person car, and I did at least have some nice roommates. One was an interesting Taiwanese guy (should have engaged him more in conversation — lots of interesting stuff on this blog!) and a couple of soccer fans from Udina (it was supposed to be an all-male car, but they screwed up apparently). These were very pleasant soccer fans, not at all boisterous like the scary British ones. They had lovely big flags from their city in which they wrapped themselves.

Jonathan's Travel Blog :: Europe

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25. Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Courmayeur, Aosta, Turin

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