Brugges and Brussels in Belgium

They have a thing for B’s in this country. We spent a couple of days in two of the big cities here. Brugges was definitely the more lovely city but Brussels was more interesting. People in Brussels don’t take life very seriously and it slips out in the oddest ways.

Brussels was the first Belgian city we visited so we immediately headed out for waffles. We have a waffle maker at home but it has been about a year since we last had a waffle and that is a very long time. The waffles were everything we could have hoped for. Some of us went pure and had it with only powdered sugar. Some of us added strawberries and some just went a little crazy and added whipped cream and chocolate to the mix. The Belgians prepare the latter for tourists only.

Across the street from the waffle shop was the French Fry shop. Fries are big business in Belgium. In fact, the Belgians claim they are the inventers, not the French and they don’t actually call fries here, “French”. Another difference here is they eat them with mayonnaise. I’m not sure how we managed to choke down fries with mayonnaise after a waffle but we did. Our cholesterol levels were not thanking us. The mayonnaise is definitely not too bad and could grow on you if you lived long enough to eat that regularly.

I think it goes a long way towards the attitude of Belgians and Brusselites in particular that their main tourist attraction is called “Manneken Pis”. I don’t presume to pronounce that for you but you should know that this is a statue of a naked little boy peeing. He’s much smaller than we imagined from the numerous copies in chocolate displayed in windows around the city. He also isn’t their only peeing statue. I guess he went over so well, they created a second one of a little girl peeing. This has spawned a third statue of a dog peeing. I’m not sure where you go from here.

The city is also in love with comic strip artists. They have a whole museum devoted to the topic and there are a LOT of Belgians involved in this activity! I recognized the name, Herge (pronounced Air-zhay). He wrote the Tintin series. We bought a couple of his books. The dog in the books is Snowy and he looks a lot like Sparky. Mind you, at this point anything small and white is reminding us of Sparky: seal pups, lambs, donuts. We miss our dog. At any rate, his name is a pseudonym and came from his initials: RJ. Comic art is everywhere. It is a Manga lover’s dream. I couldn’t help but think of Shirley’s daughter, Alex. She would love the city! There are huge comic murals adorning many of the buildings and it was fun spotting them.

Brugges was a more serious city, focused more on chocolate and lace. We toured a chocolate factory but it had nothing on the Swiss. They only offered a stingy one chocolate at the end! Hmph. We did find a bag of chocolate treats for the dog, however. We left the factory for a little local chocolate shop doing a booming business. I had to line up to get in! We bought some Belgian chocolate there so we could compare flavours when we get home.
We strolled the streets of Brugges, enjoying the very Dutch architecture and the windmills along the canals. Brugges was a cosmopolitan city back in the 1400’s or so. They were huge cloth manufacturers and a gateway into Europe. When their port silted up so did their business and they missed the Renaissance completely, only getting back on the tourist map in the late 1800’s. It felt kind of like a French Amsterdam. The Belgians seem to have two main languages: French and Dutch. Depending on which side of the country you are on, the signs may be in Dutch or French. Everyone speaks English as well, though. We noticed in Amsterdam that their English sounded quite North American. Interesting.

Amsterdam

We’ve spent the past few days in the city of love and laughter. It is a beautiful city, regardless of (or in addition to?) the somewhat titillating extras. Everywhere we walk the buildings have the typical Dutch facades on the front, all painted and decorated with various flowers. Each one is unique and together they are just charming. The canals add flavour as well but even though there are apparently more canals here than in Venice, it can’t compete with the beauty of the Venetian city.

The weather here has a lot to do with it, I think. In Venice, the water is a gorgeous green/blue colour and many buildings are a faded white reflecting the colour beautifully. Here, the sky is more gray, the buildings a dark, purpley, brick colour and the water winds up looking quite dark. Our first two days were rain free but then a Vancouver drizzle set in and the wind picked up. The temperature dropped to somewhere in the teens and it felt like November in Berlin.

We took a trip out to see Haarlem, a cute little town a few minutes away by train. It is on the coast, although I should mention that with a country dredged from the marsh, “coast” does not have the same ring to it. We visited a great museum there. It is the oldest museum in Holland, called “Teyler’s Museum”. It was started back in the 1700’s and was a delight! It is still in the same building and some of the rooms look the same. They have big old glass cabinets crammed full of old technology to measure the distance to the sun or to experiment with sound or whatever. There was an audio guide and you could punch in a number for each of the pieces of equipment to hear what it was and how it was used.

The first couple of rooms contained the most interesting fossils I have ever seen. There was a huge pleisiosaur (?) fossil almost intact, an archaeopteryx (?) and many fish. They also had the skull of a mammoth and the skeleton of a cave bear. It was all displayed in an old way and it made one feel one had stepped back in time into some sort old curio shop. The last section had recent technology and followed the development of things like the typewriter, photocopy machine and sound systems. It was fun to see the “old” stuff and much of it was hands on. The kids spent time typing on an old typewriter and playing “Pong” on a very old computer.

Amsterdam itself was fun to explore. We saw lots of tulip bulbs for sale in weird colours like black and blue. Right next to those was the cannabis. Along the main shopping street, they had the “Smart Shop” selling a variety of drugs. There were Magic Mushrooms, Ecstasy and many I had never heard of, all displayed in the front window with easy to read explanations. Apparently, the employees are almost like pharmacists in their knowledge of the drugs.

We toured a couple of excellent art galleries. One is the Rijksmuseum and the other the Van Gogh museum. It really drove home the difference between the Renaissance art of the north and the south. Here everyone is fully clothed, sitting quietly for a portrait. The landscapes show typical activities the people engaged in with lots of small figures in every manner of movement. Contrast that with the fleshy nudes of the Italian Renaissance, draped suggestively across divans, twisting together in scenes of rape or violence with classical background scenery. Boudoir Passion vs. Family Values. Interesting the Red Light District wound up here.

Our walk through the Red Light District was less than thrilling. It was too early, I think so most of the displays were sleeping. The girls sit in windows dressed provocatively to attract customer attention. Apparently, a popular display can earn 500 euros/day before taxes. The ladies have to pay taxes because it is a legal profession here. There were some actual red lights on. I still don’t know where the “red light” comes from. In our wander we saw few ladies. I swear the ones we did see were men dressed as ladies. We did see many, many sex shops and fetish stores, a real eye-opener for the children. Initially we weren’t going to take them with us but we couldn’t figure out where to stash them while we wandered so we just let them come with. I think the leather studded dog mask was the item of most interest to the kids. We tried not to go too far with why THAT was there but instead focused on the hilarity of the whole thing. And no, we did NOT pick one up for Sparky.

Our first day on the streets, we were witness to a plague of insects. They looked like flying ants and were so thick in some areas that you didn’t want to open your mouth. People were screaming and batting at them. There must have been millions. The air was thick with the creatures and they clung everywhere. It was very unpleasant and everyone had to keep moving to avoid being completely covered. I’m pretty sure there’s something in the bible about that, isn’t there? Sodom and Gomorrah and all that? Pestilence and plagues on the sinners? At any rate, it only lasted for the day and even then, only in that one area (curiously close to the Red Light District).

Our last evening was spent at the Anne Frank House. This museum was very well done. We saw the bookcase that hid the entrance. We climbed the ladder-like staircases and trailed through the rooms where they lived for two years. We pondered who could have betrayed them; a question still unanswered. At the end, there was a room with video questions about ethical and moral issues surrounding racism today. The editor showed a film clip then posed a question and the audience had buttons to choose “agree” or “disagree”. The screens showed how the room had voted and then compared that to the statistics gathered over time. Our room would skew one way or the other and then the general statistics would bring it the answers to almost 50/50. It was fascinating to see how given these difficult moral issues our general population is divided. The questions were things like: Should “holocaust denial” groups be allowed to create pages on Facebook? and Should right-wing extremist groups be allowed to demonstrate? I asked if they had a copy of the DVD in the bookstore but they didn’t. The fellow there told me they had actually had some people very upset with the nature of the questions and answers and they were quite controversial. It was all very interesting.

Germany and Luxembourg

We took a beautiful drive through Switzerland into Germany. The lakes, chalets and weather all cooperated to give a wonderful impression. We stayed one night in Freiburg, a little city known for its environmentalism. The area has lots of sunshine so many of the barns in the countryside have huge solar paneling on the roof. We discussed where all the electricity goes but only theoretically. The next day we were on to Bacharach, a small medieval town on the Rhine River.

Bacharach reminded me of Rothenburg, although not as well organized. Rothenburg was entirely redone for tourists where Bacharach was a bit hit and miss. Apparently, when Napolean rolled on through, he widened some of the streets for his cannons. You can see which side of the street got it. The oldest house in Bacharach dates to 1348 or something like that. What a great place. We had dinner there and I am pleased to report the food did not taste like it was from the 1300’s.

The next day we cycled along the Rhine River. It was a 32 km cycle round trip so we took it as training for our big cycling trip coming up. We were all pretty tired by the end but we made fairly good time so I am encouraged we’ll be okay in France. There are endless castles stuffed along the banks of the Rhine. Most of them are abandoned and only a few are open to the public. They all sprung up when the barons realized they could make money by taxing the river traffic. They’d string chains across the river to prevent boats from passing unless the captains paid a fee. Needless to say, the river barons were not overly popular.

One of the best stories I read was about a river sprite named Loreley. She was a very beautiful woman and would tempt sailors as they rounded a particularly difficult turn in the river. More than one boat succumbed to her until finally a king, who had lost his son to Loreley, sent a group of soldiers down to find and kill her. She called to her father (Rhine River God) for help and he dragged her away never to tempt sailors again. Gotta love the male psyche at that time. They couldn’t get through the river pass so it had to be a woman’s fault. Fortunately for the threatened males, a stronger male was able to rein her in and save the gender from further trials. Couldn’t possibly have been the ineptitude of the sailors on the boat. Sheesh.

The next morning we made another run from Germany into Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a beautiful city with no one outstanding site. We wandered the old town, the new old town, the casemates and the riverside, relaxing and enjoying the town. It was interesting to note that people here are noticeably taller on average. We really noticed how short people were in southern France, Spain and Italy, especially some of the women. Northerners must be a taller breed.

The city of Luxembourg is built on and around a big rock. It was easy to strengthen it because of the natural geography. We spent an enjoyable hour or so wandering through the tunnels bored into the cliff around the city. I thought it would be fun to visit where my cousins had lived when they were here ages ago but didn’t get myself organized enough to have an address. We are all battling a nasty cold now so much of our past week has been spent in and out of a sort of stunned fog.

The Swiss Alps

I can barely believe we were in the Swiss Alps. We were only there for a couple of days but it seems like such an exotic location. I can attest that it is a great place to visit in the summer. I have to admit, though, that seeing all those green ski runs made me long for some colder weather and a couple of boards for my feet.

If you are planning to come this way and you are trying to decide between the French Alps and the Swiss Alps, here is my advice. Chamonix, France is wonderfully located and has a real resort feel. It is in a valley between two mountain chains and is less expensive. The lifts to Aiguille du Midi and then on to Helbronner, Italy are THE best for Wow! Factor. You can also get a lift pass for a couple of days and hike both sides of the valley and ride a variety of fun rides for one price. In the Swiss Alps, you pay per ride and the rides add up fast. Kids under 16 pay one time ($35 or so) and then ride free with an adult. However, the views while strolling through the meadows here are unparalleled. They blow the very scenic Chamonix hikes right out of the water.

We drove from the overpriced, ho-hum hostel in Montreux to the charming, delight of a hostel in Lauterbrunnen. Lauterbrunnen is up the valley a ways from Interlaken. It is very small and has a magnificent waterfall cascading down over the town. No, you cannot feel the spray. The picture on the left is the view from our hostel room. We even had a little balcony where we could sit in the afternoon sun looking this way. It almost looked like a model train set-up with the cute little trains below our room. Rhys, Tom and Julia were all sick when we arrived so we tried to keep our day quiet but we didn’t want to miss the Alpine experience so they dragged themselves along the trails gamely.

We took a bus to another little town further along, then a lift up the mountain to Gimmelwald. This is a town you don’t want to miss. It is an old alpine farming community and is just as cute as they come. Can you say, “Heidi”? You could almost hear someone shouting, “Riccola” in the background. We took Rick Steve’s self-guided walk through the tiny village, admiring the “honesty” store where you took what you needed and left the money in a cashbox. Have you ever seen that? Anywhere? One of the buildings was from the 1600’s but you really couldn’t tell. The buildings all looked the same. The only difference was the colour of the wood. They had a few old cheese sheds on stilts above the ground and a school where all of the students have their own website. The cows in the field all wore collars with big bells hanging down. The collars made the cows look like huge pet dogs. We decided the bells must all be different so the farmer knows which cow is which by the sound. It was very musical as they ate their grass.

From Gimmelwald we took another lift to Murren and then walked the gentle slope beside the train tracks down to another town whose name is too difficult for me to spell at this time. The walk was not the most scenic as we were in the trees most of the time. It felt a lot like BC. We took a lift back down to Lauterbrunnen when we reached the unpronounceable town and called it a day.

The next day we got up at 6am to catch the “good morning” train. It was a difficult morning for the sicko’s but they insisted on doing it. It was a cost savings of $100. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day; not a cloud in the sky. The temperature was cool so we were dressed in winter gear but you could see forever. The train ran all the way up the mountain to a peak over 4000 metres in the air. Much of the ride was tunneled through the rock. The train stopped periodically to let us jump off and run to a window in the rock for a peek at the scenery. At the top, it was majestic.

We were between the peaks of Monsch (the Monk) and Jungfrau (the Maiden) and could see down both sides of the mountains. It was breezy and very cold which was surprising given how lovely it had been in Chamonix at the top of Aiguille du Midi. Aiguille du Midi is about the same height. Here, the snow hadn’t been cleared and it was treacherous walking on the icy inclines. We did stay up top long before heading down into the mountain and out another rabbit hole. We looked around their ice palace which was similar to the one in Chamonix except this one had better ice sculptures and the floor was ice as well. It even had ads in the walls frozen into the ice.

Another of the little rabbit holes led out onto the glacier where they had sledding and zip-lines set up. We sat in some loungers on their “beach” waiting for the zip-lines to open but after about an hour we decided we’d waited long enough. The views from the lawn chairs were spectacular and I’m pretty sure that’s where we got our second burn of the trip. We descended by train to the mid-point at Kleine Scheidigg and stopped for lunch. They had grilled brats cooking and we couldn’t resist. We sat next to a Japanese couple who took an instant shine to Julia and offered her and Rhys Japanese cookies. We gave them Canada flag pins and they put them on their hats, then hauled our more Japanese goodies for the kids. It was a fun lunch.

After refueling we hiked to Mannlichen. This is a hike you cannot miss if you are here. You hike around a mountain from one set of spectacular views to yet another. The white jagged peaks rise above and the valley floor dotted with chalets sinks below. You are nestled in the flowering green meadows where you can drool over the numerous ski-runs cascading down the side of the mountain dressed in their green summer suits. Mannlichen is straight out of a Swiss brochure. You can see down to Lauterbrunnen off one side and to Grindelwald off the other. The Eiger, Monsch and Jungfrau tower over it all. The Monsch (Monk) is between the Eiger (Ogre) and Jungfrau (Maiden), protecting her from harm. We took many, many pictures here and stayed awhile in the meadows. I think this was my favourite scenic point, although it has stiff competition. We took the lift back down to Wengen and from there to Lauterbrunnen by train. It was another spectacular day.

Cheese and Chocolate

We spent a lovely day touring the Swiss countryside around Montreux. We visited the little town of Gruyere first. You may recognize the name. Their big claim to fame is cheese. However, the town is also adorable. It is set amongst some craggy peaks and brilliant green countryside around a restored castle.

The castle had a multimedia show on the history of the place which was kind of fun. My favourite part was when the women of the town defended the town by tying branches of fire to the horns of their goat herd and chased them down the hill towards the invading knights. It was a resounding victory for the goats… and a wonderful barbecue feast to celebrate. Just kidding. I’m not sure what happened to the goats.

The town also boasts artists who embrace fantasy as their theme. H Giger, who just had to have designed the alien in “Alien” had a gallery there and a bar as well. We didn’t go into the expensive gallery but managed to get several pictures of the weird bar. The castle is also decked out in fantasy works from other local artists. It is a strange coupling of quaint little traditional village and fantasy artwork. The actual tour of the cheese factory was also well done. For your viewing pleasure, we took a little video of the cheese robot dusting and turning all the cheese in the warehouse.
Things I learned about cheese:
1. The flavours in cheese are enhanced by the cow’s diet. Gruyere has up to 75 different essences in it as analyzed by scientists.
2. Cheese was a way to preserve milk back in the day.

After Gruyere, we drove over to Broc where Nestle/Cailler has a chocolate factory. They also give tours. I didn’t know that Nestle was a Swiss manufacturer of chocolate. Nestle joined Cailler a long time ago when Nestle invented condensed milk for infants. It was just what one of the Cailler inventers had been looking for to mix milk with chocolate. This was how milk chocolate was born. The tour was great and the robot manufacturing was fun to watch. The best part, however, had to be the samples at the end of the tour. They had a dish of wrapped chocolates from the machine we just watched. One of the ladies ahead of us grabbed about half the bowl! Then we rounded the corner and there were trays and trays of samples of every kind of chocolate made by Cailler. We were allowed to sample as many as we wished! This lady kept grabbing handfuls and dumping them in her pockets! The chocolate wasn’t wrapped and the day was hot so I believe she may have ended her greedy behaviour in some regret. I know WE didn’t ever want to SEE another chocolate after we left. I didn’t eat many chocolates but was quite pleased to see the white chocolate tray. A little something for us all…

We ended our day deciding that Montreux was overpriced and if you ever come to Switzerland, skip the overnight and just head to the cheese and chocolate. Then keep driving into the Alps. THEY were well worth the $150/night for a youth hostel.

Did I mention the tunnels?

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Italy is the land of tunnels. On our way in from Monaco we felt like groundhogs playing “where’s my shadow?” as we popped in and out of tunnels along the Mediterranean coast. Our drive out from Milan to Chamonix was no different.

We found a secret passage to France. I think it is still secret because it is so darn expensive. It cost almost $100 to drive from Milan into

France! Can you imagine the stink in

BC if we tolled the Co

quihalla like that? Mind you, we’d have to have driven the road THROUGH the mounta

in instead of winding it up and over

a treacherous pass. After driving in and out of tunnels for about 30 kilometres, most of which were one to three kilometers long, we came to the grand daddy of them all: the tunnel under Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco, White Mountain). This tunnel is 11 kilometers long! It takes 10 minutes to drive it. They have speed and distance warnings all the way through with cameras flashing periodically to remind you they are watching. As we emerged from the other end the police were there pulling people over. After a few worrisome seconds, they waved us through

. They are serious about that tunnel.

The rest of our time in Chamonix was spent climbing and flying. We flew up chairlifts, large gondolas and personal sized gondolas. We flew down luge runs and hiked across Alpine meadows. We would have swung through the trees as well but the Parcours course was closed. The luge turned out to be more like a roller coaster you can control. You slid down rails and had a hand brake but no helmet. It was definitely fun but hard pressed to compete with the gondolas. The chairlift was exciting because there was no casing around you. The air was surprisingly warm. We rode the chair up and down the top of the mountain. Having never ridden down, it was quite exciting, let me tell you. We decided it must be close to what it feels like to paraglide. It’s very steep and the views a

re spectacular. One of the cool things about the chairlift was that it could carry mountain bikes. You would take your bike to the top and then ride down. Several people were doing just that. Looked fun. We opted for the less fun “hike across the Alpine meadow in the blazing sun for tw

o hours”. Okay, it was still fun but having the adrenaline rush of racing down the mountain with the wind in your face would have been nice too. Again, the views were stupendous.

At the end of the hike we came to a point where a paraglider was preparing to take off. We watched him strap himself in to what looked like a very cozy banana, then fly the parachute like a kite until whoosh, he was up and gone. It looks much more appealing than the old hang gliders. The paragliders were going all day from the

time we came out of our apartment

ntil the time we went home. They could stay up in the air for hours. They looked like huge colourful birds sailing around high in the air.

The drive from France to Switzerland was short. France does not make use of the tunnel so we drove up into the mountains and then down into the valley beyond and voila, we wer

e at Montreux, Lake Geneva. Montreux’s big claim to fame is their Jazz Festival in July. We arrived just in time to watch them set up. Switzerland definitely wins the prize for most expensive. We spent $44 for lunch at McDonald’s. We toured the Castl

e Chillon where the Savoy family staked their claim back in the 1100’s. They built the castle on the lake with the mountain on the other side. Anyone trying to move through the land had to com

e that way so they built a tower and set up a toll. Europeans are big on tolls. Okay, not sure there was a toll but they did control who came and went. Their family crest looks suspiciously like the Swiss flag so they must have had a real impact.

The castle was well preserved and restored and we enjoyed wandering through. Perhaps the family favourite was the latrine, however, where they had posted information about latrines from the middle ages. One particularly endearing quote was “perhaps the most noble and upstanding plant in the forest is the holly because nobody wipes their behind with it”. There are several ways we could run with this but as this is a family blog I’ll just point out that of all the reasons my parents could have chosen the name Holly, this one is my favourite.

Halfway to Heaven

We spent four days in Chamonix, France riding the gondolas up and down the mountains and hiking the French Alps. The days were long and hot and extremely rewarding. Who knew it would be so hot up on a glacier? We got more sun during this time than in the past three months in southern Spain and Italy. It was also outrageously expensive but you only live once!

The first day we bought our two day family pass and tried not to look at the Canadian exchange while hitting the “okay” button. We flew from Chamonix up to the mid-station in about 10 minutes with 70 other tourists all laughing nervously as our stomachs dropped out with each tower pass. The cable car did a great impression of a Fun Park ride as it zipped along. We then caught the second “telepherique” from the mid-point to Aiguille du Midi, the high point of the Chamonix gondola rides. At the top, we dished out another hundred dollars to ride the three km gondola to Helbronner, Italy.

This particular “telecabine” takes about half an hour to traverse between the glaciers and mountain peaks offering unparalleled views. As we drifted above the snow, we watched the mountain climbers snail along in short chains and Rhys announced he was coming back one day to walk in that snow. It had that kind of effect. The snow below looked like the back of a Beluga whale at some points and seemed deceptively close. However, we were so high up that there were no towers between the two points of the gondola. Three kilometers and no towers you say…impossible. Well, no, one “tower” is a rock peak where the gondolas squeeze through the rock. That was interesting. The second “tower” has no base. It floats in mid-air, suspended between two peaks by long cables. That was also interesting. I felt a bit breathless by the time we reached Helbronner and was glad to escape the cabin. They have a line the station there that separates Italy and France. Naturally, we had to jump back and forth visiting several times.
The return trip was just as spectacular, made even more so as we got a close up view of the rock climbers scaling the face of the rock our telecabine docked at when we reached Aiguille du Midi again. We took the elevator up (yes, you aren’t really high enough yet) to the top of the peak and enjoyed our status of being “half way to Heaven”. It may be as close as some of us get so we took advantage of it. From here, we returned to the mid-station by cable car and then hiked 2.5 hours across the alpine meadows to Montenvers to see the ice caves and ride the train back to Chamonix.

We stopped early on the hike to eat. We were all ravenous and although we had made huge sandwiches, we all managed to inhale them in record time. NOT fast enough to avoid two donkeys who obviously heard me offering tomato to my family and decided to share our lunch with us. One of them was dog-like in his approach, quietly munching grass on the side of the trail and not looking at us but creeping towards us ever so slowly until he was practically on top of us. He then waited expectantly for a treat but sandwich meat and tomato were not his idea of treat food so he meandered away after some time.

We started our hike in high spirits after lunch. It was beastly hot, even with a cooling breeze and it wasn’t long before we all started feeling the drag of exhaustion. Julia asked how long we’d been hiking and we’d only made it ten minutes. Okay, it may have been more but we hadn’t really checked the time when we left. We filled up the water bottle in a creek and enjoyed the ice cold water on the walk. The views were amazing and kept us going for quite a while. Then the thought of ice cold treats at Montenvers spurred us the rest of the way.

We were pretty much done by Montenvers. It was 3:30 in the afternoon and we had started the day at 8:00. We gamely took the gondola down to the glacier and hiked the 400 steps further down. The glacier recedes by 3-4 metres every year so they had signs showing where it had been previously. They keep having to add more steps. The ice cave was awesome. Having never been in an ice cave, this one was impressive with basic sculptures and drippy walls. There was a man with his Saint Bernard set up inside for tourists to have their picture taken with the dog. He charged 6 euros for the privilege. The dog wasn’t bad at posing and they were doing a brisk business. Imagine. I wonder how much we could get for tourists to pose with Sparky? On our return trip up we travelled in Cabin 5 which we all thought was apropos. Our last adventure of the day was taking the rack and pinion train back down the mountain to Chamonix. We arrived at the base by about 6:00 and by the time we walked home we were all ready for bed.