Chamonix

My lack of an internet connection is making blogging a bit difficult this week, not to mention emailing people and generally keeping up with anything outside of Lyon.

This past weekend I went to Chamonix with Janine, my party girl South African coworker. Here are some pics.

A view of Mont Blanc.
This is the famous Mer de Glace, which must at some point been quite a large and impressive glacier. It didn't seem so huge to us, although it is supposedly the second largest glacier in Europe.
Chamonix town. The night we were there, a 163 km race around Mont Blanc was finishing, and runners were slowly coming into town to the finish line.
We took the tram up to the Auguille du Midi, a peak just next to Mont Blanc.
A view from the tram.
As you get to the top, it gets considerably colder and scarier. The tram shook in the wind and everyone screamed.

A view from the summit. It was 2 degrees celsius there with 40 km winds. Many extremely serious climbing types were on their way down and across the mountains to Italy, which is just to the right in the photo-- they are the tiny dots in the picture below.
Afterwards we hiked down the mountain. In the last picture you can see the glacier that comes down from Mont Blanc. It was huge!