Summer 2017

June 23-24, 2017
Bill and I took a red eye flight from Honolulu to NYC, leaving Friday night and arriving Saturday morning.  We wasted no time, and immediately went out to Mexican food for lunch with one of my best friends Khaled and our mutual high school friends.  Our afternoon was spent seeing Groundhog Day, which Bill chose because the composer Tim Minchin also wrote Matilda, one of our favorite shows.  We had thai food for dinner, and it was Bill's first time trying squid ink pasta.  Jason, my friend from residency, joined us for an evening performance of Sunset Boulevard which featured Glenn Close  reprising the same role that won her a Tony award 21 years ago.  Bill and I stayed overnight with Khaled in New Jersey.


June 25, 2017

The full day was spent marching in the Pride Parade with my high school friends, an intense 40 blocks filled with rainbows and enthusiastic cheering through the streets of NYC.  Afterwards, we caught the off-Broadway production of Sweeney Todd which was absolutely amazing, and ended up being our favorite of 7 shows we saw during our vacation.  We were seated at tables and the action took place all around - and on top of - the tables.  We got to meet the cast after the show, which was a thrill.  

June 26, 2017

After a busy couple days, we enjoyed a quiet morning in New Jersey with Khaled and his husband Paul.  We relaxed in their apartment building's hot tub, and then grabbed Arabic food for lunch in Patterson (the city featured in the movie Patterson, which we had incidentally just seen).  Bill and I met up with Jason one more time for dinner prior to heading to the airport for what would be our second overnight flight in just 3 days.  We were quite sleep-deprived by the time we arrived in Europe.

 

June 27, 2017

After our second overnight flight, Bill and I arrived in Geneva where we met up with our friend Satomi and took a shuttle into Les Houches, France.  We enjoyed a leisurely first night in a comfortable hotel room with a beautiful view.  We had a multi-course dinner, with the highlight being the beef carpaccio appetizer.  Our friend Joe's flight from London to Geneva was unexpectedly canceled and he had to purchase a later flight, so he didn't arrive until the middle of the night.

Over the course of the next 10 days, the four of us (Bill, Satomi, Joe, and myself) embarked on a self-guided Tour du Mont Blanc: a 100 mile hiking trail with an elevation gain of 9127 meters that traversed through France, Italy, and Switzerland.  We carried our belongings on us, which ended up being about 18-20 lbs each.  We stopped at restaurants along the way, never had to cook, and ate like kings.  Our sleeping accommodations were various huts and refuges that typically slept about 6-10 people in each room.

June 28, 2017.  Day 1 of hiking: 16 km, ascent 646 m, descent 633 m. 

While Joe caught up on much-needed sleep, the rest of us enjoyed a long, incredible breakfast.  I especially loved the yogurt and croissants in France.  We took a cable car up to Bellevue, which appropriately ended at a beautiful viewpoint.  Satomi got a kick out of seeing a train track at an 1800 meter elevation.  

 

Our first day of hiking was mostly small rocky roads alternating with little foot trails that wound through alpine pastures, forests, and several cute little villages.  It required a little more navigation than I expected, so I was glad to have my guidebook and GPS app.  The weather was very pleasant through the day, with just a little rain right at the end.  

 

We spent the evening in Les Contamines, where we enjoyed another nice hotel room with a pleasant dinner served by a very charming waitress.  The yogurt was my favorite part, and Bill and Joe bought "La Verte" (green) beer.

June 29, 2017.  Day 2 of hiking: 18 km, ascent 1316 m, descent 929 m. 

Breakfast the following morning was incredible again, complete with the croissants and yogurt I was crazy about  Our hike started with a nice walk to a beautiful gorge, but from there turned into our longest ascent of the whole trip, which was long grueling climb in the freezing rain on rough rocky terrain.  At one point, hikers gathered in a little manure shelter to warm up, and I never thought I'd be so thankful to be hanging out in a hut filled with poop.  There was no view at the top due to the weather, which made for a very anti-climatic end of several hours of climbing.  

 

We grabbed soup for lunch at a small refuge hoping it would warm us up, but instead it only made us colder since we had to remove our shoes, the soup wasn't very hot, the room wasn't very heated, we had stopped moving, and then we had to put our cold wet shoes back in and step back into the wind and rain.  The weather cleared up a little as we descended, but it still felt like it took forever to get down the 929 m.  My middle toes were very bruised by the end.  The silver lining of the hike was that I got to see  marmots for the first time, which I now know are unbelievably adorable.

That night, we stayed in what ended up being our favorite dorm: the Refuge Auberge de La Nova.  This was the only dorm that had a drying room, which was lucky since we were soaked to the bone and it was the night we needed it the most.  There were 10 people in our room that filled up the 5 bunk beds.  Dinner was one of the food highlights of the whole trip.  We were served "hearty mountain food" which included braised beef in wine sauce, rosemary buttery potatoes, and panna cotta with berry sauce.  Our dinner buddies Rosie and Gail were absolutely lovely; they were two middle-to-later aged Australians Rosie and Gail who had met each other 30 years ago while traveling in Peru and have been traveling together ever since.  We ran into them briefly again several times during our trip.

June 30, 2017.  Day 3 of hiking: 20 km, ascent 1400m, descent 900m.  
Breakfast at Auberge de La Nova was slightly disappointing, but only because the dinner had been so grand.  We took a short shuttle with our new Australian friends down the road to get back onto the Tour du Mont Blanc path.

The third day of hiking was phenomenal, and it was the moment that everything I was hoping for came together.  I was waiting for spectacular, and spectacular we got!  The weather varied all the way from hot in the valleys to snow flurries on the top of the mountains, and everything was simply beautiful from beginning to end.

We started with an ascent up to Col de la Seigne, a beautiful snow-covered border between France and Italy, which was my second-favorite view of the trip.  Everyone abruptly went from saying bonjour to ciao the moment we stepped over into Italy.  We had our usual yogurt/French bread/cheese breakfast, and then polenta for lunch and spaghetti for dinner.  It was very surreal.  I couldn't help but think of the movie Breaking Away whenever I saw Italian bicyclists.

The descent into Italy was incredible, curving down alpine meadows with more cute marmots, while still maintaining the mountain view up ahead.  There were flowers bursting through the snow, which I thought was a beautiful symbol of Springtime/optimism.  I regret I never took a close-up picture of one, as it as quite a sight.  

After lunch was a second ascent, and we eventually reached La Maison Vielle, a hut right on the TMB path surrounded by beautiful views.  Before dinner, we hung out with Helen and Grant, a really sweet couple from New Zealand who gave me some New Zealand hiking tips. 

Helen and Grant ended up being our roommates that night, and we had the luxury of having just the 6 of us in a room of 10 bunks.  The bathroom situation was a tad trickier that night, because we had to either go through an entire other dorm room to get to it or step outside in the cold, and the toilets were squatters.  I was glad I didn't have to wake up to pee that night.

July 1, 2017.  Day 4 of hiking: 18 km, ascent 860m, descent 1500m.
Our first breakfast in Italy was notable for the exceptional coffee.  In fact, the two times we had coffee in Italy were far superior to any coffee we had in France or Switzerland.  I thought this joke on the wall was cute:

Our hike started with a steep descent to some cute villages where we momentarily got lost.  This was followed by a big zig-zag ascent up the side of a mountain, surrounded by tall green trees which reminded me of hiking Mount Si in WA state.

We had a satisfying lunch of mushroom risotto and mushroom pasta, and then were rewarded with our longest stretch of mostly-flat ground, which coursed through beautiful alpine meadows filled with a greater quantity and variety of wildflowers than I've encountered on any other hike.

Our refuge that evening was a bizarre mix of "best" and "worst" features when compared to our other accommodations.  Overall I kind of liked it, Satomi and Bill seemed neutral, and Joe was not a big fan.  It had the most beautiful location, on top of a hill surrounded by mountains.  It had the best hot chocolate, which was basically the equivalent of drinking a melted chocolate bar (it gave Joe a toothache).  And it had the most comfortable cots, making it the first time I slept through the night. 

On the flip side, it was the most crowded - with about 30 people in our room (Joe woke up several times from people coming in/out).  The room for removing boots and putting on crocks was in a narrow room at the bottom of a set of stairs, which created a bottleneck of chaos.  The water in the shower went everywhere, and hot water was limited to only a couple minutes per person (Joe actually got no hot water at all).

July 2, 2017.  Day 5 of hiking: 20 km, 895 ascent, 1410 descent.  
The hike started with an ascent, and what an ascent it was!  Though not as rough as Day 2, Day 5 definitely stood out as one of (luckily only) two bad weather days.  It was cold, misty/drizzly, and there was no view in the damp clouds.  We felt we ought to take a picture of going from Italy into Switzerland, and I think this one pretty much sums up how we felt.


After our anticlimactic peak, we started our descent, grabbing lunch on the way.  We had our first raclette dish, which is basically a huge wheel of cheese that's melted and pushed on top of carbs/meat/whatever.  As terrifying as that may sound/look, it really was quite good - and exactly what our bodies were craving.


Our descent felt unrelenting, and we got a little lost before finding our way to La Fouly.  By the end of walking down 1400 meters with wet feet, I had two blisters on my left foot that were making it difficult for me to walk.  A nice British girl at our hotel gave me some Compede bandages for them, which did wonders.  As we were now in Switzerland, it seemed only fitting that we should eat chocolate, so Joe picked up some absinthe-filled chocolate for the group before dinner.  Our meal that night was mediocre at best; they attempted a curry chicken dish which was neither especially good nor especially filling. 

July 3, 2017.  Day 6 of hiking: 15 km, 420m ascent, 565m descent.  

After such a mediocre dinner, breakfast was surprisingly fantastic - far better than the last 3 days had been, with lots of cheese, fresh bread, and yogurt.  Our 6th hiking day was a relatively easy day, which was a relief to my blistered feet.  I took tons of pictures of flowers, and one of my goals was to catch two butterflies on one flower. 

Toward the end of the hike, there were a bunch of sculptures carved into trees, which reminded me of gnome carvings in Norway.  Most were recognizable animals, though I have no idea what this was supposed to be.

There was also a random 40-rung ladder, so naturally we all had to climb to the top.

We skipped lunch so we were very hungry by the time we finished our hike, but all the restaurants in Champex Lac were closed.  We grabbed some snacks at a grocery store, and then found a bakery where we had rhubarb pie (not strawberry rhubarb... just rhubarb) and pistachio ice cream.

We ended the day in a village on a beautiful lake, where we relaxed before dinner.  We had one of our most delicious dinners that night (second only to the hearty mountain food on Day 2): mushroom pastry appetizer, black rice with fish, and an apple cake topped with creme brulee and fresh peaches.  We had the luxury of staying in a hotel overnight as there were no nearby huts/refuges.  It was my first evening alone with Bill since NYC.  I  thought it would be my best night of sleep, but I abruptly woke in the middle of the night vomiting with abdominal pain.  I never did figure out exactly what happened to me, but whatever it was self-resolved fairly quickly.

July 4, 2017.  Day 7 of hiking: 18 km, 745m ascent, 929m descent.

After a rough night, I was too sick to enjoy breakfast and was feeling a little nervous about setting off on another hike, especially since it started with a 745m ascent.  Fortunately, I gradually felt better through the morning, and by lunchtime I was back to my usual self.


We had fondu for lunch and split a baked apple for dessert at the top of Alp Bovine, a beautiful setting of cow pastures, wildflowers, and expansive mountain views.

It was mostly downhill after lunch until we reached our destination Hotel Grande Ourse.  We had a room of 3 bunks (6 beds) all to ourselves!  Dinner was pretty good, and I especially liked the orange soup appetizer.  Our dinner mates were grumpy Americans, and we didn't interact with them.

July 5, 2017.  Day 8 of hiking: 11 km (plus a detour), 1069m ascent, 970m descent.

Day 8 of hiking started with a long ascent to the Switzerland-French border at Col de Balme, yet another beautiful path in perfect weather that ended at a wonderful viewpoint.  

We followed a random tour guide's advice and took a detour down to a restaurant, and we were glad we did!  It was our favorite lunch of the trip - basically several dishes of carbs and cheese, but done really really well.

From there, we had the option of heading straight down the mountain to our next refuge or heading back up the trail to the 2nd peak.  We must have been feeling pretty good that day as a group; we chose the latter, which again turned out quite well for us. The second peak of the day was even more brilliant than the first.

We trekked down a long 970m descent to Auberge La Boerne, which was by far the most crowded dorm we stayed in.  Though it was marketed as holding 4-7 beds per room, they had 10 cots crammed into an impressively tiny space.  I had to leave my backpack by the front door and duck my head to get into my cot.  During dinner, we sat next to a very showy French man who wore a confederate flag on his shirt and liked to talk about politics.  It came up that I felt constipated, and he enthusiastically provided me with suppositories and laxatives.  After dinner, he insisted that all the men in the room try his homemade liquor.


July 7, 2017.  Day 9 of hiking: 4 km, 976m ascent, 50m descent.
Our second to last hiking day was our "rest day."  It was only 4 km but the ascent was 976m, steep enough to require ladders in a couple sections.  

 

 

On the way, we ran into the same showy Frenchman from the night before, and he sang us songs in both French and English.  That guy was quite a character.


We made it to our refuge at Lac Blanc by lunchtime, and spent the day walking/sitting around a gorgeous high-altitude lake, which we all agreed was the best view of the whole hike!

In the evening, we saw ibex!  Joe was the first to see them, which made him late to dinner.  As a result, he got stuck sitting next to some rude French guy while the rest of us enjoyed the company of a nice German man who was in his 70s and traveling alone.

Satomi and Bill went to sleep early as usual, but for whatever reason Joe and I weren't quite tired yet.  We stayed out to admire the view and watch ibex, and it was the first time I saw the moon on our trip (sunset wasn't until about 9pm each night, and we were usually in bed by then). 
 

July 8, 2017.  Day 10 of hiking: 20 km, 800m ascent, 2080m descent.

The last day of hiking was quite long, starting with a steep hike to the summit Le Brevent, where we ate some crepes and paninis while enjoying a great view of Mont Blanc.  Though the guidebook lamented that the "downhill ski industry" had made "a mockery of the Alpine environment," we found the whole trail beautiful - cable cars and all.

We had originally decided to cut the hike short and take a cablecar down from the summit, but I changed my mind last minute, and instead we embarked on a very long >2000 meter descent.  Bill twisted his ankle on the way down, but powered through and made it to the end.  We ended where we started in Les Houches and then caught a bus to Chamonix. 

In Chamonix, we were reunited with some luggage we had left behind, and it was nice to have luxuries again like cotton swabs, conditioner, and tampons with better applicators.  It's the little things in life.  We grabbed some ice cream, went out for a fancy final dinner, and drank champagne to celebrate completing the Tour du Mont Blanc. 


July 9, 2017
We woke up in the wee hours of the morning and flew to London.  Satomi traveled back to HI from there, while the rest of us explored the city.  We didn't realize until we arrived that it was Pride Day in London, which means Bill and I witnessed two Pride Day celebrations in major cities this year.  I was excited to drink chili hot chocolate at Hotel Chocolat, which I remembered well from my visit to London 4 years ago.  We caught two shows on the West End: Dreamgirls and Kinky Boots.  It was an emotional night for the cast of Kinky Boots, as it was Matt Henry's last night in the show (the show's star, who had won a Tony for the role). 

 July 10, 2017
Joe went to a museum and then a show based on Alice in Wonderland.  Meanwhile, Bill and I went out for tea (mine was blue!), got massages, ate Indian food for lunch, and saw Annie.  We met up for a comedy called The Play That Goes Wrong.


July 11, 2017
We indulged in our last croissants and hot chocolate in Europe, and then spent the entire day traveling from London to Vancouver to Honolulu.  After a great trip filled with friends, hiking, and theater, we were happy to be back home.  It was the longest I had ever been away from my babies, and it was good to see them again.