Annecy – Chamonix, via Switzerland. July 11.

Not the earliest of starts after last night’s festivities! We finally headed off about midday in the direction of Geneva. The EEC has made border crossings quite boring, and we had actually entered Switzerland, before we even realised. Geneva is the French/Swiss border, and we had managed to get off the main route into town, so we went out of Switzerland and went back in. This time on a main road, but the border crossing was still only a wave of the hand. Bring back the days of passport stamping I say!

Geneva is very pretty – just like in the movies. We drove around the Swiss side of the lake, before heading back up into the Alps and back into France.

Our destination – Chamonix. Although primarily a ski resort, it is obviously very busy in the summer as well, especially with hikers. There was also some sort of extreme sports festival on. Finding a place to stay that was within our budget was proving a challenge! Eventually we settled on a great looking little hotel a couple of km’s out of town. Chamonix is at about 1000 meters above sea level and carting all our luggage up the 3 flights of steep stairs soon had the heart rate up.

It is also at the foot of Mont Blanc- the highest mountain in the Alpes, but as usual the weather was cloudy so we had yet to see it. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.