Mountain Sustenance, French Style

I feel terrible that it has been so long between posts. I spent about a week in London recovering from India and the last five days attempting to ski in Chamonix, France and taking a break from cyberspace. I was hoping to become an adequate skier this week, but sadly my risk adverse nature has made my progress slow — I can ski, but when I try to move past the bunny slopes I have slight panic attacks and completely forget what I am doing. I really like skiing, I just don’t like being scared. I definitely plan to keep trying — even the green runs are fun — and hopefully, eventually, I’ll graduate to blue and reds (maybe tomorrow?).

Chamonix is stunning. It is an alpine village in the Mont Blanc region, close to the Italian and Swiss borders and it situated between a number of mountains, meaning that in a week you can ski a different mountain each day.

Today I took a cable car up to the highest accessible peak and could see all around over the mountains and different countries. It was unbelievable. I will include some photos below.

There are nine of us here together and we’ve been trying to take it easy on the budget with respect to food because it is very expensive. Yesterday, however, was a major splurge day and one worth writing home (or blogging) about.

I started off the day, as I did the two days prior, at Elevation, a coffee shop/bar that is over one hundred years old. The coffee is good and I had probably the best savory breakfast (if you know me well, you know I usually prefer sweet things, such as the brioche au chocolat that I had this morning) of my life — bacon and eggs on a fresh baguette. Sounds simple, but you can’t really beat this:

As if that wasn’t enough saturated fat for the day, dinner was the real splurge, and as French as can be. We started with escargot, then polished off a 1.15 kilogram ribeye (yes, it was split between two, but I still think I basically ate half a cow). Finally, I cleansed my palate with an apple tart all to myself. I can’t believe I can walk today.

Ok, as promised, here are some photos of the mountains. I’m too incompetent of a skier to bring my camera with me on the slopes, so unfortunately I don’t have any great shots of the ski runs. These views are possibly the most incredible I have ever seen.