Napoleon planted trees for his troops who traveled across the country

Because we’re crazy, we decided to drive from Paris down to the Alps. When looking at other options, like trains, stops and layovers seemed to eat up more time than we’d like to spend just sitting in stations, and renting a car was about as expensive as train tickets would be, plus we’d get to look at the French countryside as we went on our way. We also knew we wanted to have a car while in the Alps, so this plan just sort of fell into place.

We decided to take the non-toll roads, which added a couple hours onto our drive, but we think was probably more picturesque. We did get a photo radar speeding ticket, though, which was a bummer (30 euro processing from the rental company + 45 euro for the actual ticket 🙄), but we quickly learned how to spot them when they were coming up.

We stopped for lunch in Saulieu. This little town felt practically dead - it must have been an off season for them (imagine going to a tiny ski town in the summer). It was cute, and we were able to eat and go along our way pretty quickly.

While going through the mountains, we hit some pretty intense fog on some crazy windy roads, but I think Nathaniel had fun whipping around those corners in that tiny French car 😉

We got to our destination in Les Houches SUPER late - around midnight. We had trouble finding the front door of our Airbnb since it was dark and Google Maps brought us to the back of the house, but once we found it, we got in easily, and munched on the rest of our baguette and went to bed.

When I woke up, the first thing I needed to do was see the mountains - we ended up having a lovely view of the town below as well. After taking it slow that morning, we drove into Chamonix - it’s a bigger ski town, and the home of the tallest Alp, Mont Blanc.

We drove into Chamonix for lunch, and to explore the town a bit. Since it’s a ski town, it kind of felt like Vail here in Colorado. We were going to go up the cable car that day, but decided to put it off for (hopefully) clearer weather the next day. I was amazed at the color of the water running in the river! It's this whitish color because it's "Glacial Milk" - basically because of the minerals in glaciers and the erosion they cause, the melt from the glaciers makes the river this crazy color!

After exploring for a bit, we decided to hit a grocery store so we could take it easy, be a little bit budget conscious, and cook dinner at our Airbnb. We drove back to Les Houches, put away the groceries, then decided to see this town on foot. There is a super cute little church square, and there were tulips blooming. We also followed the sound of cowbells and hung out with a herd in a field for some photos (I love cows!). We stopped at a bakery for some macarons, and walked back home to cook dinner, drink wine, and watch movies on Nathaniel’s iPad.

The next morning we got an earlier start so we could go up to the top of Aiguille du Midi in a cable car! This was pricy, but worth it. It was also pretty cold, so I’m happy I brought my sweater, coat, hat, scarf and gloves. I would’ve been FREEZING otherwise. Even early there was already a pretty long line, but it moved relatively steadily, and we started ascending the snow-covered mountain. You stop halfway up to switch cars, and once you get to the top, there are walkways and an elevator as well! The views were spectacular, but due to a couple well placed clouds, we could not see the top of Mont Blanc. The Alps are a beautiful mountain range, though. They’re much younger than the Rockies (which I’m used to seeing) so they’re pointy and jagged. At the top of Aiguille du Midi, there is also something they call “Stepping into the void”, which is basically a strong plexiglass box that lets you stand above NOTHING. They make you wear slippers so you don’t scuff up the glass. It’s a really weird feeling, stepping out over nothing, even though you know you’re safe. There was a long line to this, but we figured we wouldn’t have the opportunity to go out there again any time soon, so we waited and had a great time! There was even a great staff member who took pictures for us with my phone (you’re not allowed to take your phone/camera, or any of your belongings) in with you, probably because they want to make sure nothing gets dropped or scratched against the glass. She was great, though, and took SO MANY pictures! We decided to start wrapping up, but stopped quickly in a glacier tunnel. I think that there were people there preparing to snowshoe down - but I just needed a selfie 😉 On our way down, we rode with a bunch of French schoolchildren, who squealed anytime the cable car went over a little dip or drop. It was pretty cute.

Our next stop was ITALY! You can drive through the Mont Blanc tunnel for a hefty toll (just under 55 euro there and back) - It’s the longest tunnel under the tallest mountain, so they have strict rules on how fast you can drive and how far you must drive behind the person in front of you. Nathaniel said there was a pretty bad accident a few years ago, and they put a lot of restrictions (and a lot of photo radar) on the tunnel traffic to avoid it ever happening again. The people in front of us had their photo taken several times because they were following too closely behind the person in front of them. Their journey through the tunnel probably cost five times as much as ours did!

Once out of the tunnel, we tried to find a something in the small ski town on the other side, but since it was the off season, nearly everything was closed. We instead continued driving all the way to Aosta, which is a fairly big town. It used to be a walled city, and it was amazing driving through the ruins which have just been incorporated into the modern streets and structures of the city.

We parked and started to explore, eventually coming to a piazza, where we sat down for lunch. We explored for a bit longer (just walking around, window shopping), then decided to drive back to France. One fun thing about this drive was how many castles there were along the road! Since we’re not used to seeing anything old in Boulder, it was wonderful to see remnants of old civilizations!

The next morning we had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to Lyon for a flight to Spain. We made it in plenty of time (we took the toll roads this time, just in case, and it ended up being close to 20 euro total). The two full days in the Alps were probably the most relaxing we had of the whole trip. We got to take it slow and cook for ourselves, and still be honeymooning tourists. Everywhere else we went on our trip was a big capital city, so this was a lovely change of pace, and having it placed in the middle was perfect. 👌🏼