July 23, 2024

0 miles hiked (some miles walked)

Last night I utterly ceased to exist. My head hit the pillow and that was that until nearly 9:00 this morning. When Grace said she was setting an alarm for 9 last night, I thought to myself, “We don’t need that, we’ll wake up before 9.” I was incorrect. We needed that sleep and it was glorious.

Similarly glorious was the breakfast in the restaurant at the hotel. Look, I know it’s easy to glorify Europe as an American, but they genuinely have such impressive breakfasts. This one has so many items! Hash browns. Eggs. Bacon. Sausage. A variety of breads and little cakes. Pain au chocolates (no pain no gain). Croissants. Everything in small portions so you can try them all. I get most of these things in addition to a bowl of yogurt with granola and berry compote and walnuts. And a glass of orange juice. And a café au lait. We sit in the back room of the restaurant to eat, which has these floor-to ceiling windows and tables sunken into the floor in conversation pit style. We can see the mountains and the bright blue sky. It’s going to be a gorgeous day.

We chill at the hotel for a little longer after breakfast, writing and drinking more coffee outside at a table. When we finish, we walk down to the main square of Les Houches proper, where we pop into the church and admire the sign that marks the start of the TMB that we will walk under tomorrow. Grace spots a flyer on the right side of the sign. It’s an advertisement for a TMB passport! WHAT. I obviously need to get this, so we plan to go ask at the tourism office to see if they have them there. However, both the tourism office and the little outdoorsy store we saw closes for lunch, we make a Carrefour trip first.

Grocery shopping while abroad is one of the greatest pleasures in life to me. This is strange because I absolutely hate it at home. But when you’re in a different country there are just so many different things to look at. It’s fun! I get lost in it and eventually get out and realize that Grace has been waiting for me outside. Oops. We go to the tourist office, where they tell us that you can only buy the passports at refuges. There happens to be a refuge in town, which we walk to, but they’re out of them. Are you kidding me?? I learn about the existence of a TMB passport only to not be able to find one?? Ah, well. We’ll keep an eye out at other refuges along the way.

We pop into a little souvenir and decor shop across the street from the tourist office and get some postcards (and also make note of things we want to buy here when we return again at the end, since the trail both starts and ends here), followed by the post office for international stamps, and then walk back to the hotel for some chill time before dinner.

Dinner, when it arrives, finds us walking the other direction to a restaurant called Diner Club. The path is lovely, walking through some quiet neighborhoods up on the hill. All the residential buildings, even newer looking ones, are built in the chalet style, with an overhanging roof above multiple balconies and windows with shutters that often have cute little cutout shapes. It’s just all chalets, all day.

Dinner is… how do I put this. Dinner is magisterial. Dinner is a feast. We order fondue for one of us and a couple “small dishes” for the other, but one of the “small dishes” turns out to be a flatbread with buffala mozzarella and pesto, and the fondue is enormous. We also get a carrot salad in a kind of balsamic dressing and a bottle of white wine, which the waiter brings out and opens and has me taste it, and I’ve never felt fancier. We sit there leisurely grazing, drinking, and talking for two hours. What a lovely, delicious, indulgent send-off dinner!

The walk back to the hotel is dark because we both forgot our headlamps that we made a point of packing, but we make it work with our phone flashlights. I struggle to fall asleep and stay up far too late looking at things on my phone. It’s like the night before Christmas! I’m full of wine and cheese and excited for another adventure!