Saturday, October 13, 2007

Switzerland, Italy, France...Oh My! (10/12)

Bonjour!
Yesterday was another busy day on the tour bus. We took a bus ride over the St. Bernard pass to Aosta, Italy and then on to Chamonix, France. On the way, however, since we have a huge bus filled with overly concerned people, there was much excitement. If you've never driven on a mountain road, it is filled with hairpin turns and switchbacks galore, as you wind your way up and down the mountainside. One side of the bus was inevitably on the "cliff" side and boy, were those people excited!...Excited with fear and screaming, that is. Our bus driver Jose is very good at his job and can weave a tour bus in and out of anywhere, which we found out most importantly after our stop at the top of the mountain on the St. Bernard pass (Napoleon crossed there with 40,000 troops at one time). There was road construction going on and bobcats and cranes all over the road. Jose had to squeeze our huge tour bus by these giant tools of construction, only by about a few inches or so. Our fellow bus companions even asked Charlie how much room we had on "his" side of the bus...as though we were teetering on the brink of some kind of destruction. *Sigh* About 1.5 hours on the bus through the beautiful mountains of the Swiss Alps took us to a small town of Aosta, Italy. We had lunch at an outdoor bistro - pizza and super rich, super yummy hot cioccolatta (plain and hazelnut), saw some very nice Roman ruins, then boarded the bus for Chamonix, France.
Chamonix was absolutely beautiful, surrounded by mountains and lush green forests. We saw the town a bit and had some more hot chocolate and cappuccino, plus some nummy gelato (Jaime's was passionfruit, Charlie's was pecan).
Once we arrived back in Montreux after our 2 country tour, we cleaned up for dinner at a local restaurant, Le Rouvenax. It was a kind of trendy Italian restaurant. It was packed for dinner, so we sat at a cozy bar-height table and had pastas and wine for dinner. Don't ask about the Yeti-walk...

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