Meribel Judith fancied a trip to Meribel in the French Alps. She’s been there skiing, but was interested to see what it was like in the summer. A quick browse of their website indicated that there were plenty of walking trails. So off we went.
Geneva Saturday - A very early morning flight from Heathrow saw us arrive in Geneva by 10am. We picked up our hire car from the airport and drove to our hotel. It was too early to check in, but the hotel was happy for us to deposit our car in their car park whilst we entertained ourselves for a few hours until our room was ready.We went for a walk down to the lake front, where we saw Geneva's number one landmark and tourist attraction, the Jet d'Eau, a 600 foot fountain set out in the lake.
Clock Further round the lake is Geneva's number two landmark and tourist attraction, the flower clock. And that's pretty much Geneva done. If it weren't for the lake, this place would have no more attraction and appeal than Basingstoke.
High Street This appeared to be Geneva's main shopping street and was full of laughably pretentious and overpriced shops.
Gears This is a photo of the mechanical bits of some sort of sluice or dam on the river. Quite interesting (I thought).
Lakeside As there was little of interest to see in the middle of town, we headed North along the lake side to see what was up there.
Ducks There were a lot of ducks, geese and swans about.
Beer It was really hot out - around 32C - so we stopped into a nice bar/restaurant in a park by the lake for a drink and a bite to eat.
Cygnet Well here's something I never expected to see outside of a museum or motor show - the Toyota IQ-based Aston Martin Cygnet. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of expensive cars in Geneva. I saw more Porsche Panameras on that day than I'd seen up to that point in my entire life.
Benches I thought these benches near the Rampe de la Trelle made an interesing composition.
Brewery In the evening we stumbled across this micro brewery. Everyone was sitting outside in the evening heat, so we had the cool, air-conditioned inside entirely to ourselves. Those continentals and their bonkers desire to eat/drink in the street at every opportunity. Tcheeer.
Jet D'Eau After sunset the Jet d'Eau is illuminated, which was nice. This 25 second exposure has blurred the motion of the fountain and smoothed the surface of the lake.It was time to head back to the hotel for some much needed sleep (we had to get up at 3am for our early flight). We had a pleasant day in Geneva, albeit a bit hot, but I don't think I'll be rushing back soon.
Hotel Yeti Sunday - It was time to leave Geneva and head for the mountains. Meribel was around 100 miles away. The first 75 miles-or-so were covered quickly on the French motorways (with EUR15 in tolls to add to the EUR3 of petrol we used - aren't you just looking forward to when the UK starts charging us to drive on our motorways?), but the last few miles were on winding mountain roads, so it was early afternoon by the time we arrive at the Hotel Yeti.This was the first day of Meribel's summer season, so the hotel had only just opened after being closed since the winter season finished a few weeks ago, and it looked like we were the first guests to arrive. We were quickly and efficiently checked in and shown to our fabulous room, which you can see in the photo.We were initially unable to buy a map of the local area due to the Tourist Information Office being closed for "lunch" from 12:30 to 15:30! So we had a bit of a walk around the centre of Meribel and a bite to eat whist we waited for it to re-open.
Hotel Yeti I’ve included this photo of our room from a slightly different angle too as I couldn’t decide which was my favourite.
Botanical Walk Having finally procured a map, we decided that it was still early enough to do a short walk to at least give our legs a bit of a stretch. So we drove a couple of miles up the road to Meribel-Mottarent to do the short Botanical Trail near Lake de Tueda.This was the view of the valley near the start of the walk. In the distance you can see Mont Vallon, which at 2,952m (9,685 feet) is the highest accessible point round here. Unfortunately at this time of year there were no cablecars to the top, so if I wanted to go there I was going to need to walk.
Walking Judith on the Botanical Trail. The trail climbed a modest 140m (460 feet) up the mountainside before looping back to the valley floor after a couple of miles. It was a gentle and pleasant start to our walking week.
Hotel Balcony View Back at the hotel, this was the view from our balcony...
Hotel Balcony VIew ...and this was the same view 20 minutes later. Just as well that we were done walking for the day. It was time for a fabulous dinner in the hotel.Ascent today - 140m (460 feet)Descent today - 140m (460 feet)
Hotel Balcony View Monday - And this was the view from our balcony the following morning. Doh!As we couldn't see anything at this level, we decided to get a cablecar to somewhere high to see if we could get above the clouds. So we headed for La Chaudanne, where the cablecar to Tougnete starts.
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