The Magic of Mont Blanc

Really, it is impossible to vacation at the foot of Mont Blanc without mentioning it in one's blog.

We caught the beginning of the storm that killed 58 people in Europe, manifest here as a sickening swaying of the gondolas, and a vigorous blowing around of powder on the slopes.

Accommodation, booked at the last minute, would have been better suited to teenager types uninterested in cooking or pesky personal hygiene activities, like washing below the neck. Or washing above the neck. A note taped to the mirror read "Please use top and bottom sheets because blankets and quilts are not cleaned weekly". The word "weekly" was a bit optimistic. It was the kind of place where you keep your boots on inside.

Why do such places always smell of disinfectant?

But once past such details, the view was breathtaking.

the French, of course, do food better than anybody (except possibly the Belgians). Tartiflette is essentially a baked potato. But not a tattie like we do in Scotland, nuked and dried to within an inch of inedible. Oh no. The tartiflette is richly draped in an exquisite sauce of one's choosing, and it is an incomparable dining experience. And if you do go to France I recommend this book, from Dorling Kindersley books, which is a pictorial French-English dictionary. If you can't pronounce the words, you can always grunt with an engaging accent and point at the pictures.

Chamonix, for the day, is as picturesque a mountain town as you could conjure, replete with brasseries, fountains and (I thought) an unusual number of war memorials. Everything closes between 12 and 3, but after that the place is jumping.  

Comte Mineraux s.a.s on the Rue Joseph Vallot is for my money the best rock shop ever, and wouldn't you know but we found a prehistoric version of my invented Roktopus, Barycrinus Stellatus, no less, dug up  in Indiana. He was too expensive to purchase, but we took the picture through the window.

Back home was inspired to wear a little-used scarf, (bought some seasons ago in celebration of an in-the-bag job offer which did not, in fact, transpire) which  turns out to be covered in Roktopi, also. They are everywhere, these Roktopi. Is it evidence of a true convergence of events, or of the human propensity to make subliminal connections?

And finally, before the snow is completely gone from Basel, back home, and welcome to the magic of a European spring!