Chamonix, France 2025

Our travel was pretty easy -- our bikes made their transfers and arrived with us in Geneva, our transport to Chamonix couldn't have been easier and our Airbnb was positioned perfectly at the base of towering peaks.

Our first full day was beautiful and we spent time in our courtyard assembling our bikes, snacking on meat and cheese and drinking our first Valley wine. We also headed down to into the heart of Chamonix to explore around the City

We loved having our bikes for fun transport but our Airbnb host also provided us with a train pass that we used almost every day.

After our first mountain bike ride of our trip (sorry no pictures!), we opted for a day on the Aiguille du Midi. With some time before our cable car boarding, we headed into town to enjoy some coffee and a busy Sunday morning.

The cable car took us from the Valley floor to just shy of 12k'.

Fresh tracks from an early season storm greeted us as we stepped out of the car. The views were incredible and so worth the crammed cable car ride.

The black birds that hung around the the top are called Choucas.

We stopped at the mid point on the way down to hike around a bit before heading back to the Valley.

Our first guided ride with Wayne was in Verbier, Switzerland and we pedaled up to the Col de Mille before a ripping descent. With the help of Wayne's eMTB, we were able to park higher up on the road so our ascent was just shy of 3k feet followed by 5,800 feet of descending.

Cayman took a lot of photos of cars.

We had a couple days of rain so we made the most of it by taking the train from Les Perelins up the Valley to Argentiere where we visited our first church that was open to the public. Inside, a translated sign read something to the effect, "May all who enter find peace while visiting..." From there, we stopped at every small town back down the Valley and found the local chapel to visit.

Our last guided ride with Wayne was what he classified as an "adventure ride" that again brought us to Switzerland and again involved thousands of feet of pedaling followed by a longer descent. Somewhere in the middle, we encountered a down climb section where we passed our bikes and held onto chains to help us down.

Our final ride brought us back to Le Tour which we felt comfortable navigating off the backside into Switzerland because Wayne had showed us around two days prior.

After dropping the backside, we pedaled to Vallorcine so we could get the next train back to Montroc so we could do more park laps in Le Tour.

Throughout all of the towns, we came across lovely churches and beautiful water fountains for us to fill our bike bottles.

We knew we'd have to spend the afternoon of our last day packing our bikes and getting ready for travel. So we took the morning and hiked part way up a mountain side to Chalet la Floria for crepes and tea.