We are the old touristy town of Briançon today taking a full day off. After the long, hard, sunny descent into Modane last Sunday, we set out on a (surprise!) long hard ascent on Monday morning in rain and fog. The fog and showers stayed with us until early afternoon but the weather cleared as … more
Time flies! We are almost half way though our journey to the Mediterranean, staying in Modane tonight, a small town in a valley, after spending last night in a refuge at 2474 m, crossing Col de Chavière at 2796 m this morning and descending 1750 m today. We are glad to have a hotel room … more
A week ago tomorrow we caught a flight to Geneva from Amsterdam, followed by a 1-hour bus ride to Thonon-les-Bains on the south shore of Lake Geneva. From there we started the GR5 the next day. On the flight and bus we noticed a guy with a backpack, also headed to Thonon. Turns out, he … more
We’re off to Europe on Monday. We’ll begin with a five-week walk in France on the GR5. Our journey starts in Thonon-les-Bains on the South shore of Lake Geneva and roughly follows the Swiss and Italian border to the Mediterranean: We first did this walk in 2011 and we’ve been back several times since for … more
We are planning trips for later this year. I’m reading websites in French and Spanish. My French is rusty and my Spanish is limited. Sometimes I’d like to magically translate the whole web page, or even better, the whole website, to my language. At the risk of everyone telling me “Didn’t you already know that?”, … more