Chamonix Mont Blanc

A hike up Plan Praz on a gorgeous day.

Chamonix, France, is a great mountain town.  After a quick stop in Annecy for lunch, we made our way to Chamonix for a few days--since the weather was going to be ok.  This vacation was essentially going to be a follow the weather/wind type of vacation since we wanted to paraglide and hike (aka hike-and-fly) as much as possible.

Our first few days were windy.  A combination of Mistral/Foehn winds were making their way around Europe, which resulted in gusty weather, but some warm sun as well.  We ended up hiking the first day in a half-hearted attempt to climb Plan Praz, one of the paragliding launches that during season, has a cable car that goes up to the top.  We were not in season.  And we both had colds...mine received after reuniting with my partner in crime, shockingly, not by an airplane.

Half way up Mont Blanc

We were able to manage a flight from Plan de l'Aguille (the first stop on the famed Aguille du Midi cable car up Mont Blanc) and it was spectacular.  The winds were light to nil, and we had a bit of a run off the east facing side, but the reward was amazing.  Somewhat of a sled ride into town, we caught a bit of lift here and there, but took a short, gratifying flight.  Turns out we were really lucky, as the weather and launch conditions on the rest of the trip didn't bode well for tandems.

A great flight

A celebratory lunch.

Vacation...all I ever wanted

I'm back!

Three weeks away from home is a lot, but much more do-able when two of those weeks are spent galavanting around the Alps in France and Switzerland.

Baggage.

Stop 1 was Barcelona for work.  Packing was a bit of a challenge considering I needed to take work clothes as well as gear for 2 weeks of mountain fun.  The end result was my taking my work clothes plus a paraglider and boots with me to Barcelona.  My partner in crime was stuck carrying the other paraglider, all of our clothes, and equipment.  It worked out ok.  I lugged the tandem glider (all 49.5 pounds of it) through the airport with not too much difficulty.

Not enough mustard.

My stopover was in Frankfort.  I'm not a huge fan of FRA for a few reasons.  One is the fact you typically end up in "remote parking."  It's annoying to haul off a 747 with 300+ of your closest friends and cram into busses for a ride around the airport.  And, depending on timing, lines for security can be pretty rough.  Luckily, I breezed through--off the first bus, through passport control and security quickly (hooray for business class lines) and was soon getting a pretzel with mustard.

But then, the most insane thing happened.  I noted my departure gate for Barcelona.  I meandered over after a few minutes checking email in the Lufthansa lounge.  I saw that the flight number wasn't a match--but thought nothing of it.  They wouldn't have two flights to BCN leaving at the EXACT same time on the EXACT same airline, right?  Wrong.  Much to my shock, while boarding, the gate agent told a handful of us that we were at the wrong gate, and that our flight was boarding at a gate a good 15 minute run away.  Of course it was.  Uh, Lufthansa, get your shit together.  Regardless, I made the flight and was the only person in Lufthansa's shitty business class.

The 5 days in BCN flew by.  We were staying at a hotel right on the beach south of town--hard to get into the city, but nice to enjoy some sun and sand before and after work.  The team I worked with was pretty great, so it was a nice way to wrap up work before 2 weeks off.

A little beach time.

A new dress/shirt combo for some r&r before work.

Dressed and ready...with a large paraglider in the background.