What a trip this has been! From the cities in the very north of France, through Normandy along the English Channel and two weeks in Brittany, down The Atlantic coast to the beach at Biarritz, up into the center of the country and then the Alps. Finally now we’re down on the Mediterranean, the French Riviera. The vacation of a lifetime, except I’ve probably had a few of those in this lifetime.

I first encountered the Mediterranean nearly 50 years ago when I sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar in 1974. I loved it then and I love it now. There is just nothing like the color of the sea on a bright sunny day and then you add to it the great cultures and cuisines and landscapes you find everywhere. It’s pretty heavenly and kind of begs the question: why doesn’t everyone live on the Mediterranean?

From our lovely boutique hotel in St Paul de Vence it was only maybe a 20 minute drive to the Nice airport where we dropped off the car before catching a train up the coast to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. (The French, if you hadn’t noticed, are apparently seriously fond of dashes….) Once we got here it was mostly just beach time.

One highlight was the walkway from our hotel into town. It was maybe a 20-minute walk but on a pedestrian path right along the coast. Mostly shaded, walking past a couple pretty impressive mansions, but always with the stunning view of the Mediterranean and the many yachts that congregate near a port. The other highlight was that our hotel had a small private beach with loungers and umbrellas that made for some very relaxing afternoons.

The only downside to the stop was that we really struggled to find good food, about the only activity that could compete with the beach. There was some good food at our hotel but one, it was at best hit or miss, and two, it’s kind of boring to just eat at your hotel. We went to one little family-owned restaurant that’s been open for nearly 40 years, a place called Captaine Cook, and while the food was OK it was in a spot with no breeze or air moving and at 85 degrees that was just too hot. Another place practically rushed us through, though again the ambience was nothing to keep us lingering anyway. On our last night we finally found a good restaurant right on the port, but otherwise the pickings were slim. On the up side though our hotel made genuinely good martinis so that was always worth looking forward to.

We spent two nights just outside the tiny village of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, one of seemingly innumerable, impossibly beautiful old towns strewn across France. The only reason one would stop here – for two nights no less – is to see the Verdon Gorge, described in Lonely Planet as “the Grand Canyon of Europe.” Now to be fair I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, but if the Verdon Gorge is comparable I’m not putting the Grand Canyon on any late-in-life bucket list.

First, our hotel and the town. We stayed at a somewhat rustic but very nice hotel that was maybe a 15- or 20-minute walk out of town. We chose the hotel because it’s owned by Alain Ducasse, one of the great star chefs in the world, and where he has a small Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s all but impossible to get in but if you’re staying at the hotel they make a reservation for you. Both the hotel grounds and the meal were very nice.

A funny story about the hotel though. We talked with the receptionist about making reservations for our other meals at some of the local restaurants and he said that the local restaurants won’t take reservations from the hotel. Not because they resent the competition or anything like that, but because the guests at the hotel come for Michelin-quality meals and then complain about the “ordinary” local food. Apparently it’s a big enough issue that they prefer just not to have those guests (i.e., us). So we kept our lodgings secret.

And about that 15-minute walk into town. Part of it was on a lovely, very quiet paved country lane. Then you got to the steep climb up into town. Moustiers was built way up there for security, I’m sure, but it was quite a hike. Very cute once you got up there but quite the climb. Bad enough for me but even worse for Mark and his knees, and for him coming down was even worse.

Now, about that gorge. We picked up a rental car in Grenoble and drove down, stopping at the beautiful little town of Sisteron for lunch. Getting to the hotel in the early afternoon we went up to the town, looked around, had dinner, and all that. The next day we drove 15 minutes or so to the place where you rent water crafts to go into the gorge. We discovered, though, that all the good boats, those with tarps, that is, were already taken and it was just too hot and sunny to go out without protection. This is another of those experiences that would have been better with some advance planning.

That was OK, though, since we could still come back early the next morning after checking out of the hotel and try it again before continuing down toward the coast. At lunch we thought, “Hey, maybe in the late afternoon people will have moved on so let’s go try it then.” Ha! While late afternoon is “chill” time for us, the scene was more crowded than ever. So we’ll try it again in the morning.

This time we got there just 15 minutes after things opened up and getting a boat was no problem. And in the early morning chill and with the sun behind the cliffs having a tarp cover was no issue. We would have liked an electric boat – small and very quiet, nothing big or fast – but those were already reserved in toto for the day. Again, would have been good to plan ahead. Still we got a nice little paddle boat and rode away in the cool early morning weather. There were only a few other tourists out and it was … pleasant.

When you pass from the lake where you rent boats (or kayaks or paddle boards) under a bridge you’re quickly in the gorge and it’s nice. Big cliffs, beautiful water. But the cliffs aren’t that high and they start to shrink in pretty short order. You paddle for maybe 40 minutes to the end of the route – buoys mark the no go zone – and you turn around and go back. On the return route it was clear that there were a LOT more people now and it was getting hotter and I was getting tired from the paddling. I mean, it was nice, but not some blow-your-mind kind of experience. Now I really do want to see the Grand Canyon, if for no other reason than to have a good comparison.

Now we head down towards the Mediterranean, still with a car, with just a little over a week still in France.

Now we’re definitely up in the Alps. Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, the official name of the town, was the site of the first-ever winter Olympics 100 years ago and has long been – and continues to be – a center of year-round Alpine activity. Whether skiing in the winter or hiking in the summer, this is the place to be for outdoor adventure.

These days when we travel we pretty much always have our hotels reserved in advance; we’ve had too many experiences when the hotel we want is no longer available just a few days or even weeks in advance. And sometimes we even have meals reserved. Rarely, though, do we schedule and reserve activities in advance. In Chamonix, that was a mistake.

We got here by bus from Annecy – an easy and comfortable 90-minute ride – and started to research “what to do” in Chamonix. We quickly come up with a couple really exciting options. Neither Mark nor I have ever been on a helicopter so we’re going to do a helicopter tour of Mont Blanc, right behind the city and the highest mountain in Europe. And we’re going to take a cable car – the Téléphérique – way up the mountain called Aiguille du Midi with spectacular views over France, Switzerland, and Italy. Sounds great!

Except it turns out that in tourist-intense Chamonix you have to plan and reserve these thing well in advance. I went to the website of the helicopter tour agency, expecting to make a reservation. Instead I had to fill out a form, with a promise they would respond within 24 hours. Never heard from them. Nothing. Presumably they were so full they didn’t need to respond.

OK then, how about that Téléphérique up Aiguille du Midi? Nope, that’s sold out too. The receptionist at the hotel told us that if you get there early in the morning they sometimes release tickets for later in the day so we got up early for breakfast and headed over. No way. No tickets available for days. Definitely frustrating but that’s what we get for prioritizing spontaneity over planning. We like landing in a city and figuring out what to do but sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.

You might think, then, that maybe Chamonix is a little overrun with tourists, right? And the answer would be absolutely. It is a genuinely beautiful alpine town, down in a valley with mountains climbing up all around the city. Beautiful hotels, beautiful restaurants, beautiful flowers, beautiful shops. Even beautiful people. Notwithstanding the hordes, there is lots to love in Chamonix even if you can’t do the things you want.

While this was Mark’s first trip high up in the French Alps, it was actually my third. I came up here twice while I was in the Navy in the 1970s, once in the summer when my ship was in Toulon and once in the early spring, again on a cruise to Toulon. I have absolutely no idea where in the Alps we were but I have vivid and fabulous memories of both trips. The one thing I’m certain of is that I didn’t come to Chamonix or anything nearly as expensive and fabulous as this town!

So, if you can’t do the things you really wanted to do what do you do in Chamonix? Well, our first afternoon I went on a modest hike up Le Brévant, the mountain that rises from the town across from Aiguille du Midi. It was mid-afternoon before I got out so nothing too intense, but beautiful. And the next day I did a measurably longer hike, further up Le Brévant. That hike was really beautiful with some occasional views down the valley and up the mountains across the way.

One of the striking things about those hikes was the number of trail runners you encounter. Here I am working pretty hard to get up the mountain trail and literally dozens of runners, men and women, come running by. Admittedly more down than up (I have to guess that some of them drive or maybe take a cable car up and then run down) but sometimes you definitely see the same runner on the way up and then later on the way down. To me it seems almost physically impossible and incredibly dangerous – they seem like broken ankles just waiting to happen. But apparently it’s a real thing because there were a lot of them.

So the hiking was great. And then you would see all these hang gliders up in the sky so we thought, hell, we could do that. It’s a tandem ride where they strap you onto an experienced guide and all you do is lie there while he or she does all the work. Again, we’ve never done it before but it’s quite the thing in Chamonix. On our first full day then we make reservations for the next day. Sounds great.

Except the weather doesn’t cooperate at all. While the weather was perfect on arrival and the next day – mid 70s, lots of sunshine – by the next day it was completely overcast, foggy and rainy. So no hang gliding either. Dammit. All was not lost though. Because the weather was so bad all of a sudden you could now go to the Téléphérique, buy a ticket, and just head up the mountain. They made it clear that the views were seriously compromised (which is why so many people had canceled and rescheduled their tickets), but you could go if you wanted. The views were no where near as good – at the highest point you could see precisely nothing – but for some of the trip the views were still pretty good. So at least we got that in.

I thought Chamonix was beautiful and exciting enough to warrant perhaps a return visit some day. We know now, though, to plan this one well in advance. Maybe someday.