Eurotrip 2025: French Alps

She's aliveeee!!!

I'm back babeeeee! I optimistically thought that I could keep up with blogging while travelling but I could barely keep up with the travelling part so there will now be a series of catch-up blogs months after the fact :)

Back to where we left off, we had just arrived in the French Alps....

Lake Montriond

After a restful nights sleep after our traffic ordeal, we set out for nearby Lake Montriond for a day-trip.

It was pretty busy on one side of the lake, so we drove to the far side (which was actually nicer). Unfortunately it was a little overcast, but trust me that the water was a beautiful blue-green when the sun hit it!

Everyone was picnicing (including us, with some baguettes of course), and we also went for a swim and a kayak around the lake.

We then broke up the swimming and picnicing with a short hike from the lake up to a waterfall which was nice.

We also saw a little sea captain!

Hiking up the Avoriaz Mountain Bike Park

The next day, guess what, more hiking! Because the surrounding area is all ski resorts, in summer it's a very popular destination for hiking, mountain biking and paragliding. Most of the chairlifts are still operational in summer which made it easier to climb very high in the mountains without dying.

We started the day with a bakery breakfast run for energy (and croissants), and then took the first chairlift up to the start of the trail.

Halfway through the hike we discovered that a lot of the bushes on the sides of the trail were actually wild blueberries. For some reason this is a highlight of my entire trip 😂. I don't know why it tickled me so much to find them growing wild but they were delicious.

I wasn't feeling super well that day of the hike so while the others hiked down (and back up again) a very steep slope to a view of the lake we were at (above), I had a rest and did a quick watercolour of my view and the blueberry discovery (and maybe ate a few more blueberries).

There were some pretty nice views of rolling hills and surrounding mountains on the walk, but it was pretty dusty from all the bike tracks.

After making it back down the mountain, we rewarded ourselves with some delicious crepes.

Grocery store chaos

We then went to a bigger grocery store (there was only small ones in town) to stock up for the rest of the week. I thought it would be fun to explore, but it was so busy and stressful (end of the day + summer holidays = madness).

I forgot to bag the tomatoes and apply a weight label sticker to them, so I had to run back to the grocery section, queue up behind everyone for the 2 things in operation, navigate the stupid system which had two categories for vegetables for some mysterious reason, and then the printer got jammed (in French so I had no idea what was happening) so it didn't work anyway!

At least I got to see a giant babybel (nephew for scale).

Mountain biking and more hiking

The next day Henry went off mountain biking for the day, while I did another hike with my sister and nephew. This was another combination of chairlift, hike, chairlift, hike etc and at the top there were beautiful views combined with paragliders taking off and cows!

You can hear the cowbells on the cows from ages away, and it is so loud!

Lake Geneva

The next day we took a little excursion to Lake Geneva (or rather Lac Léman as we were on the French side). It was huge and very pretty.

Lots of fun watching the swans and ducks and fish swimming around in the crystal clear water.

We only visited the one town of Yvoire, and the architecture of the town was gorgeous.

The town had an interesting bee hive tower where you could watch the bees work. Bumblebees are so huge!

The town also had a garden with lots of interesting plant sections based on all the senses (touch, taste, smell etc). Highlights were all the poisonous and deadly plants, and this plant which smells exactly like coke does!

We had lunch in town with a nice view of the lake. So far unfortunately I have been pretty disappointed by the food in France. I'm not sure if it's cos it's a touristy area? I didn't love my fish dish, but my nephew got this risotto-esque dish made with buckwheat and it was delicious. Now i want to try to find whole buckwheat to try making something similar.

I also got some tiny chocolate lake fish, because why not. There were also a lot of shops making fresh meringue, so I brought some back for Henry to try as he wasn't feeling well that day and couldn't join us.

I enjoyed this little cat ramps someone made for their cat, and this sleepy cafe cat.

Goat Village

On our last full day in Morzine we took a trip to the Goat Village! It was a pretty rainy and cold day, so we didn't spend too much time out and about, but managed to take some nice moody atmospheric photos.

Are you sick of alpine views yet? This is the last set:

After checking out the views, we came back down the cable car just in time to avoid the rain. We found a place selling burgers and they were actually reasonably priced which was a perk (everything was so expensive with our horrid exchange rate!)

I dunno if it was post-walk hunger or what, but these burgers were the best thing we ate in France haha. We liked them so much we took a group photo with them. Mine had some of the special alpine cheese which was pretty tasty.

We then wandered down to the goat village to see some of the fabled goats.

They were pretty cute but...

Apparently there are also whistling marmots around there, and we think maybe we heard them, but alas did not see the cuties.

I'll finish the blog up with this photo of me trying to stay out of my sister's family shot and just looking like a loser instead.

Next time on the blog: Back to Italy!