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.

A little more than 10 years after our first visit to Lyon, we’re back. This is our 18th stop on our whirlwind tour and only the third place we’ve ever been before; all of the remaining stops will be new to us. While a lot of things have changed in those 10 years – seen massive amounts of the world, sold our software company, moved to New York – one thing remained the same: we’re at the same M Gallery hotel we stayed at back then. We loved it back then and we still like it a lot and while I certainly don’t remember every detail of it it’s definitely familiar.

One quick note on getting here. We’re moving by train these days and these French trains are simply amazing. I don’t think we’ve left so much as a minute late on a single trip. They’re comfortable, fast, smooth, relaxing – everything you want in travel. We like it best when you can reserve your seats but even when that’s not possible it’s such a pleasant way to travel. I’ve noticed, too, that you almost never hear anyone talking above a whisper or at most a quiet voice. And no one listing to their phone on speaker; people seem genuinely respectful of the other people around them. And while it almost always takes longer to go by train than to drive – especially the trip to Clermont, which required three trains – the time is so relaxing. I’m getting more reading and napping done than if I were, say, driving (when apparently you’re not supposed to do either) and I love watching the summer fields go by. The sunflowers and corn and hay fields and sunflowers and corn and corn and corn.

There were two problems with this stop. One, it’s freaking hot. It was 97 degrees much of the day on our one full day in Lyon and that’s just too hot. We were concerned when we planned the trip that in this time of climate change Europe is getting too hot in the summer. Well, the first few weeks were fabulous, almost too cold (though we did not complain). If we’d spent weeks like this it would be a very different experience.

We went out in the morning to explore the old city a bit and then go up the funicular to the Basilica when the temperature was pleasantly in the mid-70s. After that, though, damn. All you want to do is sit in your air conditioned room but even most nice hotels in France aren’t built to handle this kind of heat. We went to lunch and as happens with almost shocking frequency we sit at an outdoor table in the shade, under an umbrella or awning and everything is fine. Sure it’s hot but you’re sitting in the shade. Ten or 15 minutes later you see that the sun is creeping your way and suddenly you’re broiling. You move to something that looks as though it will stay in the shade but no, the sun finds you again. It’s happened on multiple occasions this trip. You’d think we could figure out how to avoid that but you would be wrong.

Oh, and the other problem. We arrived on Saturday, when most things are closed including lots and lots of restaurants, particularly in August. Then our one full day is Sunday, when everything is closed. Between the heat and the August Sunday this seems like one dead city. I look at our pictures from Lyon 10 years ago and realize, “Yeah, weekdays in April might be a better time to be here…”

And one other noticeable thing. For one of the first stops since we left Paris you hear people speaking English, and North American English at that. So many of our stops the tourists are almost all French, with a few Germans and other weirdos. Almost no Americans, though, until Lyon.

From here we head up towards the Alps and then down to the beach so we should soon be seeing more temperate weather.

Our 16th stop on this jaunt around France was Cahors, a city of 20,000 in southwest France just a couple hours north of Toulouse. Cahors is all but surrounded by the River Lot as it makes a big looping curve to encircle the city on three sides. It makes for a lovely, compact town with an historic center and fabulous medieval bridge.

Certainly the most interesting, even iconic site in Cahors is the Valentré Bridge, dating from the 14th century. These days it is still used as a footbridge to cross the Lot and is part of the Camino de Santiago, linking Le Puy-en-Velay, France, to Santiago, Spain. And indeed as we wandered around the old town we saw more than a couple hikers who sure looked as though they were heading to Spain.

Two things about the town stood out to me besides the bridge. First, this is the center of the Cahors wine district, a strictly defined area of Malbec wines. And while we are by far more familiar with the Malbecs of Argentina (which, of course, came from France), the Cahors Malbecs were really good and some of the darkest wines – almost black – I’ve ever had.

The other thing I love about Cahors is a piece of history. In medieval times Cahors financiers actually charged interest on loans. Today that doesn’t seem so unusual but at the time usury, as it was known, was a terrible sin. They were so infamous that the word Cahorsins became synonymous with usury throughout much of Western Europe. In fact, in Dante’s Inferno he ranked Cahors right along Sodom as a city of sin. Cool!