Day 15 - Villeneuve, Switzerland

Day 15—Sunday, May 24, 1992

We got up at 8:15 a.m. and were quickly out of the hotel and on the road. We stopped in a small nearby town (Serres?) for a cup of coffee and croissant in a nearly empty cafe. The coffee was great, so we had two cups. Then back on Route N75 heading north through some more fabulously beautiful French countryside. We picked up the autoroute outside of Grenoble, allowing us to skirt the city. It was now decision time—what route to take to Montreux? Our options consisted of the direct, speedy autoroute versus the roundabout way that would take us into Italy and through Mont Blanc tunnel into Chamonix. There were other routes available combining scenery with speed in varying degrees, but basically it came down to these two. We chose Mont Blanc.

The autoroute ended in the town of Albertville, site of the 1992 Winter Olympics. The town featured ample evidence of its recent prominence, what it didn’t feature was people. The place was absolutely dead, perhaps because it was Sunday, and lunchtime at that. We stopped at a small fortress/village right outside Albertville, where we walked around just inside the entrance for a few minutes. Then we drove through Albertville again looking for an open store to get some picnic supplies, but an open store was not to be found, so we hopped on Route N90, destination the Mont Blanc tunnel. This road, as was the one leading into Albertville, appeared to be recently built and in excellent condition, probably owing to the recent Olympic games. We passed by the memorably-named town of Pussy and headed into the Alps. We reached the town of Bourg-St. Maurice and so far all was a beautiful breeze. Then we started heading up and up, which meant back and forth and back and forth. No guard rails of course, but the road was still in acceptable condition. It was, that is, until the ski resort village of la Rosiere, after which it resembled the road to nowhere.

Our first indication that the road we were on was something less than navigable should have been the “Route Ferme” sign straddling our lane. But we drove on. The boulders in the highway, or perhaps the twelve-foot snow banks, or maybe the lack of other cars should have alerted us to the fact that this road was not happening. But we drove on—very slowly, and as we did, with the snow bank on our right and the several-thousand-foot drop on our left and the eerie lunar landscape completely surrounding us, we got a little apprehensive. Ok more that a little, but I figured we only had a few more miles till we reached Italy, and according to the map the road character improved at the border. So we drove on (and up). We rounded a turn, and then the road ended. A huge mass of snow blocked the way. There was an idle snow plow parked on the side and three or four other cars stopped on the road and a small building off on the left. A couple of people were out of their cars talking about god knows what in this godforsaken place. Our car stalled. I got it started, I got it turned around, and we headed back the way we came. Very slowly. But before we left, we stopped and “admired” the awesome spectacle of this place. Afterwards, we looked at the map, too bad we didn’t take a good look at it beforehand, because if we had, we’d have seen that this road was closed from October through June. Instead we found out the hard way.

And so back down the mountain we went and at a fast clip at that. There would be no drive through Mont Blanc tunnel. A little more than halfway down the mountain, I pulled the car off the road, and we got out to stretch our legs, but that wasn’t the only exercise we got.

Before long we were again back in Albertville. We decided to forgo Chamonix because we’d lost so much time on our dead-end excursion, so we traveled toward the autoroute, which took us along Lake Annecy. The lake is a fantastic shade of green, but the traffic along it and in the town of Annecy was very heavy. Finally we made our way through the traffic and got on the autoroute, heading north to Lake Geneva, or as both the French and Swiss call it, Lac Leman.

Lac Leman is a huge lake, although the water color isn’t anything special, particularly compared to Lake Annecy. Our plan was to find a hotel on the lake and then eat. We drove through the touristy town of Evian, and although it looked like a lively place, we didn’t stop. From Evian we made our way toward the French–Swiss border, where we stopped at a couple hotels but for one reason or another decided to keep looking even through the rates were unbelievably inexpensive. And then without warning we were in Switzerland. So we drove to Montreux. Once there we parked the car and strolled along a tree-lined pedestrian walkway beside the lake. The sun was setting, the town was spotless, and everything seemed in slow-motion—it was a picture-perfect setting. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have lingered longer, but we had to find a hotel and eat. We sheepishly walked into a big ritzy hotel on the lake, knowing it was going to cost a fortune to stay there. And sure enough it would have, had we stayed there. Instead we got back in the car and drove around town and out of town looking for a reasonably priced hotel. We had little luck finding any hotels at all, less luck finding any with vacancies, and much less finding any we could afford. All the while we were getting hungrier and hungrier.

We checked out the Hotel Suisse Majestic, and although we didn’t stay there, we did dine at their rooftop restaurant. The dinner was probably the best of the trip, and the view from the table was probably the best we’d ever had at any restaurant. Down below was the main street through Montreux and beyond was sunset lit Lac Leman. What splendor!

After dinner we drove out of Montreux to the nearby town of Villanueve, where we finally found a hotel for under a hundred dollars a night—the Hotel Du Port. And it was on the lake. We checked in, then went outside and drank a beer by the lake, and then watched some television in our spacious room before going to sleep about 1:30 a.m.

HIGHLIGHT: Little St. Bernard pass in the Alps, where the road stops in June.

LOWLIGHT: Little St. Bernard pass in the Alps, where the road stops in June.

NOTES: Wish I took some pictures of the spot where the road ended.

REFLECTIONS FROM 2020:

I didn’t record the name of the fortress/village near Albertville, but perhaps it was Miolans.

I find it odd that the Winter Olympics were held twice in such a short period in two of the towns we passed this day, that being Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992.

By all accounts, by which I mean internet articles and photos, the towns and natural wonders in the part of France we too quickly passed by on this day, most notably Chamonix and Annecy, look like they would have been places to have stayed put for a while. Maybe next time.

This day was ranked the second most memorable of the trip and of the year. We’ve told the story of “the road that went no more” countless times. Yet one can’t reflect from 2020, and more specifically March 2020 which it is as I write this, without 2020 imposing its own cast on things. And that cast, simply put, is a world that has gone haywire over the Coronavirus pandemic. It remains to be seen how the virus will play out, but that’s not my point. My point is that in remembering past times, and in this case times that were with very few exceptions, splendid and carefree, the present always impedes. That said, this was a day for the books that rivals all others. The thrills and scares we had on this day make that virus, at least from our perspective to this point, look like a paper tiger.