The first night in Paris I met up with Marie and her father Jean-Luc, and brothers Hughes and Francois! There is a family connection that goes back decades between her family and my brother-in-law Joe's family. I met Marie when she visited the U.S. last summer.

Marie's apartment is in the Montmartre neighborhood which is a great place to take in the night scenes in Paris. We checked out Sacre Coeur where lots of people were out enjoying the night

The scene with some fire acrobats and good music was on tap too. The lights of Paris blanket the skyline below.

Marie's namesake restaurant!

Vintage Paris in the Latin Quarter.

Then it was on to the Tour de France finale! They picked a great spot at Place de la Concorde which is at one end of the Champs Člysees and a great spot to take in the action.

Marie's creative eye caught us in the reflection!

The peleton enters the city!

Sharon, Marie and Hughes getting ready for crunch time.

And then they wiz by. The first of 8 laps in the city. We were at the 500 meters to go sign which would be where the sprint is in full swing on the last lap.

Cycling fans will like this one. The Maillot Jaune Wiggins followed by Sky team mates Boassan-Hagen and Cavendish.

We just so happened to be right next to where the teams parked their buses. So we got to see a bunch of the big guns up close including the overall winner Bradley Wiggins of Britain.

Sharon outside the Louvre.

Can't miss that icon!

Many thanks to Marie and her family for a fun visit in Paris! From there, we took a bullet train down to Grenoble in southeast France. We came across a concert with people out enjoying the park in the old part of the city.

Grenoble is dubbed as the "capital of the Alps". We took the bubble cars up to see the city from above.

Euro-elevator.

We then drove deeper into the mountains to Alpe d'Huez which is the site of an iconic climb in the Tour de France. There are 21 hairpin turns and they each have a sign to commemorate a past stage winner. The first turn(dubbed #21) has Lance Armstrongs 2001 stage win. He's also on #19.

Aerial shot of the climb.

Not a bad view for your morning tea from Alpe d'Huez!

We spent a nice day driving around in the Alps. Each village seems to try to out do each other with splendid displays of color. Here is a typical scene.

We drove by a cable car station that went way up into Ecrins National Park. What the heck, lets check it out. There was a major glacier up there and views for miles.

The next day was the triathlon! The course was beautiful with a swim in a turqoise lake down in the valley, then the big climb up to Alpe d'Huez followed by a run around the ski resort. This shot is at the summit of the climb which I survived to much elation!

I can get use to the French way of triathlon. These chairs were located immediatly after the finish line. Ahh! It was a fun event with about 800 finishers from all over the world. We had flag logos on our bibs so could tell where everyone was from. They grouped the Americans and Canadians together in the transition area so we could talk shop before and afterwards.

Then it was on to Chamonix via a scenic drive north through the mountains. This shot shows what a "great hair day" is.

Chamonix is home to Mont Blanc which is the tallest peak in the Alps at 4810 meters(15781ft). And there is a popular hiking route that circumnavigates it in 11 days called the Tour du Mont Blanc. We only had a week so we took the eastern portion. France, Italy, and Switzerland meet here so we got to bag 3 nations in one hike. We started in Italy after taking a bus through the 7.2mile Mont Blanc Tunnel. This photo shows the typical European trail signs that show the way.

We were surprised to see a great array of wildflowers for the entire week. Here are some samples from along the trail

Our first accomodation was a mountain hut in Italy called Refugio Bonatti. The huts are rather civilized with hot showers and 4 course dinners to fuel you for the next day. And yes, it was very tasty! This hut had about 70 or 80 people staying there. Throughout our journey we had dinner with folks from all over. Japan, Switzerland, France, Germany, South Africa, Russia.

Although not our accomodation, this crumbling Alp ruin provided a cool photo op.

Then climb to the first big pass. That peak on the right marks the triple divide between the three countries. Mt. Dolent.

But with each challenging climb we were rewarded with bursts of color.

On our second day in Switzerland, the valley was full of wild strawberries which we took advatage of and filled our tummies!

We traveled through many villages along the way and refilled our water bottles from wonderful fountains like this.

One stretch of trail in Switzerland had cute wood carvings along they way. The artist used tree trunks for his material.

Halfway through Switzerland at our hotel in Champex

Champex Lac.

Well it is Switzerland so you have friendly cows adorned with massive bells to keep you company in places.

We lost count of the glaciers that poured off the Mont Blanc massif. But it was a bummer to see how much they had receeded in recent decades.

Yet another uber charming Swiss village to spend the night in. Trient

From the pass crossing back into France, WHAT A VIEW of mighty Mont Blanc towering above Chamonix!

Lac Blanc

The views from the stretch of trail along the peaks across the valley from Mont Blanc just kept getting better and better

Some wild critters along the trail

Spectacular

The final night on the trail was spent at a hut that resides at one of the cable car stations. And they still had an old car on display from an original installation back in the day. Chamonix is a ski mecca and hosted the first Winter Olympics back in 1924.

After we finished the hike which had given us views of Mont Blanc from valleys and adjacent mountain ranges, we hopped on the cable car that goes onto the mountain itself. This put things into perspective as we saw our previous days of hard work and climbing fall away thousands of feet below. The top station sits up at 3842 m (12,605 ft) which dwarfs Chamonix way down at 1000m(3200ft).

Voila!

Then they have another cable car that crosses over an ice field to Italy.

River of ice

Colorado has great mountains, but nothing like this!

After Chamonix, we took a bus to Geneva(Genčve to the local French speakers). It sits on Lake Geneva where they have a water jet providing the signature landmark in the city.

My car

and Sharon's

Weird science out at CERN. This is the european center for particle physics research and its located in Geneva.

The Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is housed here. The collider includes a 27km ring that allows them to accellerate protons to near the speed of light before smashing them together to break them into sub atomic particles. this is where they recently discovered the last major missing piece(Higgs Boson) to the standard model that was developed to describe how the universe works. Amazing science is taking place here. In the photo I point out where we are on the ring. We had a tour given by a physicist that provided a good overview of the lab. The LHC is the largest machine ever built and it includes several huge detectors that could each fill a cathedral.

At CERN they had a cool museum called the "Universe of Particles" that helped explain the heavy science that takes place here.

And this is where the World Wide Web was invented. And here is the actual first web server! We all have this guy to thank for all of our googling and facebooking.

Back in Genčve, a nice view of Old Town.

As luck would have it, the "Fetes de Genčve" was going on. Their big summer festival which provided a nice fireworks display to cap off our trip!