The weather wasn’t looking good in Cham for the next few days, so we started thinking about making a break for Italy sooner than we had planned. We had a lot of flexibility, actually, because the Cham apartment is free all the way until we are to depart from Geneva to London later this month. We had already asked if we could leave baggage there while we went on a five-day jaunt to Italy, and stay the last night before our London flight. Now we were thinking maybe we would leave earlier, and come back and stay several days at the end instead.
I write this as if it were easy for me, but it wasn’t. Here we were thinking about driving to Italy tomorrow and Mark hadn’t even found us an apartment yet. I got upset because there were no plans. Mark decided to calm me down by driving us to Italy for lunch.
Rain on the French side of the Mont Blanc tunnel.
Rain on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc tunnel.
We chose a little town called Morgex, and our oldest and I each mapped out a restaurant. The one I chose turned out to be all boarded up despite the posted hours on the outside. So we got back in the car and drove to the one our son chose, and that one was cheerful and open, and had a table ready for seven.
We ordered seven plates:
- mozzarella bufalo with local cured ham, sort of like proscuitto;
- carpaccio di bresaiola with arugula and shaved parmesan;
- pizza marinara;
- pizza valdostana, that is, with ham and local cheese;
- spaghetti bolognese;
- tortellini with a cream sauce, dotted with ham and scented with nutmeg;
- and a mixed grill, with tender steak, veal, and split sausage, and eggplant and zucchini and peppers, and a small pile of french fries.
There is no way we will eat all this, said Mark, but then we did. The small children chowed down on french fries, pizza marinara, and spaghetti bolognese. The rest of us found room for everything else.
And 50 cL of the house red wine for the grownups, thank you very much.
I think the buffalo mozzarella with the ham was the winner. The cheese was mild, runny, a bit bland, and creamy; with the salty, sharp ham it became perfectly balanced and luxurious.
I didn’t think we would have room for dessert, but the minute the server said “Affogato” I immediately ordered one for Mark and me to share. Sorbetto for the children, lemon and raspberry, except for our daughter who got gelato with chocolate sauce.
The affogato—plain ice cream, I thought more likely to be fior de latte than vanilla, doused with a shot of strong espresso—was the best ever. Mark and I fought our way to the bottom of the dish with both spoons. The sorbettos, to our surprise, came in tall glasses with straws, and were drinkable. The girl was happy with her “affogatto cioccolato.”
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That is literally all we did in Italy, spend two hours eating lunch and then drove back. Then we packed to go to Italy for longer the next day. Some people went shopping for a new backpack and things like that.
After it all got sorted out, so that we had an apartment—not east of Genoa where we originally planned, but west, on the Riviera Ponente, where the weather promised to be better—Mark and I set out for a walk and a dinner on the town.
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Mont Blanc is the highest peak in Europe, and it is quite close; but from the center of Chamonix it does not look like the most impressive peak. There are other peaks which are closer as the crow flies, and those look pointier and seem to tower higher.
But just as the sun is setting, you can tell that Mont Blanc is the highest, because it is the last peak to light up pink with the rays of the sun.
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Mark and I walked all over town. I had a problem: having had lunch in Italy, I was not hungry at all. Finally I told Mark to pick, and he settled on Le Chaudron on the Rue des Moulins. It had a tapas menu. Mark ordered fries for an entrée, and risotto with shrimp for the plat. I just ordered gazpacho, which came with another ball of buffalo mozzarella in the middle, and drank Argile wine from Savoie.
The wine cut
the raw-garlic taste of the gazpacho just right, and it was light enough not to make me overfull. Mark ordered dessert (baba au rhum, something I had seen on many menus but never had; it was pretty good). We walked some more on the way home.
Next day, to Italy for longer.
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