Aosta

We have been longing to go to the mountains for quite some time.  So I reserved a room for two nights in the Valle Aosta.  The plan was to leave the office about noon on Friday, but it was about 2 pm before we got to leave.  We drove about 2 hours north west and we were there!

 The valley was  beautiful with all of its mountains.  The higher we got the better things looked 

  The road was heading towards France, going through the Monc Blanc tunnel. 

 We got off the autostrada several towns before the tunnel and drove on the old road because we could see more.  The last town in Italy was Courmayeur.  It was  fabulous.

 Here is a glacier on Mont Blanc

 All of the buildings in this valley are built with slate roofs.

 Most of the homes and all of the hotels were all decked out with flowers boxes on their balcony rails.

 There were many many water falls!  I want to come back to Courmayeur.

 We then drove back to the largest town in the valley - Aosta, and found the main piazza.

 It was very vibrant with many residents walking around and shopping on a Friday afternoon.

 This is an ancient roman gate to the city.

 And just one block away are these Roman ruins.

 It is just a gorgeous setting. - they even hold concerts here at these ruins!

 And from there you can still see the fabulous alps.  We wandered around town.  Found some shoes that are big enough for me. and then had dinner at a nice sidewalk restaurant.

 After dinner we drove to our hotel in the small town of Introd, about 12 Km from Aosta.  It was a fantastic place.  Notice the slate roofs.  Our room was the top floor of the addition you see with the rock chimney.  The room was the honeymoon suite complete with rose petals on the bed.  The room had a sauna and a fancy shower with body jets, rain shower head, music and choice of lights.  The shower had two doors to it, one from the bathroom and one from the bedroom.

 Saturday we had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel then drove north east to the town of Breuil.  This is the ski resort town on the Italian side of the Matterhorn.

Yes! We were at the Matterhorn.  I had no idea that the Matterhorn was on the Italian border. 

 It was very picturesque

 Every where they had these flower planters made from carved out logs.

 Nice car!

 After walking around town and checking out the shops and admiring the scenery, we stopped and had some hot chocolate at a bar.  Very nice!

 Driving down the valley we could see all these alpine / Tyrolean homes and villages.  WOW!

 We stopped in this one town that had a gondola cable car lift to go up to the top of their mountain.  We were discussing how much money we were willing to pay to go on this lift and decided that 30 euro was about it.  Any higher than that and we would have an excuse why we did not go.  I went and asked the price and it was 2 euro!  0.50 for residents.  We had no excuse.

 The lift took us to a tiny town called Chamois.  All of the buildings were hundreds of years old, but very well kept up.  This is a ski town and the ski lift goes from Chamois up the mountain farther still.

 Here their fountain was made from a carved out log.

 Everywhere on this weekend trip we saw these horse trough style fountains.  This one is feed by a bronze mountain goat.

 Beautiful houses with rooms to rent every where

 And lupines!

We found a restaurant at the other end of the Chamois and had lunch. I had sausage with polenta and Peggy had polenta with Goat!  Yes, she ate goat.  She really liked it.  

 A view of houses below as we were waiting for the next cable car to come back.

 We safely returned to our car after the fabulous gondola ride up and back the mountain.  We then drove down to Aosta and across to the other side of the Aosta valley into the 1st Italian national park.  It is called Parco Gran Paradiso.  There were water falls everywhere!

 This is a different view of the same falls in the previous picture.  It appears to spring forth from the very top of the ridge line and falls many thousands of feet.

 More waterfalls.

 As we drove up this valley we were headed toward a town called Cogne, which was supposed to be our best chance to see an Ibex, the Italian mountain goats.  We did not see any.

 This is the town of Cogne.

 We wandered through the town and gazed at the valley beyond.

 More flowered balcony rails

 and more unique water fountains.

 It was raining in Cogne so we came back to the Aosta valley.  This is a picture of Introd and Aosta below.

 A picture of Introd.

 This Ibex head was hanging outside our Hotel.  This is as close as I got to a goat.

Up and down this large Aosta valley are 30 - 50 castles.  Many of them in ruins but some are  still looking great.  This one even had flags flying from the top turrets just like a princess castle in a Fairy Tale.  This was a fabulous weekend.