I walked into the bustling family-kitchen groggy eyed and announced my intent to leave within the hour, wanting to be sure and respect the check-out time.

“Do you have somewhere you need to be?” my host asked me.

“No, I haven’t bought my ticket to Chamonix yet,” I responded.

“It is Easter and you are away from your family, stay for breakfast,” his wife insisted. And the next thing you know their family of four pulled up a fifth chair so I could share Easter breakfast with them. We ate a special braided bread and this fried egg salad concoction from Poland along with fruit, cheeses, and pickles prepared in a way that was also unique to Poland. At one point, my host stood up from the table and came back proudly holding a liter of coke, “let’s sin!” he exclaimed. His wife promptly shut that plan down, “we have fresh squeezed orange juice.” “Ok, well Kate can sin if she wants to,” he said, solemnly setting the bottle of coke beside me in defeat.

I had the best time with their family. We talked about books being better than movies (because you make the movie up in your head), how their dog didn’t like people singing ‘happy birthday’ (me neither Jasmine, I thought, but didn’t say) and about their experiences being og-airbnb hosts, along for the ride since the origins of the application (they had been living in Peru at the time).

Upon the conclusion of the meal and clean-up, I was on my way again, eager to spend the majority of my afternoon in Chamonix and not on-the-run.

I took the Mount-Blanc-Express and arrived at my next destination before 3pm, the journey there was made complete by conversation with a fellow American, Ed, visiting Chamonix to scout out the potential of moving there. I expected to love Chamonix — I’ve had my sights set on completing the Tour du Mount Blanc for several years now (and let’s be honest, if I’m walking around it I might as well aim to walk up it, too). But I didn’t expect to be enamored to the extent I was, nor to resolve it was my favorite town I’d been to thus far within half an hour of arriving.

I liked the vibes. I liked my hostel. I liked the bar and restaurant beneath my hostel. I liked the outdoor climbing within 50m of my hostel (I didn’t like that I didn’t have my harness and I really missed McKayla in those moments, though). I liked sitting in the sunshine reading, eating frosted covered animal crackers and watching people climb as Mount Blanc humbly towered over the whole scene.

I liked it all. I texted Melanie and informed her we’d be returning together someday before my check-in time even rolled around.

Due to the extreme mileage I’d covered the past several days, I resolved not to leave the very 50m radius I was presently plopped in for the rest of the night. I had everything I ever needed right there and though I was thankful for the ease and abundance of public transit options in these regions, I was fairly tired of the constant navigation (for the record, my success rate with getting where I needed to go on time was 100% up until this point).

I had writing I wanted / needed to do, photos to sort through, facetime Easter calls to make, beer to drink and I found the best little bar-corner to tuck myself away in and do all of those things from.

If you happened to read my Italy ramblings, you may remember that while I was in the very infancy of my travels, I connected with a man named Tim in Chamonix with the aid of an application called Hinge. (He won me over by asking about Arlo).

Tim and I had been conversing intermittently throughout my travels and he asked if I wanted to do anything upon my arrival to town. I opted to create the time to do the things I previously mentioned and we made plans to meet up at the mountain the next morning.

I was able to accomplish quite a few of the things on my list that evening, including the consumption of two beers, which naturally prompted an eventual bathroom break. Unaware there was a bathroom in the bar area I was presently in, I walked across the entire restaurant to the furthest possible bathroom .. that detour lead me right past Tim who had been sitting at a nearby table with friends (of note, he had been very respectful of my choice to not tell him where I was staying, so the chance encounter was a genuine surprise to both of us). (Of additional note, that’s my most important solo-travel-self-guide: if someone becomes defensive or offended when you voice something that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, remove yourself. It’s the people who hear what you’re saying and help strategize a game plan to ensure adequate comfort levels that are reliably winners).

And the next thing you know, we were talking until after the buses had stopped running and he had to walk all the way across the wild streets of Chamonix, France in the dark.

Speaking of buses, it turns out they overwhelm me more than trains. I gave up on interpreting the timetables and maps within a few seconds of arriving at the bus stop the next morning. I proceeded to strap my bear board to my backpack and have the happiest, sunniest, prettiest mile-long walk-in-snowboard-boots I’ve ever had. It feels important to document that the rental board that showed up at my hostel in Chamonix was the exact same board I had rented in the Dolomites — the familiarity felt shamelessly endearing, especially since the board had a giant stoic-bear on the bottom and a cute little waving-bear on the top. (Melanie and I named stoic-bear Carl, the waving one remained unnamed).

Tim had to work that morning, so despite my extended trek, I beat him up the slopes and had a head-start at falling even more in love with the area — the weather was perfect, the snow was acceptable, a wild amount of paragliders riddled the sky above me, ensuring I had an epic view in every single direction (even up) .. and then Tim showed up and whipped a fresh croissant out of his backpack for me.

His presence on that mountain reminded me of me in my hometown during my involved-with-literally-everything high school days — everywhere we went on the mountain someone would shout his name or he’d yell out to someone he recognized from afar. Throughout the day, I shared chairlifts with friends of his from all over the world and it was nice to not only have the best “show-er around-er” (not guide), but to feel associated with and slightly integrated into the local scene. I was thankful to feel a sense of belonging for the first time in my travels in addition to everything else I had to be thankful for.

Tim had time to grab a quick beer with me at the top of a run before he needed to return to work. His local expertise brought the knowledge of where the cheapest beer on the mountain was, but I would’ve paid far more to drink a beer (and eat french-fries) with that particular view. Long after he left, I sat there in the sunshine. I read some, but mostly I simply sat and watched the birds and the clouds change over the distant peaks, Mount Blanc included.

To delve further into the personal significance of having a good day on this particular calendar day, exactly a year prior Jeran and I ran a call I can confidently declare sits in the top three worst calls of my entire almost-ten-year emergency medical services career. I talk with my therapist a lot about how the calls that sit with me the heaviest are the ones that are a result of circumstances that could’ve, and should’ve, been avoided. I can easily find peace with medical processes running their natural course, but to sit with and then seek to recover from the front row seat we too-often have to humans being casualties in a battle that isn’t even their own requires a unique method of processing (for me, anyways). I’m thankful for the work I do and I’m thankful for the people I do it with, and I was thankful to be far far away from it all on April 10th, 2023 (except for Jeran and Kristen — I wished they could’ve been sitting right there with me. Kristen was actually on her own travels in a different area of Europe while I traveled about, and the simple knowledge that she was in a similar timezone was something I found a lot of solace in).

Tim provided me with thorough instructions on how to catch the correct bus back to my hostel so that I wouldn’t have to walk another mile in snowboard boots before our plans to meet back up for dinner. But despite his counsel, it happened: my first public transit error. It surprisingly (but thankfully) didn’t happen in a major train station, but rather in the comparably tiny mountain town of Chamonix. “Does the bus turn around? Because I’m on bus one but going the wrong way,” I typed knowingly, already instinctively preparing to exit at the next stop.

I found immense humor in the fact that I had made this error, and was yet again walking an unnecessarily long distance in snowboard boots with a grizzly bear face towering above me. I passed the time and the walk by sending a narrated video of the scene to Melanie. Tim had promised to come intercept me as soon as he was done with work, but I had no problem walking along as I awaited my rescue (maybe a few blisters, but that comes with the territory).

Tim picked me up and returned me to my hostel at exactly the time we had agreed to meet in town. At this point, we had spent enough time together for me to be unable to mask the extent of my chaos and my accidental tendency to take the path of most-resistance. I changed quickly and we wandered around Chamonix a bit before ending up at a restaurant for fondue — just when I thought I couldn’t love Chamonix more (confusing bus system aside), there I was drinking merlot and dipping potatoes and bread in quality cheese.

I was able to meet even more of the local community that night, bearing witness to a bit more of the non-tourist Chamonix-life before we ultimately talked our way past the bus’ operating hours yet again (which was fine, because as it turns out, buses aren’t my thing). Reasonably not trusting my sense of direction, Tim walked me back to my hostel (by way of a glacial water fountain) before walking all the way back across town in the middle of the night, at my expense, for the second night in a row (and if that isn’t a sign of the worlds’ best show-er around-er, I’m not sure what is).

There really wasn’t a need to one-up the cheese feast — it would’ve been a noble grand finale, but before I left the following morning we went to a bakery / coffee shop with a faucet that emitted chocolate.

.. and that is the tale of how, despite having a lot of space in my heart for both the Dolomites and Zermatt as well, Chamonix won. The end.