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Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
International	(General)	(General)	(General)

Topic Date User

Paris to Rome 16-Jan-2015 At 11:32:24 AM Timfreddo

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I just got back from a month (most of October) honeymoon in Europe!
We hired a campervanvan (van-it) in Paris an spent three weeks driving around. Camper was a really nice way to get around as long as the aim is not many cities (for Florence, Milan etc it's worth finding a smaller town to stay and commute in on the train for the day)

Top climbing spots were:
Chamonix- a few single pitch sport routes around Cham, or hire a guide or fin a climber at a bar, hire some crampons and an axe and go up Aguille du midi. Even the popular routes like cosmiques arête are really fun and scenic! For the mrs there's good day walks, amazing cheese and wine, lots of souvenir shopping and she can catch the train to mer de glacé and touch a glacier etc...

Dolomites- lots of multi pitches (maybe you could take her up a few?), you'll want a rack of cams for 90% of the easy classics. also lots of single pitch sport but seems quite scattered and hard to find in an English guidebook. Lots of via ferratas which are great as they will keep you interested too. There's lots of infrastructure (lifts and gondys) to take you around the place. For her there's nice walks (drei Zinnen area is good), lotsa shops in Cortina d'Ampezzo. Good food n wine but breads not as good as France.

Arco- nice spot near big lake, loads of climbing, loads of cheap gear shops (that are always closed when you try and look around), shouldn't be too hard to find a partner (try camping zoo campground for enlish speakers). Not a lot to do except sit on the beach or climb. Food is ok.

Switzerland and Austria have nice valleys with well established waking tracks to get up to numerous mountain huts... A good wet day activity is to warm up by slogging up a hill, have a nice hearty soup and a few beers for lunch and then stumble back down the hill.
Unless you're mountaineering, France and Italy have better rock climbing.