Vacation #2 (Grenoble, Chambèry, Alpe d'Huez, Briançon)

The view outside our Gite looking into the valley (Alpe d'Huez)random viewpoint on our drive through the mountain pass
waterfall on the way to Briançon from Alpe d'Huezlooking East during a small sunset hike

We arrived back in Saint Etienne and hung around for Thursday and Friday. My friend Ryan and I talked about taking a short trip up to the alps before all of the snow comes. We decided to rent a car for 3 days and drive up to the mountains. Saturday morning we hopped in our Renault 4 door manual transmission rental car. Rachel came along for the ride as well and we decided to go to Grenoble for the night to stay with a girl named Marie through www.couchsurfing.com. I was the only person with an international driver’s license so I drove the entire time, which really wasn’t much in comparison with the 8 hour drive to Delaware (or the trip out west!)… We arrived in the afternoon and took advantage of having a car…drove around the city to get our bearings and then followed a road up into the mountains/hills surrounding Grenoble. Grenoble is the capital city of the French alps and is surrounded by beautiful mountains and the Isere river cuts through the city as well. On our little drive up through the hills we ran into some interesting sights (4 hunting dogs ran right in front of our car all anxiously sniffing out prey as well as a woman painting the beautiful landscapes on an old dirt road.) We pulled up next to the woman and we talked a little bit about her painting and she said that this road was supposed to be used for painting landscapes not big cars. After our excursion, we headed back to park our car near Marie’s place. We decided to walk around the city a little bit and grab some dinner. We met up with Marie and her flatmate Kroc (Guillaume) around 7h30 and went to a wine bar that had all of these different fruit wines. To give some examples: Passion, strawberry and litchi, pear and walnut, cherry, nectarine, raspberry. After the bar we went to one of her friend’s apartment and hung out with about 5 of her friends. This was a very interesting experience as we had never met any of these people before and all of a sudden we were in an apartment hanging out with them. We had a very great first experience with couch surfing. We ended up walking back to Marie’s apartment which was about 30 minutes, and Marie was telling me about how she couch surfed for 10 months throughout the world (all over Europe, Peru, Bolivia, India, Africa, California, New York, Montreal.) It sounded like a crazy trip, I can’t even imagine it. We were talking about different cultures and the way of life in America vs. Europe vs. the rest of the world. So amazing.

Sunday we headed north to Chambery to meet up with 2 other assistants from Lyon (not Saint Etienne), Maggie and Tim. We picked them up at the train station and drove up to the mountains to do a day hike. We found this day hike in a book I bought called “Around Chambery”. It was filled with about 30 hikes around Chambery with everything from caves, rock climbing, and waterfalls, to village ruins, castles and fortresses. We picked a hike with pretty much everything, but only made it about halfway up so we missed out on the ancient villages and fortress. It was getting really foggy and we wouldn’t have been able to see anything at the summit anyway. We saw a lot of people rock climbing. The foliage was absolutely wonderful and it reminded me of my trip to Lago Como (up in the mountains in Italy) when I studied in Paris. After our hike, we headed to Alpe d’Huez where we booked 5 beds in a gite. A gite is like a large house that can house around 18 people with a fully equipped kitchen and dining room. In this case, it is much better than a hostel because sometimes hostels only have beds and is more similar to a hotel. We stayed in this gite and it was completely empty except for us 5. It was 18 euros a night and housed 18 people, with 2 kitchens, a huge dining room with a fire place, and a huge bathroom with 2 showers, 3 sinks, and 3 toilets. There were about 4 bedrooms upstairs with anywhere from 2 beds to 8. When we woke up the next day we were all amazed at the view as we had arrived late in the evening and couldn’t see anything in the dark.

Monday we headed to check out the Alpe d’Huez ski resort and then continued on our drive eastward through the alps towards Briancon. Briancon is the highest city in Europe and is about 20 km (12 miles) from Italy. There is an old Roman fortress that sits on top of the mountain overlooking the city. In the old part of the city near the fortress, there is also a huge gorge with a small river flowing through. After checking out the city of Briancon for the afternoon, we headed back through the mountain passes back to Saint Etienne. On the way home we took a short detour up a side road to try and catch the sunset from a mountain top and I practically ran up this mountain side. After reaching the top several times (multiple summits), I decided to give up as I was so far away from our car. I looked up higher on the mountainside and saw a mountain goat off in the distance. It was so crazy and reminded me of the Mountains episode on Planet Earth. After seeing the alps I can’t wait to go up and ski once it starts snowing!! ...I heard it is supposed to snow on Thursday in Saint Etienne... :-)

Vacation! (Avignon, Marseille, La Londe)

Mediterranean sunset at La Londe!! :)

The Pont d'Avignon at night and the old Palais des Papes

View of the Pont d'Avignon and the Rhone from a park

So after being in France for about a month, they gave us a nice 12 day vacation. I decided to take a little trip down to the Mediterranean with my friends Autumn and Ellen. Autumn is an assistant up in Nancy and she came down on Saturday night. Sunday morning we grabbed a train from Saint Etienne to Avignon (yes, there is a famous song about “Le Pont d’Avignon”). The city was very cute and had old Roman walls surrounding the city; very beautiful. The Pont d’Avignon used to be extremely long, stretching from the city to a fortress across two rivers, but most of the bridge was washed out by flooding. Now the bridge stretches about halfway across the Rhone River and is now a historical site and no longer a complete bridge. We had fun exploring the city for the day and spent the night in a hostel right on the river.

Monday, we headed on a train down to Marseille, which is the 3rd largest city in France. This large port town was an important part of the Roman empire. The Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde is a beautiful church that looks over the Vieux Port (Old Port) from a hill on the southern part of the city center. There are a few fortresses around the old port that look magnificent at night when they are all lit up! I have heard many stories about Marseille being very unsafe and not so welcoming for tourists, but we didn’t have any problems at all. The travel book I am using says, “Gritty, grimy and gloriously real….its rough-and-tumble edginess exerts an irresistible pull.” A lot of people have also told me they weren’t really impressed with Marseille, but for some reason I absolutely loved it. I think a lot of it has to do with the landscape of the city, the Mediterranean and the cultural differences of Marseille compared to other French cities. Being on the coast, it is very close to bordering North Africa and you can tell this just by a walk down the street. There is an overwhelming population of Arabic and African peoples which adds a lot of culture of the city. On the way back to the hostel, I met an Australian man who had been traveling through Europe since May 1st. He was in the process of writing a book about it in which he talks about different cultures and people by sharing his experiences. The interesting part was that he was in a wheelchair so needless to say his experiences have been very different than the average traveler.

After walking around Marseille Tuesday morning, we decided to head to Ellen’s aunt and uncle’s house on the coast in La Londe. We took a train from Marseille to Toulon and then a bus from Toulon to Hyeres and La Londe. Her aunt and uncle are British, but both retired so they spend a lot of time at their home in La Londe. They had another aunt and uncle and their 2 girls there, so originally they told us we couldn’t stay there. We showed up at their doorstep at about 3 in the afternoon and they pretty much insisted that we stay since it was quite the journey to get back. They took us down to the Mediterranean and Ellen, Autumn, the 2 girls and I took a swim. Surprisingly the water was quite warm, once you got in… took some beautiful pictures of the sunset over the Mediterranean and walked up a path into the woods on the point. The landscape and plant life reminded me a lot of the California coast by Big Sur and Monterey Bay. It was absolutely gorgeous. After we went back to her aunt and uncle’s and they cooked us this wonderful meal of lamb, roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, squash, onions), broccoli, beans, cheese and red wine (of course!), ice cream and cake.

The next morning we took the bus and train back and caught a train from Marseille back to home. We had originally planned on going to Aix-en-Provence for a day or so to meet up with another assistant, but that was canceled because we stayed at the Mediterranean instead. Maybe next time!