Summer in France

Just a funny thing we were going skiing yesterday, it was 20 degrees 0730 in the morning.
unfortunately the ski lifts was not going due to too much wind. However we went to col du Lautaret we climbed a mounting (2h) and then sled down on the snow. Afterwards we went for a well deserved mountain meal in La Grave.

So when travelling in France you soon come to realise the great diversity the country possesses. It it also very convenient, the distances are note very long and you can always find a stop that will be interesting and small cosy hostel are never far. Of course there exist some exceptions such as the French Riviera during the summer, it's really a mess. But some example of the diversity are the year around snowy mountains of the alps, lavender fields of Provence, old villages, hiking the grand canyon of Verdon, vineyard hopping, surfing the Atlantic waves and watching the sun set in the Atlantic ocean to cliff dives in the Mediterranean, driving along the Mediterranean coast with the windows down just enjoying the views and listening to your favourite music and all the buzzing medieval city centres most of this are within one day of driving.

Grenoble -> Lac du Sautet -> Digne Les Bains -> Castellane & the grand canyon of Verdon -> Grasse -> Cannes -> Sainte Auygulf -> Saint-Tropez -> Bandol & the island of Bender -> Marseille -> Aix en Provence -> Grand Motte -> Montpellier -> Banuyls-sur-Mer -> Andorra la Vella -> Biarritz -> Hossegor -> Saint-Girons-Plage -> Bassin d'Archachon & the great sand dunes of Pyla -> Bordeaux -> vineyards of Haute Médoc -> Lacanau -> Lascaux -> Grenoble

A great road trip!

The best meals was bouillabaisse in Marseille & beef with a perfect wine in Bordeaux
The best beaches are on the west coast, huge white sandy beached, in the Mediterranean the beaches close to the Hyeres area is the best.

August started in Chamonix

Summer is turning into fall, and the first snow came on the mountain summits last weekend. It's feels great gazing up at the white snowy peaks, then you realise that ski season is not far away even if its still around 20 degrees in Grenoble, we are actually expecting 26 degrees this weekend.
Anyway since I'm not very synchronised with current events in this blog I intend to write some words about the events that took place in my life during august. It was vacation time.

To celebrate the vacation month we started the first of august by visiting Chamonix. Chamonix is very nice, I must say that it's one of few French alpine tourist villages that has kept its charms. I say tourist villages because there exist a lot of smaller not that famous villages that are very nice that not yet have been overexploited as many popular ski resort.

While in Chamonix we visited Aiguille the Midi looking down the vallée Blanche run you really looking forward to returning with your skis on. One of the few larger French ski resorts I didn't ski on last season. Of course you also have a decent panoramic view over the Mont Blanc massif. We were actually having dinner on the altitude of 3842m altitude, I must say I had some problem with the altitude feeling dizzy and nausea I was a bit surprised since I had been skiing on altitudes around 3300m before without any problems, but I guess I reached my threshold.

Jazz A Vienne

In late june & july we spent a couple of days in Vienne attending the jazz festival.
Jazz festivals are really popular in France and every village in France with some self-respect have its own festival. Vienne is one of the bigger ones competing with festival as the one in Montreux.
The nice thing with Vienne is that they have a ancient Roman amphitheatre they use as stage, since the theatre is situated on a hill you have a nice view of the sunset and the surrounding valley. We attended to concerts with: Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, Wayne Shorter and Brad Meldau.

July was good!

Today was my second day at work after the vacation, and it is ok to be back. To summarise the summer in one word is amazing, there have been more activities than I ever could imagined. However it started with quite cold, unstable and rainy weather in June but improved a lot around midsummer. We have been having stable weather since then with around 30 degrees and sunny weather.

In July we managed to pull of the following activities, this is also the reason why I not have updated the blogg that frequently:

• Hiking to the top of Dent de Crolles
• Downhill biking in Alpes d'Huez
  
• Skiing at the Les 2 Alpes glacier
  
• River rafting in parc Vanoise
• Hiking the mighty Mont Aigille in the Vercors Plateau
  
• Hiking to the waterfall of Orsière and spending the night camping at an altitude of 2000m at the mountain lake of Lac Robert
• Attending the Jazz festival in Vienne twice
• A weekend down in the Mediterranean visiting Cassis & the islands of Porquerolles
• Biking up to the 1968 Olympic ski jumping facility in St Nizier on the Vercors Plateau
  

Surprising is that I started to do crazy stuff as biking and running up and down mountain slopes. Perhaps the most crazy activity was the downhill biking, where you descend from mountains on narrow, icy and sometimes very snowy paths. See some picture below from that particular event.

Grenoble

I just realised that I have written a lot of stuff about places outside Grenoble and not about the main place of events. However it is true that the strength of Grenoble actually lies in its surroundings. Because Grenoble really is an outdoor and nature lovers paradise. There are three mountain ranges just next to the city and all of them have some unique properties. They all have ski facilities, however one tend to forget the summer activities. The summer activities is just as fun with mountain biking or hiking. All the mountain trails seem full with almost endless views, waterfalls and beautiful sceneries. Surprisingly there are also a lot of people doing water sports like sailing wind- and kite-surfing in the surrounding mountain lakes. No wonder that the Grenoblians can consume sometimes 3 desserts during lunch and not looking too chubby.
Well anyway back to the town itself, there are a lot uninteresting and greyish Soviet style suburbs which I never tend to visit, I rather stay close to the city centre with its broad avenues its building in Hausmann style architecture to the small narrow paths through the old town. Of course there are numerous of cafe's and bars all over the place where you can sit and take a sip of coffee or pastis.

The wine district of Châteauneuf-du-Pape

After a hot day in Avignon we decided to cool ourselves down with some wine drinking in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape (The popes new castle, has probably something to do with the popes staying in Avignon centuries ago?) wine region just around 40 minutes north of Avignon. The wine district is considered as one of the best in France and is famous mostly for its red wines they do have white wine as well but its very limited.

Since it was Sunday we were initially a bit worried that a lot of the vineyards were closed for visitors and indeed the seemed deserted while we arrived. However after some driving laround we found the perfect spot on a hill, a château with pool, the Fines Roches wine cellar and finally they were serving a 4 course dinner just in front of the château (with an amazing view over the Southern Rhone valley).

Most often in France at least of what I have experienced so far you receive a treatment not very service minded, however this time it was different the castle owner visited all tables during the dinner making sure everyone enjoyed their stay and that the food was good. The food was of course excellent.

A Short visit to Avignon

Avignon was a nice surprise, the town is situated in the Provence region next to the Rhone river.There are a lot of old and nice architecture tight streets which are nice to stroll around in and of course the tourist attractions such as the palais de papes & the famous pont d'Avignon (which is not that much of attraction).

Saintes Maries de la Mer en Camargue

Late may (yes I know I'm almost 2 month behind), anyway we decided to go south exploring the Camargue area staying in the small and cosy coastal town Saintes Maries de la Mer.

For some reasons the town is a popular destination for gypsies and almost in every corner of the town there is a guy playing Gipsy Kings songs or at least the songs they were playing sounded very familiar to Gipsy Kings.

Some other notable events that took place while were there except watching flamingos and white horses (they were everywhere) was watching a bull fight. Well it wasn't a classical bull fight killing the bull in the end, it was more of playing session pulling a razor between the antlers.

And not to forget, the huge beaches that surrounded the village the sea temperature was well above 20 as well. Quite nice when coming from Grenoble where the weather hasn't been that good (note that this was in May, weather for the last 4 weeks has been really good with degrees above 30 every day).

Last ski day

Everything was looking great before what was suppose to be the last ski day of the season, this was the 18th of April. The weather forecast was looking great with sunny wonderful weather perhaps a bit to warm. I was also looking forward to visit Val d'Isere and Tignes (the whole ski area is called Espace Killy) . However the plans were dashed, instead we experienced zero visibility, snowstorm and on top of this really bad food. However this was not going to ruin our day celebrating a great skiing season.

Hiking in Monteyard

Another warm April day spent in the mountains with beautiful views and a great picnic.
We were planning to do the Lac Monteyard tour but unfortunately the boat that are suppose to take you across the lake wasn't running. Apparently the boat will not start until mid May, tha lac i also a good place to do some sailing, windsurfing and kite surfing so I guess we have many reasons to come back.

Annecy in April

My mother was visiting in mid April, we were blessed with mostly good weather with around or just below 20 degrees which is excellent for doing some sightseeing.
We went to Chateau Vizille and strolled around in the park before we made a quick stop in Chamrousse ski area drinking some Vin chaud, in the evening we went out in Grenoble eating some local dishes such as Fondue Savoyarde. The evening was rounded of with a taste of Chartreuse liquer

The next day we went to Annecy doing serious sightseeing, we spent the day walking around the old town exploring the small alleys and market booths scattered. We also went on a boat trip around the lake. We also ate a nice lunch in the sun next to one of the canals that run through the old town.