Sorry for the huge delay in getting these blog entries out. I am in Paris right now and so I have more time to post about what happened in the past month or so.
Dent de Crolles is a mountain in the Chartruese. On the scale of french hikes it was "easy" but for American standards that means "moderately hard". I went with my coworkers on a beautiful Saturday morning. The hike took us about 6 hours. We scaled the very steep front side of the mountain which was covered in grass and bare rock and when we finally reached the top plateau there was still snow up there. We had a little picnic at the top while drinking in the view of the entire Grenoble Valley. The hike was over 700 meters in elevation gain so we were pretty high up there. Coming back we went along the backside of the mountain. This was a much more gradual descent than the front side. Around the back we actually found an ice cave with a frozen cascades and a fine shimmering sheet of ice cold water falling from the ceiling. We refilled our water bottles (which wasn't easy since your hand got numb each time you reached under the falls) and then continued on our hike back.
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| This is why I love the Chartruese. Looks a lot like Yosemite but with more french people. |
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| Eating all that cheese sure makes you strong. |
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| Frozen waterfall that we found in an ice cave. Oddly enough, the cave was filled with really slow moving flies all over the place. It was a bit freaky. |
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| Sandrine's feet hurt on the way down. She was a real trooper by making it as far as she did wearing shoes not meant for hiking. |
Dinner in Crolles
At the top of one of my hikes to the Bastille I met a very nice french couple whose names were Bruno and Monique. They were both older, and didn't really speak very much English but they liked travelling and had been to the US many times before. They invited me and Denis over to their house for dinner one day after work. Denis and I drove out to the town of Crolles, which is incidentally at the base of the Dent de Crolles. They kindly placed an American flag on top of a cabinet in an effort to make me feel at home. We had apperitifs around the coffee table and I did my best to keep up with the rapid french being spoken. We had lots of wine and cheese. It was a very french meal all in all, topped off with fresh strawberries and Chantilly creme. The coolest part I must say though is how welcoming people are here. I just happened to ask these people to take my picture at the top of a mountain and next thing I knew I was eating in their house. Lesson: Speaking the native tongue, even a little, can pay off big in the end.
Grenoble Par Nuit
Ivan my Roommate
This is my roommate (the one with the pink hair) and a previous roommate named Maria.
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| I don't really remember how this picture came about to tell the truth. |
