France part three and Bastille Day!

Ahh, another movie scene breakfast outside! They had fancy yoghurts that come in their own adorable little ceramic pots, and man were they delicious. I guess I fawned over them noticeably enough because they told me to finish eating them so they could be washed for me to take. Yay! We had an opportunity to throw a few clothes in the wash as well – especially the clothes from yesterday’s hike, when stinky hot became more than just a phrase – so that was very good as well. Once that was done we set the clothes out in view of the mountains to dry…even our laundry was scenic! It is so relaxing here that Peter actually went back to sleep after breakfast (“good food, good view, good weather…want to take naps”).

The ladies of the house – Sue, myself, Sophie and Isabelle – all went to the supermarket to get last-minute things for the Bastille day celebration for lunch later. That was a pretty cool experience – they have a whole long bar for cheeses and an entire aisle for yoghurts and crème pots! Incredible! I wish we had either of those things in the US…I have grown to appreciate cheese a lot more now that I’ve been here.

Then it was time for cooking and Bastille Day celebratory eating! We had melon and prosciutto, little sushi-looking cheeses that Sue bought from the store because they looked too cute (also because of the joke she made that baled hay looks like large sushi for animals, which the family thought was great), ratatouille that took a day to make, different kinds of sausage, pasta salad that was legitimately tasty and simple, ice cream cake, a chocolate-pear bar, more chocolate, coffee…oof, delicious and the type of meal that just keeps going. Plus one of Sophie’s daughters had a 17-month-old girl that was adorable. Her husband is Mexican so he speaks to Amalia in Spanish and the wife speaks to the kid in French. English is also sometimes spoken because the daughter is a language teacher. Incredible multilingualist in the making…very cool.

After everyone had left it was actually time again to eat! We packed up all our stuff and drove down to the apartment to drop it off, though, so we could leave for the train station (really close to the apartment) early in the morning tomorrow. Lots of flights of stairs! But it was no match for the incredible terrain between us and the mountaintop restaurant we were going to…Isabelle’s transmission was clearly not designed with French mountain scaling in mind, and although there were a few insane bikers I doubt the road is really fit for foot travel either, being so steep and narrow and windy. Another harrowing experience, wahoo! Once we got up to the restaurant, though, the view was just spectacular – the entire town! According to the family, the dinner wasn’t that great, but we thought it was delicious. Any food not from Spain tastes better, I guess. Then we checked out the view at the end and saw fireworks in the city from many many kilometers up. I’ve never seen fireworks from above so that was really cool – they look like short little weeds shooting up from the city. But it was good to celebrate the 4th of July – ten days late, and colder since it was so high up, but such is life in the French mountains!

We are very sad to leave Grenoble but we have to keep going! Not only has this been the first and most likely last day we haven’t spent anything, I think we have felt like much more than tourists here, seeing a lot of things normal people – even relatively dedicated travelers – would never see even on their own. Plus the food is great and so is the whole family. They all have great senses of humor and it was awesome to have met them! We hope the rest of the trip is this good…we’ll see!