Saturday was a day with the family and also the older girl's 11th birthday. We started out the day early, going to her favorite place for breakfast, which was this hotel buffet. And it was delicious! There were croissants, pains au chocolats, mini crepes, fruit, cheese, butter, Nutella, jams, bread, little local donut type things, coffee and hot chocolate. I enjoyed it, to say the least. After, my host father went back with the girls while my host mother showed me around a llittle and went shopping a bit. Right now is the "soldes" or sales in France, which only happen twice a year so it is a very good time to shop. Sales in France, because they only happen occasionally, are VERY good: I'm talking 50, 60, 70% off. I may have to take advantage of this.
After lunch the girls started arriving for the birthday party. They were at first a little shy but soon were asking a million questions: what do we eat in the US? how do you say this in english? And so on. I watched a movie and had pizza and popcorn with them (popcorn in France apparently means candied popcorn?). It was a sleepover, and this morning they made "pancakes" for breakfast but I didn't have the heart to tell them they were in fact not real pancakes but basically thick crepes and that a pancake isn't a pancake without maple syrup.
Today we as a group took a tour of Grenoble, led by our capable Patrice, academic advisor to us and professor of history and literature at the university. Also genuinely cool human being. He told us lots of cool facts-apparently the Revolution started in Grenoble when the Grenoblois refused to accept the new taxes and then threw stuff on the King's deputies from the rooftops; this caused the Estates Generals to be called that led to the Revolution. Also we saw a place where Napoleon slept on his return from Elba. Now it is a hotel you can actually stay at! Also we saw a place Rousseau lived and where the writer Stendhal was born.
Next we had lunch at the second oldest cafe in France, which is called La Table Ronde (the Round Table), founded in 1739. IT WAS AMAZING. First we had kir, which is white wine with cassis, or blackcurrant liquor--my first legal drink, as it happened. Our appetizer was raviole, a local specialty, followed by a choice of chicken or fish or sausage-- I had chicken with bleu cheese sauce which was good but which I couldn't finish. Also a lovely red wine.
For dessert we had vacherin, whcih is meringue and whipped cream with ice cream made with chartreuse, a local liquor. IT WAS delicious. And beautiful:
After lunch, from which we were all EXHAUSTED and ready to fall in to a wine/food coma we climbed up the Bastille, a local mountain with a museum and an old fortification on it. We didn't get up to the fortification as it started to rain but we did have a lovely view from the Musee Daphinois, which is an old abbey and now a local museum. Voila Grenoble!
You can see the Isere river and the red tiled roofs that are ubiquitous here. We walked around a little more in the town center and then that was the day!
It really is amazing here, though it would be more so if one could actually see some mountains because it has been very overcast and occasionally rainy. Thus, not much in the way of visible Alps. Still, I live in hope!
Love,
Miriam
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