OK, I promised some rants, and here they area, all relating to driving. We have driven over 1200 kilometers in France and Italy, in big cities and small, small villages, and I have yet to see any road in as poor a condition as almost all of the roads in Sonoma County, especially those in the unincorporated area. Maybe I’ve become more sensitive to it because I’ve started bicycling more; […]
After travelling around so much, it is only in the last day or two that we have really come to appreciate the great natural beauty of the area around Grenoble. Notwithstanding my slightly underwhelmed post about the city itself, it is easy to see why people would choose to live here — in 30 minutes you can be in any number of places that seem like they are at the […]
Suzie had arranged to have the boys go to a tennis camp this week, so she and I had a free day all to ourselves yesterday. We parked the car in a residential area near the tennis camp, then spent all day walking through and around Grenoble. Grenoble is a strange conglomeration of old and almost new. It looks like it went through a boom in the 60s or 70s, […]
It would not, apparently, be a proper trip to Europe without a little dash of rowdy vache…. So we interrupt the description of our trip to Italy to bring you: Sunday morning we decided to drive north from our house on the Grande Route de la Chartreuse to a town called St. Pierre en Chartreuse. We were planning to visit the town and the nearby Couvent de la Grande Chartreuse, […]
We returned yesterday from five almost perfect, very relaxing days in Italy. To begin, a word of thanks to our green five-speed manual-transmission Renault Kangoo, a fine, fine vehicle, totally French-looking, very comfortable to drive, with more room on the inside than appears from the outside. I forgot how much fun it was to have a manual transmission and shift. When I get back, I’m going to try to talk […]
It is 9 p.m. and I am exhausted. We are leaving for Italy tomorrow early, and we still have stuff to do (and when I say “we” I mostly mean Suzie, since I’m sitting here at the keyboard). We had a memorable day today, thanks mostly to our neighbors here in Le Sappey, Jacques and Madeline. They invited us to a local fete, a big outdoor picnic (although that does […]
Mostly the photos will tell the story today … we had an absolutely fabulous time traveling to and from and exploring the old part of Annecy, a splendid city situated on a splendid lake hemmed in by the Alps. Even the drive (about an hour and a half each way, had we done it all on the expressway, which we didn’t, partly by choice, partly through a slight failure on […]
Every vacation, I think, has its odd day or two, and today was one of ours. The weather forecast this morning was for thundershowers, which made us change our original plan (to drive to Annecy) and go into Grenoble instead. Our thinking was that if it were to rain, there would still be things to do inside, and we wouldn’t get wet. So still a bit jet-lagged (me feeling it […]
We took it very easy today, and mostly remained in Le Sappey, the small village where we are staying. We walked downhill into the center of town, had an excellent prix fixe lunch for 10 euro (a first course of salad and a leek tort, which was like a flatter, cheesier quiche, followed by veal served with a strong, dark red sauce that Suzie says was a red wine reduction) […]
We made it to Le Sappey en Chartreuse after a long, long day of hot travel. Everything was hot: the air conditioning on the flight to London wasn’t working right, we had a three-hour layover in a mostly unairconditioned Heathrow Airport that included three long, long waits in what were (logically) unnecessary lines, a long hot wait in Lyon to go through passport control, it took a long wait for […]