The Bastille

I'm finally doing a full post about the Bastille, which I've mentioned once or twice before. It's basically the fortification on the hill just north of Grenoble. It's one of the landmarks of the city and is a great place to hike, especially since the view is great! It was finished in 1847 after 23 years of construction, but it was soon rendered obsolete and never saw any actual combat.

A closeup of the Bastille! There's part of the Italien quarter at the bottom, which is basically the quarter between the river and hill.  

Nice, Orange, and Eze Excursion

This past weekend was our final excursion, but it was a big one and lasted 3 days. We left early Friday morning (which meant I had to skip class, yay!) and visited Orange in the afternoon. With a population of only 30,000 Orange is a pretty typical French town, but it is famous for its huge Roman theatre, which is in extremely good condition considering that it's around 2,000 years old. After wandering around the theatre for about an hour we ate a nice long lunch outside a restaurant, but unfortunately I didn't see anything too bizarre on the menu so I settled for a delicious 3 cheese pasta. We were very fortunate that the weather was warm and sunny (in Nice and Eze as well) because it had been rainy in Grenoble for at least a week (and it's still cold and rainy here now that I'm back!). We slowly drove by the Triumphal Arc of Orange, also a beautiful site, as we left to continue our trip to Nice.

 It was impossible to capture the whole thing, but it's pretty big. I'm not even standing on the last row here

French Things...

Well this is just going to be a quick post about some of my observations of, well, french things. This will mostly be about stuff in our house, but I'm sure it's all very different based on the French family.

I'll start off with this chocolate easter chicken that my french mom gave me! In France chocolate eggs, chickens, bunnies, and fish are all popular. Like in the U.S., Monday is a holiday, but students also get 1-2 weeks off school after easter. In Germany, they get both Monday and Friday off for a 4 day weekend.

Grottes de Choranche

I went on a day trip with my program two days ago to Les Grottes de Choranche (the caves of Choranche), so I can talk about that for now. Choranche is a very small town just over an hour drive from Grenoble, but we didn't get to spend any time in the actual town. The cave entrance is only a small, just over 1 meter, opening where a creek flows out, but the inside is spectacular. Unfortunately it was hard to get many good pictures because of the dim lighting, but it was quite an experience. We only saw the main areas of the cave, but it still hasn't be completely explored. The cave was saturated with stalactites and was practically filled with shallow pools of water.