Traveling Hits and Misses
As blog titles
go, this one is rather elusive. How do you sum up two days of travel to get to
Lyon France from the northern climes of Canada? Stupid is a word that comes to
mind. Daft. Unreasonable. Exhausting. Mind meld.
The trouble
with living so far north, flights are limited and airlines are limited. We have
two choices: WestJet or Air Canada. The ordeal of travel comes from me having a
bright idea of some place fun to go. Then, we book airline seats in good faith
and pay arms, legs and mortgages to pay for them (not really, but it sure feels
like it.). This is after watching for seat sales that are for the rest of
Canada, but not us. So, in the end, we have the privilege of waking at 3:15 am.
to head for the airport for a 6:00 am flight.
We landed at
7:15 into Edmonton and wandered through the airport to find a place to curl up.
Fortunately, this airport has comfortable curved benches that were perfect for
miserable teens to sleep on. Five hours later, snacking and shopping our way
through the time, we get the awesome news that close to boarding, our flight
will be delayed for an hour plus for routine maintenance. Don’t worry, they are
rebooking people as needed. Question: how can they not know that this routine
maintenance needs to be done and why was it not scheduled properly? We were
fortunately that our flight from Montreal to Lyon was also delayed so we had no
trouble running to the gate. We left at 10:00 (it was delayed) to fly to
FRANCE.
Lyon, for the
traveller, and a jet-lagged traveler to boot, was a wonderful experience. We
landed, and deplaned smoothly. Customs was small and simple. The airport had a
shuttle to the rental cars that was easy to find. We had landed and found our
car within 1.5 hours and were on the road with EuropeCar. First note: France
has toll roads. Second note: they take credit cards for payment so not to worry
if you haven’t found currency yet. I was excited to see the sunflowers in bloom just outside the car rental depot.
Grenoble is
stunning. It settles into the river valley with beautiful buildings and
sweeping mountains. We found Pizza everywhere so settled on pizza for lunch at
Pizzeria de Vieux Quartiers. Trust me, every restaurant seemed to be a wee
pizza place along this strip of the river. The pizza was authentic and
delicious. We also managed to find a patisserie to get breakfast for the
morning so armed with a baguette, croissants and pain au chocolat, we headed
for the car.
The girls were
finally girls again and not being awful, so instead of driving on, we opted to
go up the Bubbles. The Bubbles are the funky gondola that take you up to the
Bastille. It is possible to walk up but the sweltering muggy heat and jet-lag
made that option not viable. We road the bubbles for 7 minutes and found
ourselves at a nifty historical adventure. We walked to the caves and explored
them. It was lovely and cool. From the caves, we saw the contemporary art
exhibition, had ice creams and enjoyed the view. This was about a two hour stop
altogether before we bubbled down and walked through the gardens and back to
the car.
Our destination
was still nowhere to be found on Sat Nav, so we set it for Alp D’Huez and drove
on. The mountains in this part of the Alps are stunning. We weaved our way through
the mountain valley and finally arrived at destinations sent to us by Melanie,
our land lady for the week.
Thanks to Home
Away website, we are staying at Ferme Noemie in Le Sable in the Middle Barn. This
place is incredible. We have the middle barn apartment which sleeps five people
comfortably. It has two bedrooms upstairs and on the main floor is has an open
concept living room kitchen and bathroom. Balconies on either side allow access
to the mountain views. I will let the images speak for themselves. It was
heaven to fall asleep here and wake up with the sun streaming in the windows.
Altogether, we are up and about to go adventuring.
Ferme Noemie
Grenoble
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