The remarkable thing about traveling overseas is that it broadens your horizon in an instant. Here in Salt Lake we periodically engage in hypothetical situations: if we had to leave the Avenues, would we move north to Bountiful (perhaps) or out to Herriman (unlikely.) Take a flight out of the country and these hypothetical conversations become much more interesting. Places once considered far too remote to be reasonable suddenly seem accessible. If given the chance to settle in France, where would we go?
It just might be Grenoble.
The allure of mountains, river, and old town is pretty irresistable.
Plus, we found a phenomenal Harry Potter store.
We almost took one of these gondolas to the top, but elected to take the stairs instead.
I love this picture. It totally encapsulates the essence of a Wheeler death march.
As for me, I'll gladly march any day.
Not that Grenoble's perfect. We got caught in the middle of an anti-vax protest. At first the vibe was very hippy, but eventually grew more strident. A whole bunch of unvaccinated folk gathered close together to holler about how unfair it all is. What could possibly go wrong? Needless to say, we didn't hang around to listen, for fear that our own freedom to fly back to the States would be curtailed by a positive Covid test.
We spent only a few hours in Grenoble because our AirBnB that night was in a little town in Gap. The drive between Grenoble and Gap was breath-taking, passing along the outskirts of the Parc National des Ecrins. At one point we looked over and saw a lake full of colorful sailboats enjoying the marvelous weather. On an impulse, we pulled off the main road to find out if we could rent a sailboat too. Turns out that we could! (The blue sign is pointing out the rental desk. It was
so nice to be somewhere we could communicate, especially since Jason had to convince them that he knows how to sail.)
Welcome to lovely Lac Laffrey!
Our sailboat-loving Jason was in paradise.
We couldn't stop chuckling at the our impulsive adventure. Spontaneity for the win! Plus it was quite affordable.
There was only one problem. Being late afternoon, the wind died down
completely. Before long, we had kids jumping out of the boat to swim. Every once in a while we would get a little breeze and they would have to hustle to catch up. Here you can see Talia helping Annika back to the boat, for fear they'd both get left behind.
In the end, we were grateful for their strong swimming skills as the kids literally towed us back to shore. No matter! We had a great time anyway. My only regret is that I don't have a photo of the cute teenage boy in a beret who seemed extremely eager to help Brooklyn out of the water. I do, however, have a map of where we were (vous etes ici), just in case we decide to go back some day.
70 more kilometers to Gap, all passing through the prettiest countryside.
We stopped off at a promising pizza truck for dinner, but it would be an hour wait for them to handmake our pizzas. So, we settled for a ride on the farm equipment instead.
Our sailing adventure may have set our schedule back slightly, but it let us enjoy this beautiful valley right at sunset.
The only downside is that it was late before we checked into our AirBnB, and even later by the time we left again to find dinner. After discovering several places were closed, we finally settled on a French McDonalds drive-thru. It may have been our empty tummies talking, but those chicken sandwiches were really good.
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