Day 34: I visit Vizille and learn about the French Revolution

Saturday 22 July 2017

Castle Grounds

I left early in the morning to meet Marianne and Katrina at the Gare. Due to the bus schedule I arrived half an hour early, so I began reading The Sun also Rises while I waited. It is the perfect book to read while in France, because Hemingway casually describes the places his characters talk about and places they go, streets they take, which are all in Paris, and France, like Alsace and Strasbourg, and the Tuileries. I could picture each place perfectly that I had been to as his characters passed through these same places.

Once we’d all arrived we took another bus to Vizille. It’s a small town outside of Grenoble where the Dauphine (heir to the French throne) once lived in the Chateau Vizille, the grandest castle in the Daupinois region. An assembly was held there in 1788 and because of this Grenoble is thought to be at the forefront of the French Revolution. The Chateau now houses a collection of artwork and artifacts pertaining to the French Revolution.

Inside the chateau I was especially struck by the artwork of David portraying the murder of Marat. I also learned that the revolution was a crazy time. During this period 5 different Constitutions were drafted and the parties who controlled the government were in a state of constant change. Napoleon finally brought stability to the government, but then got crazy thinking he could conquer all of Europe. I like the exposition very much, but my favorite part was walking the grounds.

Path to the honey harvesting house

The Chateau has 320 acres surrounded by a rock wall. There are grassy areas, ponds, ducks, geese, and swans, forested areas, and a path around the entire park. After having lunch at a nearby Brasserie where I ate a salad with raviol, (tiny ravioli’s sautéed in oil, instead of boiled) we took this path. It goes quite far, and once we could no longer see the chateau we found a small house with people inside harvesting honey.

We entered, and found we could watch them through a glass partition. They were busily cutting off the white waxy lid the bees had put on their honey, and they placed the trays in an extractor to be spun, using the centrifugal force to harvest the honey.

People extracting honey

A man with bushy grey eyebrows and white hair, and an oddly shaped head, wide at the top and narrower at his chin came out and talked with us. He recounted how he had been to the United Stated, New Jersey, doing a summer camp, and he remembers seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon when he was there. He held a tray of honey and invited us all to ‘gouter’ (taste) with our fingers. The honey was so sweet, and the taste was so different from any other honey I’ve tried that it tasted like something else entirely. It was especially sweet, and make me think of a mandarin orange drenched sugar, made syrupy. That’s what it tasted like.

At the back of the park we found elk, an entire herd that would have been kept in historical times for hunting purposes. They were a beautiful sight to see and made me think of Mike.

As the trail bent left to round the furthest perimeter, we found ‘mutants,’ or sheep. They were very friendly, all coming up to the fence and putting their heads between the wires. They are grass right out of our hands. I felt sorry for them, as they looked dirty, and not very healthy, and clearly loved human company. I wondered how many people visited them each day, and if they were lonely. Behind them in the distance, I could also see what looked like a very small moose or Élan. I wasn’t sure though, because Moose in North America are so large, I checked with Mike and Rémi, and moose do not live in Europe, so I’m not sure what it was, but it was the size of a deer, with very large horns, and at the tip of its horns, it had palms instead of points.

As we turned left again and followed the path back to the chateau we passed a peacock house. Perhaps one of the peacocks had escaped, because he paraded proudly on the roof of the enclosure. I would have liked to stay there all day, but I did not have the bus schedule downloaded to know when the latest bus came, and Marianne and Katrina wanted to get back, so we left.