Day 7 Part 2: Grenoble and Cafe des Alpes

Sunday, 25th June 2017

I have arrived! It is also still 1817 in Grenoble. Maybe not that long ago, but what I mean is all the furniture in Madame Rohé’s house is antique. My bed is a full size with a wooden framed headboard and footboard upholstered with red fabric printed with tiny pink tulips bordered by a dark brown nail head trim. There is a beautiful quilt on the bed, like something my aunt would have made, as she loves to quilt. There is also a wardrobe, as I’m guessing none of these houses have closets. This is a wardrobe which I realize I have never truly seen a real wardrobe in real life. It is huge, taller than the doorframe, and very much reminds me of the Chronicles of Narnia. I could literally step inside this wardrobe, it could probably hold 4 of me that is how large it is.

The comforting mountains near my host family home

Yesterday I was starting to get homesick. I’d had enough of living in a big noisy city, and really looked forward to the idea of coming to Grenoble to see more green things and less concrete. I loved watching the countryside from the train window, but missed the mountains. From the train window I did see cliffs as we approached Grenoble, but nothing more. Once at Mme Rohe’s I unpacked my things and then we sat down for lunch. During my salad I looked to my right outside the window and saw the face of a mountain just beyond the neighborhood, just like we have at home. It was so comforting to see a scene that was reminiscent of home. I had the same reaction after lunch when I looked outside my bedroom window and saw red raspberry bushes. I have raspberry bushes outside my kitchen window at home, and so it is another reason to be grateful I am in this place now.

The largest armoire ever

My room in Grenoble

Grenoble is considered to be in the Alps. There is a large city called Grenoble in the center of several mountain ranges including what my hosts tell me is Mont Blanc (the White Mountain). It is just one of the many peaks surrounding the area. There are three valleys and these contain tiny towns or villages. I live in one of these valleys, not actually in Grenoble, in a village called Montbonnot. My first night my host mom Helene and her boyfriend Pierre drove me to school so I would know what my bus stop looked like, and then they said we would eat at a restaurant for dinner.

In the car we started making our way up a steep road, which felt as if we were circling a mountain. Indeed we were. I was a little bit terrified as the road was very busy, but seemed as small as the road to the top of Millcreek canyon, with no center line, and cars passing and missing each other by inches. Nobody seemed to mind though, and I tried not to look afraid. Finally at the restaurant, Café des Alpes, Helene said we must take a walk further up the mountain in order to build up a good appetite. Helene is 79, and Pierre too, and here we are walking the side of this mountain together, with crazy cars and motorcycles whizzing past while she explains to me Montbonnot is named for a monastery, the first establishment in this area. It is still in use today, but you cannot visit the inside because the monks need quiet.

View of Grenoble from the restaurant

the delicious potatoes at Cafe des Alpes

Once back at the café we were seated outside on a deck overlooking the entire valley. Helene said the café only has 1 option for dinner, so there is no need to order. There was sweet lettuce with a buttercream dressing, pepperoni tasting meats with tiny sweet pickles, bread (of course, bread is at every meal in France), butter, and gratin pommes du terre, which you would kind of equate to funeral potatoes, but these are so much better. They’re sliced very thin, but arranged standing up like petals of a flower, and are baked in a milky type of sauce. For dessert we had what Helene called a fromage, but I would consider more like the cream of milk or yogurt. They take milk and keep it at a constant temperature for 3 days until the cream separates from the watery part of the milk, and that cream is what we ate for dessert with a raspberry jam (confiture) on top. The cream had such a bite to it, like you could feel the chemicals tingle on your tongue, but it was really delicious. Unfortunately my stomach didn’t handle it very well, but I’m still glad I tried it. I would hate to go through life not trying anything new and different, that just wouldn’t be a full life, I don’t think anyways.