Chanagility Le 16 avril 2011

Road trip

I must have written about my Aussie-ness fostered by Emus and Red Kangaroos somewhere, but when I drive, I am the TomTom and I hate going backwards after taking the wrong route. The question is, should I change my approach as we are now paying by mileage?

Our road trip to Evian included a short visit to a medieval port town of Yvoire. It is on the Lake Léman, established around 1300. In February, our Lyonnaise friends took us to Pérouge (1200~), and we have been fascinated by small fortified towns, preserved as a national heritage and inhabited by ordinary citizens! Yvoire was rather touristy, probably more than Pérouges, but they did have a great seafood (lakefood?) restaurant. Nathan had local perch and I had a fera fish, apparently extinct but delicious.

Instead of staying at a hotel, we chose a chambre d'hôte (B&B) in a small town called Margencel for our accomodation. We had a lovely room only 1.5 years old with lovely decoration, in the building which used to be a barn established more than 150 years ago. The lady who ran the chambre d'hôte was so welcoming and lovely, and spoke with us in French even though she spoke fluent English! It was such a warm experience, and I would love to go back again.

On the following day, after tasting a delicious cheese called Abondance, we were on the cheese hunt. The lady of the chambre d'hôte gave us some info, and here we were on the country road looking for cheese. After driving through some nice woods, we finally found the sign and really shabby building as described by the lady. Given all three cheese we bought were great, (Tomme, Reblochon, Abondance), it is proven that you don't need a nice house to make good cheese.

We were in a hurry back to Grenoble as the car started smelling delicious with cheese warming up. However, this is France. When you are on the road, random views of castles capture your eyes. We drove up a random path in the vineyard (Chignin), and found the castle which is a private residence and the remains of seven towers of the castle wall.

For our next road trip, we do not need a destination. It is truly "yours to discover" :).

I love driving

I love driving. I do not know what Nathan would do when I am too old to drive... It won't be pretty.

Getting French driver's licence was amazingly easy. Firstly, we were lucky that we had an Ontario driver's license. I do not know why, but not all Canadian provinces are granted simple exchange of license in France. Secondly, we had our Driver's Record which states the day we obtained our license. One must be driving at least two years for the exchange to be granted. As the Ontario driver's license only shows the date of renewal, we needed this second piece of document. Thirdly, thanks to Canada's official bilingualism, we had no need to have our license translated. We went to the Prefecture, and surrendered our beloved, credit-card size, plastic license. In a week, we received our French license, good for the rest of our life, in paper!! It is carefully laminated so that it is still good when you are 80 years old! Now I regret that I did not use a better picture...

Although we still do not own a car, we now have access to one....or many :). We are now members of Alpes Autopartage, a car sharing system. For €16 per month, we have access to almost 50 vehicles in Grenoble, and we are entitled to use the system in other French cities as well. Making a reservation is easily done on-line according to your needs. You pay the hourly rate and the mileage, but gas is already included in the price. From our apartment, we have three cars within 5 minutes on foot, and so far the experience has been great.

What is great about this car sharing system is that you only drive when you really need it. So far, we only booked the car three times, and other than that we had no need for cars. It encourages people to take the public transportation, and in Grenoble, it is truly ideal with the tram system. In addition, we now bike most of the time. Nathan bikes to work using his Métro-Vélo, a bike rented for a year, and I take my red folding bike which we shipped from Canada. I happily ride my small bike as I do not stand out as much as I did in Waterloo! And when it rains, there is always the tram and bus.

At the same time we try to be as much environmentally conscious as possible, I am happy to have the sense of mobility and freedom that having an access to cars provides us. Car sharing system: brilliant.

The source

Nathan and I are both SIGG users, and we hardly ever buy bottled drinks. We live on tap water, and the quality of water here in Grenoble is pretty good. No need for Brita filter, no need for Culligan. However, I noticed that the water Nathan brings back from his work (Montbonnot) tastes better than ours, and the water at our friends' place (Le Versoud) is even better. This is quite interesting as all three loci are within 15km.

This past weekend, we left for a short excursion to drink the most celebrated water in the world: Evian. Évian-les-bains is on the south shore of Lake Léman (Lake Geneva), about 2.5 hours by car from Grenoble. Not yet too crowded with touristes, the city welcomed us with a perfect weather with delicious water for free. Originally "owned" by Mr. Cachat, the Evian water is now sold by Danone. The city also offers the thermal therapy. We missed out on the spa opportunity this time, but any town with "les-bains" have the spas.

Here on the Avenue des Sources, you can freely get "Evian" water in your bottles. We chatted with a couple who had two dozens of bottles. They come from 30km away whenever they need more water. I am sure their tap water is labeled as "French Alpes Water." I must say, the water in Évian-les-bains in our SIGG bottles tasted really good, definitely better than the one in plastic bottles.If we ever move to Germany, we will be drinking water in glass bottles (so I heard?)!

(Original Cachat building with Lausanne, Switzerland in the background over the lake)

Arbre aux pochettes

This post is for our uncle Arthur :) Our kind neighbours told us that there are only three of these trees in Grenoble, and we luckily have one in the park in front of our apartment. In French people call it "tree of pocket handkerchief" or "tree of tissue paper." In English, a Dove Tree.

Les images du printemps

I love chocolate

We are already halfway into April, and I do not even know what happened to the month before. All I remember is that I was busy buying souvenirs to bring to Japan while panicking myself by signing up for two French exams (DELF A1 and B1) to take in May, that I was sitting in front of the TV in Japan and complaining why people are stuck to the ideas of the nation-state, and I remember vaguely that I agreed to teach at the Japanese complementary school in Grenoble starting in April...

April is a good month in France. It is a month of chocolate, so no complaints from my side. Chocolatiers are busy getting ready for Easter, and you find chocolate in various shapes: eggs, bunnies, chickens, chicks, and FISH!

Some say it is for "Poisson d'avril (April Fool's Day)," and some say it is for Easter. Basically, it doesn't matter. Inside the fish, you find lots of tiny fish (chocolate, bien sûr) or sometimes pralines. Viewed from the street, those chocolate sardines are pretty grotesque.

Thanks to the overdose of chocolate, I am now well recuperated from our trip to Japan. Nathan and I attended my Dad's 1st anniversary. It feels strange to realize that he has not existed in this world for a year. The letter he sent to us in December 2009 has a much deeper meaning now. I miss his humours and I miss my parents' imbecile quarrels.