Touring with mom

Today we set out for the mountains. My plan was to show her either St. Christope en Oisans -- a quaint mountain village steeped in the lore and history of mountaineering, or perhaps La Berarde, with it's steel corrugated roofs and proximity to many of my beloved peaks. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far at all because the road was blocked. Undaunted, we continued on along the mountain roads up past les Deux Alpes and Lac du Chambon

and finally to La Grave. La Grave also has a pretty significant place in the history of climbing and mountaineering, but nowadays it is the home of world renowned skiing , and a very pretty town to boot. We'll be vacationing past la Grave in Monetier this summer -- bike riding the famous cols, and crushing limestone with our gym honed kung-fu grips. Anyway, it was a bit of a whiteout up there, with wind swirling through the middle of town and slamming shutters against sills.

We stopped at an overpriced, but cool cheese and ham place and bought some local sheeps cheese, appenzal and local speck. After getting buffetted for a while, we retreated to a cafe for espressos,

and then headed back to Grenoble. After a brief stop at the mysterious and exceptionally French store that the locals call 'Ikea', mom and I hit the town for lunch (unfortunately my favorite Lebanese place was closed) and antiquing. Amazingly, we ended up in the same antique store that Chloe and I had started out Quest for Armoires in more than five years earlier! OK, so not very amazing in itself, except she had the exact same two armoires/hommes debouts!! The price was about the same as well, and I thought she was saying "vendu" again! I was very sad not to see the great grand mother there, and I did not want to ask the grandmother if she was still with us.
Afterwards we stopped by Pignol

to buy some macarons, tartes, and other delicious things. The macarons are *fabulous*, but I can' help but think that they are an extremely high profit margin item: a box of 15 costs 17 euro!