After a morning at the market (the most exciting purchases was two year old comté and Tomme au marc de raisin)
Next, we went into town and walked up a few switchbacks of the Bastille
Before stopping into the Bookworm café, which was wonderful. They even have a kids area downstairs.
Then, back over the Pont Saint Laurent
and home
We hit the road today and headed to La Garde Adhémar today (~1:30 from Grenoble). We had seen the town many times because it is perched on a high bluff overlooking the A7 to Marseille, but we had never stopped to take a look. It turns out to be yet another charming Southern town,
with cobbled streets and charming doorways -- yawn (just kidding)! There is a small garden
where they grow medicinal herbs on the western side, which we walked through and in which I discovered a nice Arbutus. The arbutus looked essentially the same as the one in our yard in Oakland, and I was reminded of my friend and coworker Steve, who brought me back some delicious medronho from Portugal. Thanks again, Steve! Anyway, there is an excellent central square with a few cafés. After a few weeks of Grenoble rain, it felt great to sit outside at a table soaking up the sun, drinking espressos and eating crêpes. We watched people playing boules in the dirt while being serenaded by the lilting whine of Alex and the "FEED ME"s of Zoe.
In addition to the beautiful sunny skies (did I mention that it was sunny?), it was also quite clear, and we could see all the way to the Giant of Provence: Ventoux
As well as the less scenic cooling towers from the nearby nuclear reactors. Interestingly, "the man" appears to have reduced the available resolution of Google Maps for the reactor complex:
View Larger Map
Today was a French holiday, but I was on call for work, so after setting up the beamline, I decided to go into Grenoble with Zoe. I figured that if something bad happened at the beam, I could drop ZZ off at home and be back there within the acceptable time (happily, no problems occurred). We started off with a trip to the museum, where we saw the Balkenhol exhibit. I quite liked it but Zoe was generally unimpressed until she saw the room full of Penguins. Next, it was downstairs to see some of the permanent collection, where I saw a painting from Gerhard Richter's series of candles (familiar to many of us as the cover to Daydream Nation). From the musée, it was on to a park in the quartier St. Laurent. It met with Zoe's approval, except for the fact that there was no slide, so it was soon time to move on. Along the way, we passed a really cool looking cafe which was unfortunately closed. We had a lovely café and syrop de menthe right next to the pont Saint Laurent.
From there, it was on to the excellent, but chaotic park at the jardin de ville, where I received more questioning looks regarding my black eyed daughter.
After chasing Zoe around for a while, we left with the intention of buying some shelves at the IKEA, but it was a complete mad house, so I chickened out and left without even parking. Instead, we went to Espace Montagne, where zoe played on the kids climbing wall, and I tried on some fancy down jackets. For some reason Espace Montagne has organized their gigantic outerwear section according to brand, not function! So if you are looking for a shell, you have to traverse the entire floor looking at the various brands. Even so, it is more comfortable than the tiny Vieux Campeur, where every jerk outdoors enthusiast in Grenoble seems to go!
Today, Zoe's eye socket is an angry shade of purple, but at least her eye is open. More explanations were of course necessary at the school drop off. This is getting embarassing!!
Chloe ran the Ekiden today with Francois and Laurent, and did really well! She was the 28th woman out of 235 (unfortunately classified as a man by the organisers, though).
Meanwhile, I took the kids shopping at the market and had to explain the state of Zoe about ten times. She is better today, but still looks pretty bad.
Zoe tripped today, while running through the living room and smacked her eyebrow on the glider chair. We didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary at first, but a gold ball lump appeared within a few minutes, and had almost closed her eye by the early evening.
swapped front wheels today and went for a ride up to Proveysieux. They finished reopaving the lower half and it is soooo nice and smooth now! Of course, tractors have already managed to grind hardened mud into the beautiful and otherwise pristine asphalt... bastards!
One of my favorite outdoor stores in the world is Au Vieux Campeur. They might not have very good prices, but they have *everything*. For years, there has been debate in Grenoble about whether a VC in Grenoble would be a good thing. It actually seems a little weird to not have one in such a sporty town, but they finally opened one in a new american style mall downtown that used to be military barracks. I'm not sure who the biggest opponents were, but I have heard that places like Espace Montagne were behind the anti VC campaign. Who knows. My suggestion to Espace Montagne is to think about ohh I don't know... lowering their prices?! I'm not sure what they are really worried about, since it is possible to stay in business with the worst possible service and products (e.g. Intersport). In any case, the new VC is pretty good, and they had a huge selection of down jackets (doudounes in French), and I have a new object of covetousness: a Pertex enclosed 850 fill power jacket. I was also amazed to see the asking price for the GoPro Helmetcam: 349 euro! In the states it is 300 dollars (~213 euro). Highway robbery! There should be outrage and burning of cars in the French helmet cam community!
Since it was raining AGAIN, we decided to take a drive up to Annecy for a change of (wet) scenery. We wandered around the lake, ate some crepes in a cafe, rode a merry-go-round (twice), and fled when it started to get really cold.
Zoe and I went to the Rocheplaine park to feed ducks.
On our way out, I saw that some company has been contracted to remove some of the rocks perched above the roundabout. You can see the climbing cliff at the upper left of the top photo. The base of the cliffs are now fenced off, and climbing has of course been shut down. It looks like they are doing a pretty terrible job though: many white rock scars now dot the face from rocks getting crowbarred off. I have a feeling that a lot of bolts will need replacing. Color me unimpressed.
Not too many updates recently, as we have been pretty busy, as well as a bit stranded with the lack of diesel. We went to the gas stations three times over the past few weeks, but they were either out, or closed! Nest time we will do as the French do: at the first sign of a strike, head for the gas station to weather the storm. After a pre-reconnaissance on bike on Monday, I managed to get 50 euro worth of fuel. Nice.
In other news, I finally cut Alex's hair, having learned the secrets of fine coiffure via the YouTube Haircare Institute. I was actually prepared for an emergency trip to the hair place for him, but it turned out great! I will post pictures soon.
We are now having a hard time finding diesel for our car, and the ATM machine in town is out of money (armored car service on strike, apparently). At least is obliges us to bike to work! I don't really understand what all the noise is about. There must be something else at work besides moving the retirement age to 62, because that really does not sound so bad!
The nanny had told us that one of the other children that she watches has a new bike, which was the object of much Zoe desire (and the source of some disputes, apparently), so we decided to look for a bike with training wheels for Zoe this weekend. After trying out five or size bikes, we bought this fine machine.
Despite the fact that it was raining, we had to go test it out immediately. She insisted on riding up the gentle hill that takes you to the park "BY SELF", which was going fine until she ran out of torque and started rolling backwards down the hill.
That's the first part of me saying "Uh oh" at the end, and running to stop her.
Once in the lot, she amazed me with her speed and bike handling.
She did manage to wreck once, when she attempted a turn at high speed and ended up toppling over. This was followed by tears and daddy hugs, and a puzzled look when I asked her if she wanted to go home. She backed away from me as if I was insane (for having the temerity to suggest that she stop riding her new bike, I assume), threw a leg over the bike and sped off. I think she's going to be a professional cyclocross or mountain bike rider. After twenty or thirty laps around the baby park criterium, we headed home for cupcakes.
I've been looking at replacements for my now not very lofty down jacket, but have been unable to find anything decent. Chloe's excellent Moonstone jacket is still in great shape, eight years later, and is my benchmark for excellence. It had fleece lined pockets and a comfy, insulated hood back when those features were pretty rare. Unfortunately, Moonstone appears to have gone out of business, so I've been looking at Mountain Hardwear and Patagucci. I thought that "fill power" was the only important number in assessing the quality of the the insulation, until I came upon the web site of Valandre. Valandre is a French company that makes some of the lightest and highest performance sleeping bags in the world (with an appropriately elevated price). I've probably mentioned them once or twice before. In any case, they make jackets too, and when I was browsing their web site, I came upon a page that they had created, which was devoted to information about their down:
http://www.valandre.com/graygoose.php
translation
Things I did not know that affect the quality of the down:
the age of the animal,
the quality of food,
how the goose was raised,
the BREED of the goose!
Today we went to Champbaran with Lolo, Vero, et cie to look for animals (we saw a couple of stags), walking around, and gathering chestnuts. It was a lovely almost-fall day
I had a late lunch of oysters and 18 month old comté (but not at the same time).
Special Guest Blog by Chloe!!
Thursday was Valrhona Caramel and Chocolate Day-a full day of instruction on working with chocolate and caramel by a Valrhona certified patissier. Originally I had planned on attending the same class a year ago however Alex decided to make an early appearance and nixed that plan (going into labor was a good enough excuse to warrant a full refund at least!).
After an hour and a half drive Franck, Chantal, and I arrived at the Valrhona factory and cooking school. It was a surprisingly discreet looking building-no huge neon signs proclaiming VALRHONA, only a simple logo on the side of the building. We went into the school and were immediatley led to a cafe for espressos and chocolate (Valrhona, of course). Our instructor arrived and after introductions (which I vaguely followed) we went into the laboratory- an incredibly well equipped kitchen with marble countertop, multiple freezers, refrigerators, convection ovens, and a temperature controlled "Chocolaterie" (16 Celcius) for chocolate making, tempering etc.
Sebastien, our instructor, had us introduce ourselves and recount the Valrhona recipes we had made (everyone else was a repeat participant) and whether or not we were successful. I felt out of my league right away as everyone discussed the various entremets, macarons,and other pastries I had never even heard of. My baking chocolate chip cookies sounded rather lame in comparison (although they are pretty good).
We quickly plunged into the caramel making after a quick explanation from Sebastien. Caramel is not hard to do, but requires some nerves-sugar is melted dry in a pot and quickly turns a golden brown color and needs to continue cooking without burning. Cream is then added, bubbling and hissing violently as it comes in contact with the hot sugar (do NOT peer into the pot as the cream is added), afterwards butter is stirred in to achieve the creamy texture for a good caramel cream filling. After tasting our caramel cream it was onto the next caramel concoction-a chocolate caramel ganache filling for macarons. The principle was the same but with the added deliciousness of chocolate stirred into the caramel. Again, the recipe was verified by extensive tasting (including by Sebastien who told us the Valrhona pastry chefs put on about 5 kg a year. This was confirmed by Franck and Chantal who were very surprised to see the Sebastien had put on at least this much weight. A hazard of the job....)
We continued in this way until lunchtime-everyone taking turns making the caramel, using the pastry "poche" to lay out the macarons, tasting the various pastry doughs, chocolate ganaches, and caramel creams. Making pastries is exhausting work and after the combination of caffeine and sugar I was ready for lunch!
Zoe and I went "hiking" today, which turned out to be a short walk up to the play structure at the MJC.
And then did a little painting
Later, we all went into town in search of things to faciltate the production of future chocolate delicacies today. I was also trying out a new camera - A borrowed D90 with the stabilized 16-85mm lens. We stopped for coffee and tea at Pain et Cie
And then on to the pedestrian bridge over the Isére
