Family visits! (part 1)

About two days after the Cables left me, my parents and grandparents arrived.  They got here on Monday around lunchtime and we wandered around Chambéry for a bit.  This is my parents and me on the street where I live.

This is my dad, grandma, grandpa, and me facing the other direction of the street.

We went shopping and I got a super cute dress!  Then we headed to Bourget-du-Lac to see their hotel.  It was right on the lake.  I hadn't been this close to it before.

We went to a café there, where everybody had a drink.  Mine was a chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) and it was really good since it was kind of chilly that day.  After that, my grandparents, suffering from jet lag, decided to go to bed and my parents and I headed back to Chambéry to find dinner.  Since it was a Monday, most places were closed but we ended up heading to the Café du Théâtre where my mom and I had crèpes and my dad had a quiche.  Then they took me back home along with the macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, and reese's (precious commodities in France) that they'd brought me.

The Cables Visit!

This past weekend, my aunt, uncle and cousins came to visit me in Chambéry for a little more than a day (it was supposed to be a little longer, but wasn't because of a few problems with train strikes).  The first night they got there (after a very long day for them) we went out for some fondue at a restaurant that I hadn't tried in Chambéry.  It was very good. 
On the way there, we walked by the elephants (some pictures are borrowed from my aunt, like this one).

I stayed with them at their hotel in Aix-les-Bains.  It was a nice hotel with really soft beds.
The next morning, we woke up and went to see Grenoble.  Although it's fairly close to Chambéry, I hadn't been there before.  They rented a car, so we got to drive there instead of taking the train.  Driving was very cool.  There are so many things out in the country and the outskirts of town that you just don't get to see when you use public transportation.
When we got there, we wandered around town for a bit and then got some lunch, which for me was just a ficelle (a smaller version of a baguette).

After that, we went to the cable cars that go up over the Isère river to the Fort de la Bastille (an old military fort).  These are the cable cars:

The view from the top was awesome!  It makes me appreciate French architecture even more.

The boys and me:

While we were up there, we wandered into a new and high-tech mountaineering museum which I thought was really cool (a lot because of the high-techness of it), but unfortunately, the information was only available in French and I didn't do a great job of translating for anyone.  Then we wandered around on top of the fort where there were more pretty mountain views.

After that, we headed back down into the city.  We stopped for a small break at a café where we had one scoop of ice cream and a chocolat chaud (hot chocolate).  Hot chocolate in France is supposed to be quite a bit more bitter than in the US and they come with sugar packets to put in.  Personally, I didn't think it was that different and I didn't feel like I needed to use the sugar but it was really good.  We then went to a cute old church nearby and the boys bought some candles to light in front of the Virgin Mary's statue.  After that, we went to the Grenoble Museum.  They had some pieces by Picasso and Monet.  It was interesting to see.
We decided from there to head to Annecy for dinner.  Everyone liked Annecy a lot.  It was much better this time since it was sunny and not too cold.
Here are the pictures that I got this time:

After wandering around town, we sought out a restaurant in their tour book.  We couldn't find it so we asked a local person who showed us a good restaurant for local food.  We ordered some more fondue and some Raclette.  I mentioned Raclette in a previous post as a traditional Savoyarde food:

The cheese is heated by the contraption around it, making it melt slowly.  You put it on meat and potatoes with other toppings like gherkins (little pickles).

After that, we headed home very full and satisfied.  I had meant to show them around Chambéry on Saturday but when we checked in at the train station, we found that there was another strike and they had to head back to Paris straight-away to catch they're Sunday morning flight.  It was an awesome day and a half!  Right now, I have my parents and grandparents visiting me so there will be more on that later sometime! :)

The Park! (again)

Ok, so before I get to the park, the other day it was rainy and sunny at the same time and I just happened to look out my window and see a lovely double rainbow (although the second one is barely there):

So, back to the park: Tuesday was a beautiful day.  It was fairly warm and very sunny and, since I'd been sitting and reading all day for homework, I decided to take a walk to the local park (the one that I've mentioned in a few other posts).  I took my camera because I thought it would be nice to get some pictures of the trees that have just started flowering, and I ended up with some more mountain pictures of course.  Here is what I got:

I thought it was all quite beautiful!  Stay tuned for expeditions with visiting family! :)

Annecy

After our Spain trip, I had a whole week of classes to look forward to (well, up until Thursday anyway) so Ali spent her time around town.  There was some gorgeous weather during those days.  We also took a mountain hike and helped a lost, lonely dog find its way home.  I don't have any pictures from any of that stuff so you'll have to check out Ali's blog, once she has some spare time to post anything, for her pictures.  We had planned to do day-trips to some of the cities nearby on Friday and Saturday.  Thursday night we got all our stuff together to head to Geneva (and we had to go really early because there weren't that many trains to Geneva).  On Friday morning, we got to the train station around 6:45am and we couldn't figure out our tickets in time to actually get onto the Geneva train so we went for plan B: Annecy.
Annecy is supposedly one of the most picturesque alpine towns.  It's also supposed to be considered a "little Venice" because of the canals that run through town, although the architecture seemed very French to me.

Unfortunately, Friday turned out to be a cold, rainy day.  And not just a rainy day, a day of pouring rain. You can see the rain draining off the market cover in the picture below.

Despite the pouring rain, you can see that the market still went on.  Ali and I probably would have spent more time looking through it (some of the pastries looked delicious) but we were cold and wet and it wasn't in the covered part of town for the most part.  By covered part of town, I'm referring to the arcaded nature of many of the sidewalks in town which is somewhat visible in the first picture.
The market:

More canal pictures:

Although the town was beautiful, we really were frozen to the bone.

Ali looking cold and miserable like we felt...

We first took refuge in a Monoprix (a grocery store chain) and then went to a Quick (the French version of McDonalds) where Ali got a hot chocolate.
The Quick was close to Lake Annecy for which the town is named, I believe.  The canals from town all led into the lake:

The lake had a nice park around it where I could imagine myself enjoying spending time on a day where the weather was nice.

The lake was beautiful and had nice mountains around it, which, unfortunately, were mostly covered by clouds while we were there.

After the lake, Ali and I headed towards the chateau to see what that was all about.

Once we were there though, we decided that neither of us held any particular interest in going in.  We decided that we had been cold for long enough and went to the train station to head home.  After I slipped and fell down the marble stairs, creating a very embarrassing spectacle, we found our tickets and sat in the waiting room waiting to head home.  As is our luck, on the way home the weather started to get nice and the rest of the day was beautiful and sunny.  We were hoping that this lovely weather was only in Chambéry and that in Annecy, it was still miserable (in order to justify our leaving so early). 

Something interesting that I didn't notice until this trip is that when it rains in town at this time of year, the mountains around it get snow.

Annecy was beautiful and I can't wait to go back sometime, but I will definitely be waiting for a beautiful, sunny day before I do.

Madrid, Spain!! (Part IV)

On Monday morning, our last day in Spain, we went to see the Plaza de Toros and Las Ventas, the bull-fighting ring.  Ali and I had considered going to see a bullfight because it seemed like a good cultural thing to do, but we heard stories about how most tourists (even big burly men) have a hard time sitting through them and they're not how people usually expect them to be.  That's why we decided not to go to an actual fight but to just go see the arena during the daytime instead, so this is it:

We didn't actually go inside because we didn't feel like paying for a guided tour but we did go to the bullfighting museum.  It was interesting to see all the portraits of the famous bullfighters and how the sport evolved.
After the arena, we headed back to the Puerta del Sol where we found this statue.  We'd been seeing the bear and tree all over and had realized that it was the symbol of Madrid but we didn't know there was an actual statue of it.  According to wikipedia (as we looked up later), the tree is a strawberry tree.  Ali and I still aren't quite clear in its significance but, of course, we had to take a picture.

After this, we wandered around some souvenir shops in the area of Plaza Mayor.  I knew that I wanted to get a fan so we were trying to find the best one for cheap.  On our way around, we stopped at a McDonalds to get the cono kit kat off of the euro menu.  Basically it was a small vanilla ice cream cone with a kit kat in it.  I don't know why, but it appears that people in Europe are nuts about kit kats.

After shopping around a bit, Ali and I finally found the fans that we wanted.

We then headed for the airport and came home!  It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad that I went and it was made infinitely better to have company in the form of Ali. :)