GRENOBLE – France (Wed 16 Sept)

We woke this morning to showers of rain, but decided nevertheless that we needed to have a look around this city before we left. We started by walking around the lake edge and then back through the old part of town. There wasn’t much happening on the lake today, we are guessing that it is just too cold, although there were a couple of hardy souls just a few meters off shore in their boat fishing.

The old part of town makes for an interesting wander. Lots of little alleyways and backstreets that you stumble into before you realize that they are there. Quite a few canals which although plentiful, are shallow and provide a perfect home for the swans and ducks. Each of the canal bridges are lined with flowerpots, in fact they seem to like to adorn every available space with a flower pot or two, which provides a pleasant bit of colour to the medieval buildings, many of which look like they could do with a bit of a scrub up.

We have often wondered what it is like to live in these houses with their doorsteps sitting in the canal. The impression is that they look like they would be very damp and cold in winter, and judging by the weather over the last few days, the winters here are very cold.

By the time we had perused around, the sun had decided to make an appearance, and we wished we had taken our cameras along, but the sun’s enthusiasm was short lived.

By early afternoon, there was more life on the water, with what appeared to be school kids taking to the water sailing and rowing. We also saw them heading for the tennis courts, which made us think that perhaps the kids do half days here.

By mid afternoon we were ready to head for our destination for the night, Grenoble, about a two hour drive away. We are still in the alps and this was evident in the huge massifs of rock pushed up on either side of us. Very dramatic, and very impressive. The traffic in Grenoble slowed us down to a crawl as soon as we came within screaming distance. This didn’t help our mission to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Our first stop after the crawl through the traffic was the information centre, who despite their pleasant disposition, were unable to help us as their computer system had crashed. So it was back on the road. We have no idea what is happening in this town, but the first three hotels/hostels that we called into were full, but finally we hit the jackpot. WooHoo! We have a bed to sleep in.

What we have noticed throughout our travels, is that even at the cheapest accommodation, the carparks still house an array of late model BMWs, Porsches, and Mercedes owned by the customers. It makes you wonder if it was like this five years ago, or whether the recession means that even the wealthy are going ‘budget’. It makes harder for people like us to find the cheap places to stay.

The place that we are staying in is called F1 and is very formulaic. Bathrooms and toilets are complete molded plastic easy care contraptions, with all the fittings part of the mold. Everything about this place is automated and shouts, easy clean, easy maintenance. Their philosophy is ‘Paying twice the price doesn’t mean you’ll sleep twice as nice’. Although it is very impersonal, it does agree with what we have talked about at times, that it seems a shame to stay in some places when you only spend a few hours there sleeping and don’t get to take advantage of their facilities. Although we wouldn’t want to stay at these places all of the time. Despite this we have booked ahead to stay at another of their chains in Nice. At least we know what we will be getting.