On Monday after work Michel took us to dinner. Before we headed into town, we took a 20 minute car ride up to the northern mountains to a fort built at the mountain top. The road was steep and narrow. If I had to guess it was barely wide enough for two Honda Fits to lie side by side. There were tens of very sharp switch backs and it almost seemed impossible to see if another car was coming up or down the switchback until you got pretty close (then again I was sitting in the back seats). Unfortunately the fort is closed on Mondays so we weren't able to get in, but that didn't stop us from exploring a bit. Off to the side of the fort entrance, there's a staircase built into the mountain side that allowed us to reach the very top of the mountain peak. We scaled no more than 3-4 meters and voila, we were at the top.
The cliff face is incredibly steep, it drops straight down right after the edge. Great for paragliders, not so great if you don't enjoy heights. Regardless of the height, the view was absolutely breath-taking, and I mean it. The sun was about 1.5 hours from setting, so there was more than enough light to see the whole city and into the glacial valley. Facing east you could see Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, just above the trees; facing south you could oversee all of Grenoble and even some towns more east in the valley; to the west were more mountains. Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was just low hanging clouds, but there was a faint blue haze that defocused objects that were farther in distance, adding to the valley's beauty.
There was a walking trail carved out from the many hikers making a dirt path through the lush greenery. Outside of this 15 inch dirt road, you had plants with yellow and purple flowers, large rocks, trees and still active insects (I saw some flies, bees, and ants). Heck, the bees were so busy with the pollen they didn't even notice us. The trail stopped at a gap in the mountain top, so that's where we stopped. A bit more east though, and across the gap, there was a path built into the mountain side with a passage way that cut through the solid rock. Apparently it extends for miles. That's when it hit me; there aren't close places with such beauty, history, and sights in the U.S. I don't mean the U.S. doesn't have such places, they just aren't normally a 20 minute drive up the mountainside from a well-populated city. And that, is why I'm somewhat jealous.
From here, we walked back to the car, but we didn't go into town immediately. We noticed some hikers walking up an even higher cliff than we were previously on and so we decided to follow suit, even though I wasn't wearing the right shoes (just a pair of sandals). The adventure started out down a hill side with various size stones. Some were about the size of a baseball, others grapefruit-size. At the bottom, we paralleled what seemed to be a man-made moat. Odd, yes, I wouldn't expect a moat on a mountaintop. Interestingly, parallel to the length of the moat, and situated in the center of the moat side, was a small jail-like housing. On our way back to the car we looked inside and on the wall there was a sign. Michel translated and apparently the jail-like place housed cannons of sorts. If intruders tried to get across the moat, they were fired at.
The moat ended and a path leading to this new mountaintop started. We made it up without too much trouble. The hikers we saw earlier were having an evening picnic with the sun set. They had carried up a case of wine and laid out a blanket on the ground. I saw what looked like a pasta salad with chunks of tomato, though I couldn't really tell. They took some pictures for us and we did they same for them. It was very fun. We stayed up there, for about 10 - 15 minutes, then decided to return to town for dinner. By the time we returned to the car, it was about 8:15PM.
Dinner was yummy. It was three courses for 27 euros. For my first course, I had a salad with fried cheese and thick slices of a prosciutto-like meat, then rabbit with a bed of vegetables for my second course. I've never had rabbit before. It didn't taste "gamey" at all, and was very lean. I think I enjoyed the vegetables and the sauce they used a bit more than the rabbit meat. Then for desert I got sorbet. It was a good meal for the end of the day.
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