Melby's Travels

Knew that I would want to chill after hiking in the Alps, so came to Provence for some chill French country living. Best of all, I could indulge in my favorite travel activity - strolling through local markets! We started off the morning with a trip to the daily morning market in Place Richelme. Originally, I had planned to buy ingredients to cook in our “aparthotel” and even bought some fancy salt from the supermarket. But I saw that stalls were selling homemade food and figured I couldn’t top local cooking. Here’s what we brought back for lunch: brick de epinard - spinach wrap thing. The dough was chewy almost like scallion pancake. The olive oil and light garlic flavor on the spinach was so good!! poulet roti - roasted chicken from the roasted meat vendor. Perfectly seasoned with herbs de Provence. Even the bones were flavorful (my guess was they used a brine) lapin roti - rabbit leg! My mom got excited so we ordered two, fresh never frozen unlike the stuff in the US, herbs de Prove...

View of Le Massif de la Chartreuse from Le Massif de Belledone Next stop – the French Alps! This was the most difficult part of the trip to plan. To start, which part of the Alps? I settled with the Belledone Massif which is one of the more accessible mountain ranges. From the city of Grenoble, it can be just an hour by bus. During the off-season, the buses run much less frequently (just twice a day). Still, I could take a train and then a bus from Grenoble to Uriage (a larger town), where a van could drive us to Chamrousse (a ski resort  ~1650m above sea level). Not too bad compared to getting to a mountain from Chicago… View from the train... aaah the mountains!!! The challenge was reserving the van. I tried reserving online before the trip but couldn’t figure out how to create a count. So I decided to call from the hotel landline once I reached Paris. After finally reaching an operator, however, I couldn’t understand what they were saying in French nor could they speak English. ...

Right off the bat, Lyon has the feel of a smaller city compared to Paris. Stores close earlier and there are fewer people out and about. On the other hand, the produce is fresher and the prices are more affordable. The trains are shorter (similar to Montreal), but the hotel rooms / apartments are bigger. I can see why Paris is more exciting, but Lyon is more livable. Lyon is also one of the food capitals of France. Meats are one of its specialties and as such there are a lot more meat shops littered about. This is one of the observations we made as my mom and I strolled through the Montplaisir neighborhood for breakfast.  We saw these everywhere - supermarkets and meat shops alike There was a morning market in the square with produce, cheese, meat and bread vendors though we settled for a coffee shop instead.  Judging from the coffee shop, the population in Lyon trends older than that of Paris. Also, there were a few people who brought bread across the street and ate it at the...