Paris - Grenoble

Today was basically a travel day, we had to travel about 650k's from Paris to Grenoble so we could head off to Alpe d Huez tomorrow to watch the Tour. Left the hotel around 9:00 after having some brekky, the car was where we had left it and surprisingly didn't have a parking ticket. When we'd arrived 2 days ago, the advice from the Hotel manager was that the parking ticket "paper" was onyl 11 Euro's and to buy parking card was 10 Euros plus we had to top up the parking every 2 hours. So she said park it there and you'll be unlucky to get a ticket, if you do you only get one per day and it's 11 Euros, so that worked out rather nicely.

Managed to get out of Paris without causing or being involved in an accident, the GPS had said that the proposed route involves tolls, we went with it anyway figuring that there would be a way to pay, just after going through the first toll gate, which only dispensed a ticket and didn't ask for any money, we found a place that seemed to be connected to the toll road, so we pulled up and I went inside to ask what the options were.

"Paarlerview anglaze" I said in my finely honed french accent, "no" came the reply, hmmm this was going to be fun. After much pointing, gesticulating and general confusion, we(Carol had come in and joined the fray after about 15minutes, hard to say whether an additional english speaking person helped or added to the confusion though) left the office with a "thing" to stick to our windscreen that will take lots of money off my credit card whenever I go anywhere near a toll road in France. We did manage to gather that we would need to use the Ticket at the next toll gate and use the thing afterwards. 31 Euros was the cost at the next toll gate "holy f'n what the f was that" or similar may have been spoken by Carol, I of course was much more accepting and calm.

Interestingly for a country where people seem to have no understanding that road rules even exist, let alone follow them, the freeways have speed limits of 130km/h, French people become very polite on freeways, nobody sits in the left lane (that's the fast lane) and in general they don't tail gate. I was happy with the higher speed limit as it shortened the trip somewhat.

Once we arrived in Grenoble and checked in (yes the hotel was booked for the correct day) we watched the last hour or so of the Tour for the day, not a great day for Cadel but he still looks the goods as long as he can keep the status quo tomorrow, he did put in an amazing ride to peg back over 2 minutes of Andy Schlecks 4:24 lead over the last 15k's though, with no help from anyone else.

After watching that we decided that we should find something to do before dinner, so we found some information on a place called Lac Monteynard which sounded like a good spot to see some good scenery. That turned out to be the understatement of the century, Lac Monteynard is in the middle of some pretty big hills (we are in the French Alpes for those not paying attention) and the Scenery from all angles of this place were stunning, the Drive was amazing in itself, and not only because I managed to be on the wrong side of the road on more than one occaision!! There's some attempts at photo's of the scenery here, but I'm pretty sure that we're not doing it justice.

Oh and a footnote, I'm not sure that I've managed to mention that the food is amazing in France, we've been eating in restaraunts mainly and it doesn't seem to matter what you order or how much it costs, it's always really well done.

Paris - Grenoble