France vacation

Our vacation in France started Friday night, April 3rd. I wanted to meet my friend Florence in Meylan, next to Grenoble in southern France, who did an internship stint in the lab where I got my doctorate. Florence was only available to get together on Saturday the 4th, and as she was an 8-hour drive from Brussels, we decided to break up the drive by spending our first night at a random hotel in Nancy, France, a little less than half-way to Meylan. We left Brussels after dinner, and got to the Nancy hotel with the girls sleeping in the car.

Saturday the 4th we headed out for Meylan, taking a break for lunch. We discovered that when you drive on the autoroutes, options for eating are often lame or non-existent. We found a town that had some eating options, according to the GPS, but they were all closed for the moment or closed permanently. We got some bread and cheese at a little store in the little town, and ate it on a bench in a little playground (do I sound like Gulliver in Lilliput?).

Traffic getting to Meylan was worse than we anticipated, possibly because we were traveling at the beginning of the holidays in this part of France. But we eventually hooked up with Florence and her 3-year-old son Peyo, and proceeded to a nearby playground, and then dinner.

Our accommodations for that night (and 4 out of the 8 nights of our vacation) were at with Claudie and Pierre Sikirdji, who live in Sainte-Agnes, up the Chartreuse mountains near Meylan and Grenoble. Their address simply doesn't exist in a conventional way, and it defied our GPS. We had a lot of trouble finding their place, and when Claudie eventually found us waiting for her, it turned out we were only 100 or 200m from the house! The 20-minute trip from Florence to the Sikirdjis probably took us about 2 hours, the girls sleeping comfortably in the car.

Grenoble is located in the valley between 3 mountain ranges, the Vercors, Chartreuse, and Belledonne. The Sikirdjis house afforded great views of all of them, from their snow-capped tops all the way down to the valley. Sunday the 5th we took a long walk around the local farmlands and small town center. Then we went down to Grenoble for lunch with Claude and Bernard Ramus. Their daughter Claire and her two kids Simon (4-ish) and Anna (2-ish) joined us after lunch for a venture to a large playground up the mountain a little bit.

Dinner that night was back at the Sikirdjis, and their son Laurant and his wife Marion and daughter Maude (11) joined us. We enjoyed home-made orange wine, which I loved, and also the most enormous chicken in the history of chickens. Our girls were put to bed before dinner started, but it didn't stick, and they made several appearances during dinner.

Monday the 6th we headed out to Juan-les-Pins, where we knew no one. The drive there took us through beautiful mountains, and we stopped for a nice lunch in Eygians, which had a nice (guess what?) playground. I've already chronicled our little misadventure getting to Juan-les-Pins, so I shan't say more about that here. But Tuesday the 7th was a beautiful day there, almost too warm for a shirt. We spent a bunch of the morning playing in the sand on the beach, and getting our legs wet in the cold Mediterranean water. In the afternoon we swam in the slightly less cold water of our hotel's pool. We stayed in town most of Wednesday the 8th too, but the weather wasn't as warm or sunny as the day before. But we thought one perfect day was worth this part of the trip. It's kind of funny: Juan-les-Pins is about half a degree further north than Madison, and yet palm trees grow there!

We returned to the Sikirdjis late Wednesday night. Thursday the 9th was all about Passover for us. Everybody except me made some home-made matzo in the morning, and it came out pretty good (you know, for matzo). Later, Naomi and Claudie shopped for ingredients in the morning while I played with the girls. (I was hoping to take the girls up Grenoble's telepherique, but the timing didn't work out.) Still later, Naomi and I cooked chicken, matzo stuffing, matzo ball soup, haroset, etc., while Claudie wrote down what we did. The seder was intimate, with just the four of us and Claudie, but very enjoyable. We had hoped to share the seder with Michele and Gilbert Ganem too, but unfortunately that didn't work out.

Friday the 10th we met for lunch with Malice and Dominique Mathias, our next-door neighbors in Venon in 1978–79. I was in the same class as their son Benoit (and a few years younger than another son Nicholas, who we met last month in Paris). The Mathiases moved to Saint-Martin-d'Uriage a few years ago, which is one town over from Venon. Both towns are in the Belledonne mountains, with great views of the Grenoble valley and the mountains around it. JoJo got sick on their front door step when we arrived (presumably car sickness from the windy mountain roads), but the visit improved considerably after that and we had a great time. On our way out of town, we went through Venon and Gieres for a very quick trip down memory lane for me.

Our last stop in France was that night at a B&B in Pressigny, near Dijon. This town was so far in the boonies that camion boulangerie (bakery truck) delivered bread around town—in other words, the town was too small for its own bakery, which in France is saying something. The next morning we learned the B&B didn't accept Visa, and I had to go to the next town to find a ATM. But the area was beautiful, with lots of farmland, and lots of roads that were little more than cow paths. The B&B was very nice for our family, and we had a nice dinner and breakfast there.

We got back to Brussels Saturday evening the 11th. With all the driving we did the vacation seemed a lot longer than just eight days. It was good to be back.