Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Grenoble - 23rd April

Grenoble in the Rhone Alps region is a large city known mainly for its winter sports. We rode the cable car from the old city up to the Bastille to see the sights. The Bastille was a 19th century military fort which is now in ruins and used for sightseeing and sad people to run up to and down from including through the tunnels.
Today’s Amusing Fact #1: The French are currently protesting about the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64, however to get a seniors discount on the cable car you have to be 75.

We came down from the Bastille and unfortunately missed the Sunday markets so we had to grab a filled baguette from the last bakery open. With my limited French I chose (the bakery assistant chose for me) the chicken, sundried tomato and guacamole combo.

From Grenoble we headed further south to the Vizille chateau. In the 14th century the chateau was owned by whoever inherited the French throne. It has changed hands a few times due to French religious wars and the French Revolution. Today it is a Museum of the French Revolution displaying art depicting the history of the chateau and the French Revolution. The chateau and surrounding 130 hectares became the property of the French Government, who in turn gave it to the Community Council, and they kindly don’t discriminate between French and Kiwi visitors so we could park, visit the gardens and the chateau for free. Although we didn’t walk the whole gardens we did enough to achieve a geocache find.
Today’s Amusing Fact #2:  Apparently the first riots of the Revolution started in this region with protestors climbing on the roof and hurling the tiles on the soldiers, now known as The Day of the Tiles. Similar to the English expression “a night on the tiles” referring to people being out all night, supposedly like a cat that spends nighttimes up on the roof tiles.

Essence of France Photo Challenge #2 - Marie Antoinette: Born in Austria, she had a long history with France from the age of 14 when she was married to heir apparent and later King Louis XV1 of France. She was the last Queen of France before the French Revolution and rightfully earned her position in the Museum of the Revolution for her bad reputation of being promiscuous, wasteful with money, deceptive and controlling.

Due to Sunday closing hours our tea tonight had to be a tasting platter of yesterday’s shopping. This included Cheese Experience No.2 Our first cheese purchase is Emmental, it’s from Central France, and made from raw cow’s milk. There are big holes in the cheese; the size of the holes depends on the time spent in the warm caves during the maturing process. We buy this particular type of cheese because it tastes nice and comes sliced, ideal for picnic lunches.