Le Lac Noir

David and I did our first bike hike since the Croix de Nivolet escapade, and it went really well, except that we did get lost trying to find the Lac Noir, even though this was our second attempt. It really is a pretty well hidden lake in the woods of the Chartreuse mountains. However, this time we succeeded in finding the lake, and we got some of the best photos from our entire time in France, I think. Also, because we have finished planning our  Loire Valley bike trip, we wanted to time ourselves to get an idea about how many kilometers we can bike in a day, how many we do in an hour, etc, so that we can accurately plan getting to our chateaux and hotels each day/night. We estimate, based on yesterdays ride that we can attain 16 km in an hour, without killing ourselves, and hopefully reach our goal of between 45 and 60 kilometers a day to get to all of our destinations. To give you an idea, David and I did 45 kilometers yesterday on our hike, during a window of about 6 hours, so we think that that estimate is reasonable.

Here are the pictures that we took:

This is us after we left the Lac Saint André (which you might remember from about a month ago) and as we started up into the mountains, which of course are filled with vineyards. These ones produce a white wine known as Apremont. Also, that mountain in the background is called the Col du Granier, and we will more or less be at the foot of it when we reach the Lac Noir.

This is a photo facing the other direction, showing you our adorable little biking road and the greenery and mountain views around it. 

David and I continuing on our bike trip... Sorry about the crooked photo but I had to balance the camera on the bike's handlebars. Either way you can see that it was an absolutely beautiful day to be out on a hike. (Good thing I am not too worried about all 4 of my upcoming exams this week!)

Our first sign ever for the Lac Noir (which is kind of infamous in our minds since it took two attempts to find, both of which included us getting lost). Mom can relate to the usefulness of French signage. 

David and I walking the path toward the lake. 

This "bourne frontière" or in other words this border marker, was put up in 1822 to mark the border between Savoie and France. Savoie did not belong to France until 1860. I am standing with the Savoie side, which has a symbol very similar to the Danish flag.

Here is David with the French side (the fleur de lis) and also the side marking the date they were put in place. Unfortunately though, the borne was on elevated ground so we couldn't take a timed photo together. PS the word "bourne" should ring a bell for all of you who play Mille Bournes back at home... next time you play you can imagine passing 1000 of those barrier markers!

David and I still on our way toward the lake. You can see how close we are to the Col du Granier. Also, sorry about the bench at the bottom of the picture, but these sorts of things happen when you have to pose cameras for self-timed photos. 

The lake! Yay! Success! In this light you can see that the lake looks rather green, but from other angles it really does look quite black, and is certainly one of the darkest lakes I have ever seen. Though really I think it should be called the black pond... Oh, and I almost forgot, there was some kind of serious frog collaboration going on while we were there. It was a frog croaking jamboree! It was pretty cool because I don't get to hear frogs all that often, and in this case there were a lot of them! (though no, we didn't actually see any of them)

This is my favorite picture of all. It is David and I in front of the lake (though that part you can hardly see). Miraculously, this was a self-timed photo, balanced on a nearby slanted post. We even had to find a piece of wood on which to balance the camera. So yeah, we're pretty proud of how it turned out.

As for the rest of this week, we are continuing to prepare for our upcoming vacation (now we are only 3 and a half weeks away) and I also still have exams going on. Also, we are trying to squeeze in as many last bike-hikes as we can before we have to leave Chambéry: We are already preparing to have a few of our "lasts", like our last pack of ten bus tickets that we will buy tomorrow. It is amazing how close we are getting to returning home! Yay! But at the same time that is tough because we have had such a wonderful time abroad, speaking French and exploring... wow I can't believe I have less than two months left!

Cruise Dinner on the Lac du Bourget

Hello Family and Friends,
This past week has been one of productivity! On Monday I had two more of my business exams (for Marketing Case Studies and Consumer Behavior) and I think that I did quite well on both of them. The only one I am not completely confident about is Marketing Case Studies because the last question was a little confusing, but I think I answered quite well. I guess time will tell! But either way I was extremely relieved because that means that I am done with 4 of my 9 classes for the semester, and I have finished all of my business courses. Next week I have 4 more exams, two of which are going to be extremely difficult, but I'll give you specific updates as the appropriate time comes.

Speaking of exams, I finally got my scores from Le Havre! It only took 4 months for them to process and I am guessing that that is probably some sort of a record because that is just so speedy! As it turns out, the class I was most worried about (Analyse de Données) I did not pass, so I am in contact with the school to try and fix that, because it was a group project and my group didn't understand what the teacher was looking for so we got a bad grade. Either way the teacher said she would give me some extra project to try to raise my grade so I will be working on that as soon as she can get it to me. Other than that flop however, I had amazing grades in all of my classes! I was really proud and impressed! I actually forget the exact numbers but maybe I will dig them up when I have the repaired grade for ADD...

Finally, as the title of this blog suggests I wanted to share two pictures with you of David and I's cruise dinner on the Lac du Bourget with the other ISEP study abroad students. It was a wonderful, fully paid-for dinner outing put on by the ISEP department and we had a very nice time on the lake. Well, actually for the most part I was seasick and I had some trouble really enjoying my meal because of it, but after a few minutes on the bow I did feel a little better. It is just a bummer that I really had difficulty enjoying such a nice outing due to seasickness, but in the end I would say it was worth it.

This was the inside of the little dinner cruise ship. We were all served Tartiflette for dinner (in addition to a salad appetizer and yogurt and cake thing dessert). 

David and I sitting in our dinner places before the cruise began. Believe it or not I was already having trouble with seasickness even before the boat actually left the dock. I have serious issues.

Ok well wish me luck for next week's exams, and in general wish David and I luck with planning out the details of our upcoming trip. So far we have starting planning all the chateaux that we are going to see in the Loire Valley (SOOOOOO EXCITING - there are so many great places to see) and we have purchased our first train tickets, getting us from Chambéry to Paris, so that we can fly out to Venice. In a sense I am really excited for our vacation but at the same time it will represent the end of my "study" abroad, and my eventual return to the US. Even though I am really excited right now, I know that once I am back I am really going to miss France. I guess I'll leave my blog open for about a month after I get back so that I can record those feelings... yeah, I think I'll do that. Ok, love to you all! 

Actually Just One More Post

I feel that it is necessary that I inform you all of the revelation I just had about 20 minutes ago. David left for his weekend trip with both sets of keys, so I cannot leave the apartment... or at least I cannot leave the apartment without leaving the door open (because you need a key to close it) and therefore very unlocked. Basically that means my plans of studying this weekend just got seriously reinforced since I literally will be going nowhere. I just thought that that was a bit of a funny story, and I didn't want to let David live it down, so I thought I would inform all of you of the happenings. Now off to studying!

Thursday April 12th and Friday the 13th - Arles and Chambéry

I have had a really busy week with one exam and two presentations plus lots of classes, which is why I haven't finished my vacation update. So first, in real-time, I would like to say that I did well on my Monday exam for Introduction aux Achats et à la Supply Chain, which I did study considerably for, and I also did well on my hour-long presentation in Techniques de Vente, even receiving a compliment from the professor about my ability to communicate in French, and put together an interesting and informative presentation. So that was good. Likewise my presentation yesterday, Thursday, for my "innovative project" in my Marketing class went quite well. We had to define an innovative item that doesn't already exist in any market and then use the 4 P's of marketing, plus the market positioning and target consumers to describe how our new item could be integrated and covered by a company. We were in a group of 5 people and though communication between the French students and their foreign student counterparts was lacking in all the groups (I was complaining with numerous other foreign students because we didn't receive information from our groups about meeting times or idea development, etc) in the end I did my part of the presentation and I was even charge of editing for spelling mistakes (and I changed 6 out of just 12 slides!) The French have a hard time writing their own language because everything sounds similar when spoken orally. Whereas since I learned the language as a set of grammatical rules, it is easier for me. So I did find that kind of funny. Now I just have to crack down this weekend and study so that I am ready to pass my two final business exams on Monday morning. I still will have 5 more exams to take (Econ, Mythological and Biblical Culture, 18th Century Lit, and my two FLE classes, French civilization and language perfection) but I will be done with the business classes after Monday. Woot!!

Also, since David is back on the Mediterranean coast (that makes two weeks in a row for him) I won't be nearly as distracted as I normally could be. I was originally hoping to go along on this excursion (which comes paid-for through his study abroad program fee) but it would have cost around 220E for three days and two nights and we have a lot of traveling expenses coming up so he is just taking advantage of the trip on his own. On the other had it is a good last opportunity for him to hang out with his ISEP program friends before they all start heading back to America. He'll be seeing Nice, Cannes, and Monaco and I'm sure he'll have a lot of stories when he returns. As for me, I'll be studying. Yay.

Ok so onto the final part of my vacation with Mom. In our last two days we visited Arles, a city still very very south in France which is known for its surrounding marsh lands (called the Camargue) and its ancient city which has very well-preserved Roman architecture, as you will see in the pictures below. Unfortunately due to weird bus times we were unable to make it to the camargue, but that ended up working out for the better because we had a wonderful time in the ancient city exploring Roman artifacts.

A picture of my mom and I by one of the ancient "doors" into the city. In other words, the tower represents a break in for fortified city wall through which people could enter the ancient city. I also particularly liked the lamp. We also commented on how cool it is that people used to be able to literally "keep the bad guys out" with something as simple as a wall.

Mom took a stealth picture of David and I exploring the Roman thermal baths. We wondered what the little columns were for, but then we found a sign that explained that the heated water ran through them, but not all the way to the top, leaving room for the steam, and then there were benches built above them, with another accompanying pool of water which was a more pleasant temperature. 

David and I on the "walkway of sarcophagi" which was basically the ancient form of the graveyard by the church called "Eglise Saint Honorat" at Alyscamps. It was a really cool kind of creepy totally deserted ancient church. I am not sure exactly when the church was constructed but the "nécropole" as it is called in French began it's collection of "caskets" in Roman times (in other words around the year 0) and was still being doted upon until the years 300. Other than that I need to do more reading to get more information.  

Here is the church at the end of the walkway. By the way, you can search Van Gogh paintings and you will find some of this church and walkway. 

This is the ancient Roman amphitheater which is the tenth largest of its type preserved in the world. Unfortunately it was difficult to get a great picture from the inside because there was a lot of temporary seating put in for the yearly "running of the bulls" that they do in Arles. Don't worry though, theirs it more of an idea-based running, and no bulls are hurt or killed. 

This is David and I inside one of the back and upper walkways that surrounds the "arena" as they call this one in French. It truly was amazingly large... and I can't believe that it was built so well that it still exists today. 

This is David and I in the cloister part of the St Trophime Cathedral, because the two are annexed together. Unfortunately there was some restoration going on in the courtyard so our view wasn't quite as impressive or beautiful as it could have been, but ti was still a neat sight. The church part also dates back to Roman times, and its current facade was finished in the 12th century. It's bell was replaced in the 13th century, which just goes to show they made stuff better back then. 

This is my attempt at a photo of the ancient Roman Cryptoportiques. It was really really dark and dank down there, but we got to walk the ancient underground traffic passageways, once again built by the Romans. There were even rooms attached to certain hallways, and it was quite a long walk. Also, we think there was another floor of these beneath us because there were lights in certain spots in the floor, and we could see around the edges and you could see a floor a good... 15 feet down I would estimate. No 12. I don't know, but not like 3 feet or anything. 

Once we left Arles, we returned back to Chambéry, where we showed Mom around our town, our grocery store, and our campus. We got some good classic photos from that as well.

This is David and I in front of David's main school building on campus. You can read the ISEFE sign which is right below the building marker 14. 

David and I at the famous elephant statue in Chambéry. It is kind of a weird statue, honestly, and when it first got sculpted a lot of the town people didn't like it very much and they called it "the four without butts" though they used a different word for butts. However, the statue slowly grew in fondness and certainly maintained its uniqueness and now represents a main square in the downtown city. The biggest collection of bus stops in Chambéry is called "Eléphants".

David and I at the entrance to the chateau which is right across from our apartment. There was a cool little exposition set up inside with some very interesting documents, including one of the original selling deeds from the 1100's (...I think) and also the family tree of the royal family, a really ornate tapestry-looking thing.

Finally here is a goofy picture of David and I with the other facade of the chateau (we live on the other side) but we found these cool cement pillars that we could stand on and so we took advantage of the photo opportunity. Thanks to Mom for photographing such funny-looking people.

Ok well I guess that means I am finally caught up, and I will try to give you an update after I take my exams on Monday. Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the final segment on our travels, and has a good weekend back home!

Wednesday April 11th and 12th - Marseille

Though today is actually April 16th, I am still working on updating you about my vacation with my mom. In real time, that is to say, this morning, I took my first exam at the University of Savoie. It was for my Intro to the Supply Chain class. I didn't end up studying a lot during my vacation, but with David's quizzing help I crammed a lot yesterday and feel that I did very well on my exam this morning. I guess time will tell when I get my grade back (probably in like 4 more months) but I feel at least mildly confident about my performance. Also, tomorrow I have my hour-long presentation for Techniques de Vente, which I had already fully prepared before going on vacation. I have taken some time today to look over it once to make some last improvements, but really I think it is ready to go and I am kind of excited about the presentation because I get to evaluate the differences between American and French commerce based on my time spent in the two countries. I think it will be quite fun. So that brings you up-to-date with my real life, and now for telling you about Marseille:

So we left for Marseille (on our very sore legs from our hike to the cross) at 6:02 in the morning, meaning we were awake and getting ready by 4:30. As far as all that was concerned, however, everything went smoothly and we had no problems whatsoever. It was a total of 3 hours to get to Marseille, and my mom and David managed to get some sleep on the train, which lead to me having the only time I would have to study for my upcoming aforementioned Supply Chain exam. Once we arrived in Marseille, we headed to our hotel which was supposed to be nice and close to the train station. After about an hour of being lost and walking around in circles, I couldn't figure out why the hotel wasn't where it was supposed to be according to the maps that David had printed out. Well, unfortunately, somehow there was a mix-up and David had put the wrong address for the hotel on the map, and I didn't realize it initially because we had multiple sheets of printed out maps so that the roads would be big enough to read, but meaning that I couldn't situate the location of the hotel in the city based on the map we were looking at. Suddenly, while we were wandering around we came across a city map and I compared the intersection that we were looking at on David's map with the intersection on the map and I knew immediately what had happened, because I knew we weren't in the correct part of the city to find our hotel. Actually, I was glad that is what had happened because previously I was starting to get worried that our hotel didn't exist! To fix the problem David and I went to a McDonald's to use the free internet and look up the correct address of the hotel and get directions, after which we had no problems, dropped off our baggage in a very nice looking hotel and set off exploring.

Our two-day trip to Marseille had several highlights, but also several letdowns because of certain closures. For example, due to "weather" we were unable to go to the island of the chateau d'If because the ferry "couldn't dock during rough tides" but we went to the beach that day and could see nothing of overwhelming importance as far as waves were concerned, so we are not sure why the landing was so finicky, and we wished we would have known to expect the possibility that visits get frequently cancelled due to "weather". Also, one of the old forts that protected the old port at Marseille was closed for reconstruction (because they are attaching it to a nearby museum) but that meant that we couldn't visit the fort. Unfortunately there was nothing about this construction or closure online, or even on a street sign, so we walked all the way there to figure this out, which is just typical France. Also, I was in the peak of my sickness which did prevent us from going to very nice sit-down restaurants (it is very embarrassing to have to frequently cough and blow your nose if you are in a nice restaurant)...

On the other hand, we did get to go to the very impressive Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde, the fort Saint Nicolas, the Pharaoh palace, Saint Victor's Abbey, and the beach for a decent amount of time or relaxation. We got to watch some hard-core bocce ball games get played on some official "courts" near the fort Saint Nicolas, which was incredibly amusing because the players were so skilled. I have never in my life seen more successful bocce ball playing. I mean seriously every time they threw the ball they either placed their ball within a foot of the target, or skillfully, in one perfect trajectory knocked a competitor's ball away from the target. I mean the balls that knocked out other balls were honestly thrown threw the air, with a perfect arch and backspin so that they knocked the competitor's ball away and yet stayed generally close to the area of play. You can tell that I was really impressed by their skill, but it truly was awe-inspiring.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

David and I on the beach, showing off our hotdogs that we all purchased from a street vendor. They were enormous and filled with fries. They were really good.

This is a picture of the beach when we arrived. Because it was only about 70-75 degrees, maybe even about 65 when the wind really picked up, the people of Marseille had deemed it too cold to go to the beach. I suppose that was nice for us though because we did have the beach all to ourselves! (almost)

While I was sunbathing David and I amused ourselves by tempting our nearby pigeon audience to eat bread crumbs off of me. At first we had to convince them to eat the crumbs near me, then we finally succeeded at having them jump up and eat the crumbs, which this picture shows. We also took a pretty good video of the situation, with a funny ending because I laughed and scared the poor pigeon off me. 

There were a lot of stairs to get to the Basilica, and I would just like to remind everyone that we had put ourselves in traction the day before by climbing to the cross...

David and I with the basilica in the background.

Mom and I from the hilltop with the basilica, overlooking the ocean and city behind us. 

A view of the city from the hill of the basilica. I love all the orange roofs and the blue sky, even if it is slightly cloud-covered.

The chateau d'If as seen from the basilica

The beautiful and ornate inside of the basilica. 

Here is the view of the ceiling in the basilica. It was truly a beautiful church, and you should have seen the floor! It was the most ornate set of mosaic tiles, and they were so small! The detail that was put into this church was just unbelievable. Also, it had a drawbridge to get into it, so we think it served as some sort of military shelter at some point in its life. 

David and I at the fort Saint Nicolas.

The view of the fort Saint Jean as seen from the other ancient fort. Unfortunately that is the fort that we couldn't get into, but it did still propose an impressive skyline view.

This was my favorite bocce ball player because he was so calm, so serious, always had a perfect throw and had a really interesting "throw routine" which usually included squatting on the ground before doing some funky thing with his wrist and then throwing the ball. 

David and I in front of the Pharaoh Palace. We are not actually sure what this building is, but there we are in front of it!!

Overall I would say that our time in Marseille was rather successful, though there were some things that we were hoping to see and couldn't. However, I am glad to say that we have now been to the Mediterranean coast of France, something that I may not be able to do again during this trip to France. 

Ok well wish me luck for my presentation tomorrow, and I'll try to update you about the last leg of our journey tomorrow!  

Tuesday April 10th - La Croix du Nivolet

Well I am not entirely sure where to begin to bring this blog up to date, because I have so many events to catch up on... Therefore I will do a separate post for each "event" and I will, as usual, use photos to tell my stories.

My mom arrived Tuesday April 10th, and though she was scheduled to arrive at 10:15, she didn't get in until about 30 minutes after that because of a train delay. This was a harbinger for some of our travel luck to come, though this delay really did not cause any issues because the only item on the agenda was our hike to the Croix du Nivolet (the Nivolet Cross). So we met up with David after his civilization class, picked up lunch at a local kebab shop (French kebabs are nothing like anything we have in America, though I do find them quite good, they are not my favorite food. they are, however, quick and decently cheap). We then hopped on the bus that was going to drop us off at that starting point for our hike, and we set off.

We arrived and then ate our lunch, officially hitting the trails at about 1:22, a little bit after what we originally planned, but with the buffer we had built in we were not worried. We hiked a very steep path for about an hour and a half to reach Lovettaz, a small town from which David and I's hike book had the hike officially start.

This is a photo of the three of us as we entered the small town. Notice that we still had smiles on our faces. That is because we were yet to complete exhaust ourselves with way too much walking...

The signage in the town pointing to the various trails and sights. We went to the Doria waterfall and obviously La Croix du Nivolet.

So we were on track and continued hiking for about 45 minutes to reach the Doria waterfall, which was quite gorgeous. Here is a picture of my by the waterfall:

After Doria, we were back on the trail, hiking for another hour and a half before finally reaching the cross. It was an extremely exhausting and difficult hike (not something that we would have purposefully decided on for our hike with mom had we known how strenuous it would be) which absolutely never stopped steeply climbing upward. In all, we gained about 4800 feet in elevation during the climb, and our hamstrings and calves were incredibly sore and tired for the second half, and particularly the last 1/4th of the climb, which even included scaling a rocky wall/path (with the help of a built-in cord) and climbing a series of rungs built into some boulders to access the plateau with the cross. We did, however, successfully arrive at our destination...

I haven't edited this photo yet, but there is a cross on that mountaintop behind us. Obviously at this point of our hike we were very near our destination, but we were also quite exhausted and we still had some very exciting challenges to come.

Here is the rock "wall" we had to climb with the help of the metal cord. I personally really enjoyed this part of the hike, though I was the only one. I guess it was good that I had the camera since I was the only one willing to take a hand off to take some pictures.

Here is the built-in "ladder" that we also had to climb.

Me climbing the ladder. I sent David up first so that he could get a picture of me. Mom followed me up so that I could give her a hand whenever needed.

Almost at the cross, this is the view back over Chambéry and the valley

Success!! David and I at the cross. If I may say so myself, this cross isn't too lovely up close, though the views were spectacular. However, as you can see the approaching storm did take away from some of the beauty.

This is the view of Chambéry that I took from the cross. Believe it or not we double-checked the forecast before leaving and it said that it wasn't going to rain.... I think they might have been wrong.

Within ten minutes we were in the heart of the storm, which caused us two very big problems: 1) We lost time because we took shelter from the rain for about half an hour so that we could let the worst of it pass and avoid getting soaking wet, and 2) we were prevented from returning to our planned bus stop because the weather made the access to our cliff-faced ladder rather perilous and we decided it wasn't worth any of our lives to try to take that path back. Therefore we had to walk away from Chambéry, down the plateau, in order to get to another small town from where we could descend the mountain and begin our trek back.

Once the weather cleared up we did get a pretty view back towards our mountain, but we were still a very long way from home. By now it was about 6:10, and the last bus from Pragondran (which is more or less outside the frame of this picture but close to the point below the clearing in the very bottom right-hand side of this picture) left at 7:00. When we made the decision to return by the alternate unknown route we were fairly certain that we wouldn't make the bus, but we weren't really sure what other alternative we would find.

By 6:20 we had found the path that lead to Pragondran and down the mountainside, but it had a time estimate of 2 hours and 40 minutes to get there. Without wasting time we set off, this time at a steep descent, working out way back home. Amazingly, we would arrive at Pragondran in 51 minutes (so I am not sure how in the world they make their time estimates for the signs) but that means that we arrived at 7:11, 11 minutes past the departure of the last bus.... 

We had already been walking for about 6 hours, with 4.5 hours of massively uphill paths, and 1.5 hours of extremely downhill slopes that hurt our knees, and now we were looking at another 2ish hours to return home. But we had no choice, so we kept walking, following the bus stops home, and every time a car drove by I attempted to hitch a ride for us. 5 cars drove by without stopping, so I was beginning to lose hope, but then a college-aged guy stopped and said that he would take us to Bessans, a town very near to Chambéry, since that is where he was going. Though we probably only spent about 5 minutes in the car, he was driving quite quickly and we all think that he probably saved us about an hour of walking, especially given how tired we were at that point. At Bessans, we got out of the car, and kept on walking...

We were so happy to reach Chambéry that I stopped to take a photo of the city limit sign when we arrived. Surprisingly we were all the way into the city center by 8:25pm and we were home by 8:40. In all, that means we walked heavily for about 7 and a half hours that day, with huge elevation change, and all three of us were walking like invalids for our remaining travel days in Marseille and Arles. 

I learned a valuable lesson that day: 1) Do not trust online hike blogs about the difficulty of a certain hike (most blogs had said that this hike was not too difficult, giving it and average rating) 2) Do not trust the weather report, because that rain cost us our planned route home which eventually lead to a longer hike, which lead to a missed bus... and 3) Never ever ever do a really big hike before you are about to go traveling and touring because you will regret your loss of mobility.

In the end though, several days later, I am glad that we made it to the Croix du Nivolet, one of the iconic symbols of Chambéry with my mother, and that we were able to safely return from that ill-fated hike. My muscles have all recovered, but I am nursing a sore knee that started acting up just yesterday and is causing me a fair amount of pain. I will let you know the prognosis as time continues though. It is a troubling pain because I never have problems with my knees, and it didn't hurt specifically during or in the two days after the hike, but it began hurting day 3 and has become quite a nuisance. But hopefully since I will be doing absolutely nothing active tomorrow it will use some relaxation to recover.