Je suis allé à Grenoble.

Yes, as the title subtley suggests, I spent the weekend in Grenoble. I arrived late Friday night (at about 11:45pm) and went straight to Thomas' apartment.
On Saturday we went hiking up a nearby mountain (that really doesn't narrow it down - Grenoble is surrounded by mountains, but I can't remember which one). We were lazy in the morning and didn't leave his apartment until midday, so it was just an afternoon of hiking, after which I was tired anyway. Because we hiked through a lot of snow we needed to use snowshoes, which was cool because it was the first time I'd ever used them and they definitely made walking through the snow much easier, especially on the steep bits of the slope. The view from the top of the mountain was beautiful (see photos on the left). On the way down we decided, after walking a little, that it was more fun (not to mention quicker) to slide rather than walk down the mountain. I'd been sitting on the snow for a while so my bum was sufficiently numb that I didn't notice where the snow was bumpy (well, mostly).
On Saturday evening, Thomas, Lise, a friend of theirs, and I went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. The food was amazingly delicious, though a bit on the expensive side. We shared two antipasto platters between the four of us for entree, and we all had a piece of dead cow for main (though cooked differently, with different sauce and sides etc..). My dessert was an ile flottante (floating island: a meringue floating in a bowl of custard). The others had chocolate cake or tiramisu.
We were up early on Sunday morning in order to get as much skiing in as possible. We went to a place near Sept Laux. I can't remember the name of the station we actually went to, but I'll try to find out. I love skiing. My arms and legs are sore now from the exercise but it was worth it. I need to go more often. I started out skiing on green and blue runs to warm up remember how to do it, but by the end of the day I was on red runs (though not difficult reds) and even one black* one!
I only had one spectacular fall, where I tumbled a bit and had to retrieve equipment that hadn't fallen as far as I had. Unfortunately it was witnessed (by Thomas) so I can't pretend it didn't happen.
We left the ski field at about 5pm and got back to Grenoble just after 6pm. I had a couple of hours to rest and repack my clothes that had created a large messy pile of themselves next to my bed (of their own accord, of course), before going to the train station and returning to Paris.
A cheese called 'Tomme de Savoie' is all the rage in Grenoble at the moment (and probably has been for many many years). I saw several people buying it in the Monoprix near Thomas' place. Thomas also had some in his fridge and I tried it. It's delicious, and much better than anything advertised as "tasty".

Photos of my weekend are on Picasa** and there's a link to the album on the left of this blog.


* Okay, not really. It was signed as a black run, but I suspect it was an "ego-black" - it was easier than some of the red ones. Some resorts have taken to being a little bit generous in their classification of the difficulty of some runs, so that the people who ski there feel like they're better.
** I had problems with Flickr, so I'm trying Picasa for a while to see which I prefer.