Off the beaten track

We survived the harrowing experience of driving on the German autobahn to Sweden. You think that you are keeping up with traffic driving at about 140km an hour but you are constantly being overtaken by Mercedeses and the like, driving at 190km an hour. Then if that is not bad enough you also have the thousands of trucks.  They have their own little competition going on. They keep overtaking each other and being generally dangerous and also very big.

Anyway, it's over now for this time and we survived and are now at our destination. On the way though, we had to sleep somewhere and we have noticed that in Germany, if you take a little bit of extra time, you can find great guesthouses in little villages off the beaten track. This time we found a place that dated back to 1847, and it was very popular with workers of different kind, so I was the only female there. Breakfast was fun and rowdy even though I think my presence put a damper on it. Everyone was also given plastic bags to do their lunch bag, which is usually frowned upon if you try to do that in hotels.

'Abseits ausgetretener Pfade'

Our few days in Grenoble were fun filled. We had dinner and lunches with friends and neighbors and we also caught up on a few errands we had to do. As I did last time I slept at my kind neighbour's house and hubby was left to his own device in our little studio. He still have loads of paper work to check through from his previous job so it is best to leave him to it.

Dinner the first night after our arrival from Australia. Jet-lag ! Never heard of it!

A nice Zen breakfast with our neighbors in Montbonnot.

Delicious dinner with old friends

Lunch in Villard de Lans, very yummy!

Happy reunion with neighbors

Now we are yet again off the beaten track in our little cottage in Sweden together with sister- and brother-in-law. First day it poured with rain, but yesterday and today look good.

We drove into Gothenburg yesterday to visit my mother whom we hadn't seen yet. She looks very well and we will have her out here in the cottage as soon as we have everything in order. It always takes a while to get the garden looking ok and the house set up so a 88-year old can be comfortable

Coffee time at the old people's home!

Leaving you with a big hug. Yes, Swedes hug as naturally as the French kiss, even though hubby still has a problem with man hugs!!

Villard de Lans, you rock!

I am back in France after a 2 day nightmarish drive from Sweden to Grenoble. Not only did it rain most of the way but Germany has decided to repair its Autobahn.  Normally it is THE way to get from Scandinavia down to the south of Europe relatively quickly but not this time. Instead of driving 130 km an hour it was limited to 80 km an hour most of the way. And did I mention the rain? It was truly a dreadful trip. The other thing is that I get so sleepy so I had quite a few power naps on the way as well and that also slows you down.

I stopped off in two different place, Lübeck in the north of German, which is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site and producer of marzipan, yum! They also had lots of amazing bridges. I am sure hubby would be delighted to have a little stop there another time.

I also spent the night in Ettingheim, a very cute baroque town with lovely old buildings. Both those places are well worth a visit but I was a bit limited for time.

This beer was true nectar when I arrived in Ettingheim, just a shame about the food. I guess after living almost 30 years in France you are a bit spoiled and the German cuisine can be a bit stodgy (sorry German readers.)

The title of this blog is 'Villard de Lans, you rock!', and there are several reasons for this. It has lots of things on, and today they had a special market on so we did a bit of shopping, of course. My friends have fairly recently moved up here from Grenoble and since this is my first trip back to France since we moved to Australia I had not seen their house nor did I really know Villard de Lans. 

The other reason for mentioning a rock is that their house has a huge rock in front of it in their garden.

So standing on their balcony looking out this is what you see:

However, walking around the village you have lots of opportunity to see beautiful views of the Vercors.

The rock is a real feature, and it is classified, so they can't remove it, even if they wanted to, which they don't.