Grenoble

I'll try to catch up on a few days of posts, but may be short on pics and videos for a while as the wifi connection we have at our camping site near Nice is a little dodgy.

So, back to Monday 31/5 ... we caught a train from Paris to Lyon which was pretty cool sitting back in first class comfort while the French countryside rolled by. We arrived at Lyon at about 1pm and stopped at the station for something to eat while we waited for the campervan rental store to open. As we seem to have to try out every toilet in Europe, I took the kids to the loos at the station. Sounds pretty straightforward, but as I locked the door to the cubicle, the handle came off in my hand, trapping us inside. I was just about to Facebook my friends back in Australia for help when I realised I wasn't a Gen Y and I had a mouth for effective communication. Even better I had my trusty French dictionary to help remind me of those pesky Year 10 French lessons. So, here I was in the loos of Lyon Station, yelling out "Aider s'il vous plait!" Fortunately a toilet attendant came along with his keys to let us out. (My French is improving with each day and after just a few days in the country I can now do most transactions without needing to revert to English).

After a short taxi trip we arrived at the rental store and probably should have spent more time watching the instructional video rather than laughing with the kids, because I had a very steep learning curve. Not only did I have to learn to drive something a little bigger than my Mazda 2 girlie car back home, but on the other side of the road. Long story short, after a few hairy moments, I'm now driving almost as aggressively as the locals and having a heap of fun gunning along highways at 120kph (could go faster, but am afraid it'll blow over in the winds!) and thin, mountainous roads of the Alps.

About an hour after leaving Lyon we arrived at our destination of Grenoble where we settled in for the night and stocked up at the local supermarket. We had a little trouble finding pillows, so I kid you not, we ended up buying a few cats beds which have turned out to be rather comfy during our camping!
The next day we set into town by tram and was very impressed by the 5-10 min frequency of their public transport and ease of navigation. We explored the town and took a very interesting, but sort of scary, cable car ride up a few hundred metres and across the river to the town's Basteille.