Bonjour à tous!
Today was another fun-filled day in the city of Grenoble! Waking up to the sun was definitely a good change in the weather when the weather forecast said it was going to snow and possibly rain. Our CEA group was meeting at 10h30 this morning for an adventure on the town of either going up to the Bastille or touring one of the museums Grenoble has to offer. Either way, I was excited to be spending time with the 5 other students here this semester and really getting to know them and find out what they are all about. Of course, we were running a little behind schedule this morning, typical Stephanie move I might add, but in this case, it was my roommate Lexie who was running late :) We finally made it out of the house around quarter ‘til 10 and headed to the tram stop! I learned a new way of getting downtown and to the CEA office that is much quicker and makes a lot more sense than the way I took the first day here for orientation. There is a park right next to our apartment building where we can cut through to where the tram stop is. The park is massive with a multitude of trees surrounding every which way you walk and I can’t wait for the Spring when all of the trees have their leaves back and are in full blossom!
the park across from our apartment
When we arrived at the train station, we heard an announcement on the speakers saying that Tram A is not operating today and that we needed to find another way to our destination and I’m sure you already know what I am going to say, but yes, Tram A was the tram we needed haha Luckily my 2 other roommates knew their way around town a little better than I did and we were able to walk to the office within 20 minutes. By that time it was already 10h30 and we all knew we were going to be “en retard” (late) so we did the best we could trying to navigate our way to the other side of town. On the way over to the office, we kept seeing policemen after policemen fully armed with guns and padding, the whole shebang, patrolling the streets of Grenoble. At first we didn’t think anything of it but while walking we kept on seeing large amounts of people crowded together in the streets and we realized that a strike against the tram system was going on, hence the reason tram A was not running. We didn’t actually see the strikes or riots break out, but by the looks of the policemen, you knew not to mess with them or question their authority.
By the time we were ready to go out on the town for our adventure, the clouds had rolled in and you couldn’t see the mountain ranges at all, so we decided to hold off on the Bastille until a nicer day when it is clear blue skies and mountains for as long as you can see. So instead, we went to the Museé d’Art, aka Museé de Grenoble. We even were lucky to catch the last few days of the collection on display of Gaston Chaissac. His artwork is very abstract and many of his drawings looked like a little kid could have drawn them and put the painting in a frame, while other pieces of his collection were very unique and well thought out and executed. He used many different types of material to construct his masterpieces like a wooden door, rocks, plywood, parts of a car or house, etc.
One of Chaissac's exhibits
Museé de Grenoble
But the coolest part about this exhibit was a room that was dedicated to elementary school students to recreate work like that of Chaissac. The room started off with nothing in it just stark white walls and a white picnic table last November and today, the room is full of colorful pieces of art made entirely by children and funny enough, could pass for the work of Chaissac!
The artwork of the children of Grenoble
After this exhibit, we toured the many different areas of the museum which took a good 2 hours, maybe more. The art ranged from contemporary to abstract to sculptures and ancient Egyptian artifacts. There were even some famous, well known artists’ paintings in there like Picasso, Renoir and Andy Warhol. The best part about the rest of our afternoon was when Patrick was telling us some background information on a particular painting that he had studied in art school. Before I tell you why this was the best part, let me start by saying that this picture is probably worth tens of thousands of dollars as well as that it had a wire rope in front so no one would go super close and try to touch the canvas. Well one of the girls in our group, Rachael, was so wrapped up in what Patrick was telling us that she steps forward towards the painting, not even seeing the wire rope and physically touches this masterpiece!! You could even see the painting start to sway and everyone in our group started freaking out and yelling at her to back away! We immediately left that room in fear of the security guards coming after us! After that, no one in our group was going to let her forget what she did!
Overall, the museé had amazing paintings and I am so glad that Patrick has a passion for art and has a lot of knowledge behind the history of paintings and fun facts you wouldn’t know just by reading the information card or just by looking at the piece. That made my afternoon so much better and enjoyable!
After the afternoon lull, we all met back up for dinner downtown at a restaurant called Chez la mère ticket. It was a random restaurant we found walking along the side streets in downtown, but it had reasonable prices and I could eat something there other than a salad so we decided to check it out. We got there right at 7pm when it opened because we weren’t sure if you needed to have a reservation or not, but we had nothing to worry about because we had the place all to ourselves with a table in the back of this small, hole in the wall restaurant. Oh and I totally forgot to mention that it snowed again here tonight!! This time the snow was slushy and wet, but I still am in awe of the snow and was so excited to look out my window and see snow falling! But back to dinner… I ordered the ham, thinking it was going to be cooked or smoked or something warm, like you would get at a restaurant in the States. But oh was I wrong. The waitress brings out a plate with 2 pieces of sliced ham that looked like something you buy in the grocery store to make a sandwich with and a piece of lettuce to the side. To say the least, I was very disappointed because not only was it not good, but I paid 7 euro ($11 USD) for this crappy entreé! Besides my meal however, it was fun getting to know the people in my group and just hang out.
The best part about dinner was that all of a sudden in the middle of our meal, really in the middle of me putting a fork full of green beans (one of the girls was nice enough to let me share her vegetable plate with her) in my mouth, everything goes black. The power was out! We all start to laugh thinking “Oh my gosh what is going on! Are we going to have to pay for our dinner still...we can’t see anything?” haha We sat in the dark for about 10 minutes or so until the lady serving us could figure out what was wrong. We asked if we could help, but she only had a little lighter and we had no idea how to fix it anyways, but at least we asked to help. At the same time, we were sitting there cracking up laughing because this had never happened to us before. Finally the power was back up and running and darn it, we had to pay! But let me just say that we will never forget the experience we had here tonight!
In front of Chez la mère ticket (Aaron was taking the picture and forgot to get the sign of the restaurant in the photo! Boys will be boys...)
Grenoble is my new home away from home and I love everything I’m getting to explore and the beautiful landscape and architectural buildings I see every which way I look! I am so blessed to have this opportunity to study abroad and I wouldn’t give it up for the world!
Looking up to the Bastille (you can see the Téléphérique in the distance too)
Fountain of the 3 orders
Grenoble= LOVE
Bonne soirée,
Stephanie
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