Friday - Grenoble

University city of about 170,000, about 40 mins from Chambery by train.

After school on Friday I raced to the train station, also home of the rented-bicycle station, to return my bike, as I'd rented it for 4 weeks only and was in need of my E150 bond back! Unfortunately some idiot must have punched my front light some time when the bike had been parked, so I had to pay E7 for it.

Anyway, getting better with trains, I got to Grenoble at about 2.30 and found my way to the old centre. I'd kind of planned my trip because I only had about 4 hours. The city centre was quite pretty. A lot of the buildings however were grey and dirty because of their age, but this was made up by numerous green and flowery gardens everywhere :) also a lot of large piazzaq, I really like the way cafes have lots of tables outside here (meaning Europe).

I visited a few old churches, the Cathedral of Notre Dame (bit disappointing), and had some time for the museum of Grenoble, where apart from the Beaux Arts I saw Roman, Greek and Egyptian remains. Ancient Egypt always fascinated me a bit so I was in awe at the sarcofages and little sphynge statues! (nope not sure how that was spelt!)

I met a strange lesbian couple, pretty nice really, although both covered by an interesting combination of tatoos and piercings; one of the girls was Italian so we had a nice chat.

There was a great number of one-way roads in Grenoble. To my disbelief, I insisted in looking both ways when crossing every single one of them! Ah, can never be too careful I suppose... hmmmmm...

Oh yeah. On the way back, I decided I felt like visiting the Montmelian trains station! Montemelian is about 15 mins away from Chambery and... well.. ok, I didn't INTENTIONALLY wish to stop there! I felt so ridiculous, you hear of people getting off trains one stop late, but who EVER gets off early??? I'll admit that it was dark and I was tired, but comparing the two train stations is like comparing the Bunbury and Perth bus stations (Perth being Chambery)! But no problem, got the next train half an hour later... Madame Andre was starting to get worried but we had a nice laugh about my stupidity later!

- More tomorrow, once back at school :)