Bartimaeus

Yesterday there was light snow and sleet for much of the day as forecast.  We set off in the morning looking for somewhere for breakfast, and then headed for a museum in the old district.

The wind made the narrow streets of the old town attractive as long as they were not aligned with it.  Despite the cold and the rain we enjoyed meandering and discovering as we went.  A covered market made an interesting diversion.  It had more than one cheesemonger, butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer and more.

A short while later, the weather took a turn for the worse as we passed the Old Bishop's Palace Museum.  While the tramline was being excavated, an ancient baptismal font had been found under the ground.  It had all been excavated and now formed an exhibit in the basement. It was a completely different experience from our visit to the Baptist Church in Tewkesbury.

We emerged in the middle of the French lunch time.  I was concerned that we might be too late.  We went in to a quiet-looking restaurant nearby (many other restaurants were available).  When we opened the door, the place was full of people enjoying their lunch, but there was still room for us.  We enjoyed the "formula" - dish of the day, dessert and coffee.  In a very French way, just before 2pm almost everyone left, presumably back to work in many cases.

While we were at lunch I had realised that we had walked past the Notre Dame church, so we had a look in there, before continuing to the Museum of Grenoble - an art gallery.  It has a major collection of artwork arranged chronologically.  We came across several parties of young school children having works of art explained to them at some length.  They mostly seemed surprisingly engaged.

A highlight for me was the mountain scenes, which started to become popular at the same time as mountain tourism was gaining a foothold.

Although we are surrounded by mountains, the weather had robbed of us any views.  The realism of these pictures was breathtaking from across the room - close up, the paintwork was hard to connect to the effect it produced.

The snow was turning to sleet as we walked back to our hotel, but we were able to stay warm and mostly dry by keeping to the north side of the streets.

Today the sun had reappeared and most of the snow had vanished from the streets - I was glad we would not be walking around in slush.  A man we spoke to at breakfast said we we were lucky to have seen Grenoble in the snow.  He seemed to think that we wouldn't get snow in Scotland. The snow had not gone from the high mountains around the city.  We enjoyed glimpsing them through the gaps in the buildings, but it was hard to get a good vantage point for a photograph.

We headed for the Dauphinois Museum, not knowing what to expect inside.  We were a little surprised by the (electronic) frisking at the entrance, but pleased to find that the museum was a history of the former province of Dauphiné, with a history of local skiing thrown in.  Many of the exhibits were described in English.

I was concerned that we would miss French lunch time again, but nearby was a row of restaurants, almost all of which seemed to specialise in pizza.  One closed just as Clare decided to try it, but we were welcomed in to another.  Clare was adventurous enough to try a local speciality: ravioli pizza.  This turned out to be a pizza with (tiny) ravioli as one of the toppings.

We meandered across the river and towards the Natural History Museum in the relatively warm sunshine.  It seemed too nice to go straight inside, so we had a walk in the nearby park behind the Hotel de Ville.  As we returned, there was some sort of protest or remembrance happening there.  Neither of us were able to make out what it was about.

By contrast, at the museum we were given audio guides in English, which made the exhibits a lot more accessible.  We've enjoyed Grenoble enormously and been made very welcome.