Two weeks ago, I posted about my favorite place, Timberline Lodge. While Timberline still holds that title, the Savoie "department" of France puts up a very good fight. I spent Christmas there, in a town called Albertville. The area ridiculously mountainous, and for a mountain-lover, it was a beautiful place to spend Christmas. For example, the view out of the apartment where Ken and I stayed:
On the other side of the apartment, across the street, there was a store that sold pain. Delicious, fresh pain (bread) that smelled great. I learned how to order pastries and coke products at the pain store: "Une tourmillion chocolat coco, et un coca 'cherie', grand," was one thing I ordered. A funny pastry with chocolate and coconut, and a large cherry coke. Our pain shop across the sheet:
We went on a number of day trips, and I will talk about each until I get bored.
Annecy
Annecy is a small town full of canals:
Annecy is also full of nougat.
We walked through the town and had lunch, and I learned to order apricot juice (jus d'abricot). Ken's mom, Jane, bought me a nice hat. Here I am with my travelling companions (sans Ken, taking the photo). Ken's parents, Rick and Jane, are standing next to me, and one of their friends, Jan, is standing next to Jane. I'm sporting my new French hat.
Annecy is on a large lake surrounded by mountains.
The town also has a bunch of these bizarre-looking French trees. The branches look like they have knobbly fists.
We saw these trees all over the region. Something about the way they are trimmed made them look unique.
Mont Blanc
The next day, it was time to visit Mont Blanc, apparently the tallest mountain in the French Alps at nearly 16,000 feet. We took a train up the mountain. I think there were three main summits. Here is a very pointy one, named Dru.
Wikipedia claims that some climbers lugged a statue up to that summit. I cannot verify. Another summit:
If you zoom in by clicking on the image, you can see some extremely pointy areas.
One glacier on Mont Blanc is called the "Mer de Glace," the "sea of ice." Here it is:
Here's another view from up there:
If you zoom in, you can see that someone snowboarded down that slope, after hiking up. Spot the snowboarding track:
After looking around, we boarded the train back down.
Views from the train ride down:
From the train, we could also see the large valley that we drove through on the way to Mont Blanc. At the very far end of the valley, you can barely see the ski slopes that will host a downhill ski championship in the future:
Here's the view from back where we came from, once we were down in the valley again. In the foreground are Ken and a French guy named Jean-Marc, my intrepid skiing guide who led me skiing through the Alps a couple of days later. Mont Blanc is in the background.
Endless French Food
An interesting property of my trip was that, after 24 hours in the country, I ceased to be hungry. Entirely. The next time I felt hungry was on the plane going home. It's not that the food was bad -- the food was, on the whole, delicious -- it's just that everyone kept over-feeding me rich food. We'd eat multi-course meals nearly every day. And after a meal, we'd wait the minimum amount of time that it would take for me to even consider consuming more food, and then we'd eat another huge meal.
Example. A typical meal, which we ate the first, second, and third days of my trip (before my body revolted against the rich food and I tried to detox on simple pasta and salad dishes), would go something like this:
- An "amuse-bouche" -- an appetizer. Caution: may contain fois gras, cheese, and various things with cream sauces.
- First course. Fish, shellfish, or possibly more fois gras. Fois gras is a very Chrismassy thing in Savoie, as it turns out.
- Second course. Lobster, beef, rooster, pidgeon, various other interesting things.
- Optional third course! Choose from previous list.
- Cheese course. They bring out a huge platter of different types of cheese, and you choose a few you want to eat. Pieces are cut off and put onto your plate. Eat with bread.
- Dessert! A tart, or possibly a Christmas log cake (see picture below).
- Optional second dessert! Aaaargh!
- Extra little dessert snacks, such as Christmas chocolates, or candies or marshmallows.
- Coffee.
- A small glass of liquor (preferably the one made from local flowers, Génépi), "to help digestion."
All courses are served with bread, cooked the same day.
On Christmas eve, Jean-Marc and Brigitte cooked us dinner. Given that I don't eat sea urchin, smoked fish, fois gras, scallops, or lobster, and given that they served us all of those, I think I did quite well. I ate everything and cleaned my plate.
I was dubious about the whole thing from the time I heard what we would be eating, but once the second course (scallops, in their shell on a bed of rock salt) arrived, my doubts vanished. The dish looked so impeccably beautiful that when I saw it, I knew there would be no way I couldn't like it. Sure enough, it was delicious. It helped, of course, that Jean-Marc was very, very French and thus paired each course with a different wine that complemented the food perfectly.
So, as I said, the food was great on the whole. But after a few days of eating like this, my body couldn't take anymore, so I started ordering simple pasta or salad whenever possible. If people were serving me food, I would try to get people to give me small portions by saying "petit petit," but then they would just nod and say okay, and cut me off a huge piece of tart regardless.
The last night, we had traditional fondue. Delicious. We were warned not to drink much water during the meal, because fondue is filling. We should just have a bit of wine, and then some kirsch afterwards for digestion. I did as told. When in France, do as the French do?
Coming Up Next
That's the first half of my trip. Coming next time: skiing in the Alps! I leave you for now with this sculpture we found in a skiing village. It is... a very long-legged elephant with a pyramid on top? Not quite sure. I guess it's a French thing.
