06 March 2011

Solemn snow and a market of rainbow

After a night in Grenoble and an early start, we headed north to Annecy through le Massif de la Grande Chartreuse. Few-day-old snow beautifully blanketed the mountains and little villages, but luckily the curvy road we were driving on was ice-free. We stopped at the monestary even though the museum is closed in the winter, and it was nice to walk below the jagged peaks and feel the mists of snow on my face as the soft wind blew it off tree branches. There were icicles nearly a foot long on some of the buildings. 

Snowy trees and peaks surrounding the monastery

Le Monastère de la Grande Chartreuse in a snowscape. This is where the two Carthusian monks who know the formula for the Chartreuse liquor live among other monks.  

View after a short walk from the Monastery

We continud north and stopped at a little town on the the north end of le Massif de la Grand Chartreuse where there happened to be a bustling market of everything from local knives to fresh local produce.

Here are some close-up photos of what i saw at the market:

Knife/cork screw for 8€

Tartiflette! Of course. 

Wooden pots of various types of olives

The candy in France, it is tasty, not to mention beautiful

We made our way to Annecy were we ended up staying the night. It was quite cold near the lake, but it was cool walking around the medieval city with its little canals a bit. Annecy is known as the Venice of France. I visited Annecy in October for the Fête des Alpages (click here to see my blog post on it), but it was quite bit different visiting the city with colder weather and a lot less people.

The lake and some boats

In the historic district; this castle is kind of a symbol of the city

Saxophoniste right by a bridge

Only in France could you find this street name

No comments:

Post a Comment