[Summer in Grenoble] A Bowl of Salad at Harper's Cafe

June 4th, 2015
My friends and I had a morning French class on this day, so after that, some of us decided to have lunch somewhere close.

That's how we found Harper's Cafe.

Wraps, Nachos, Salads and etc.
They sure do sell various kinds of food, and made it a bit difficult for me to make up my mind.

I still managed to make my choice, and ordered my lunch.

All of us who were at Harper's Cafe, waited while chatting around the tables.

The kitchen got busy, thanks to the large number of orders by the group customers (us).

I got my Salmon Salad shortly after.
I don't always crave salad, but for some reason, I did on this day.

and According to what I've learned from my French class, the French do adore treating themselves with salads.

After the group lunch with friends, we took the tram back to our residence.

When it comes to salad, I do not really mind the taste, as long as there's no ingredients that I don't like. But it sure was very nice to have a group lunch with friends at a foreign country.

[Summer in Grenoble] Welcome Party

June 3rd, 2015
This was the day when the summer abroad program started to become serious(?), because I started taking both Biochem class and French class.

After Biochem class and French class, all of the people involved in the summer abroad program started walking somewhere together.

After following fellow summer abroad program people for a bit

We've arrived at this garden we've seen on the previous day, right before taking La Bulle up to the Bastille.
The reason why we were here is because the Welcome Party is held at the building right next to this garden.

All of those who were involved in the summer abroad program jointly operated by Universite Joseph Fourier and Alliance Francaise were here!

After the welcoming speech...

All of us helped ourselves to the food and drinks that were prepared

and had a moment(?) of meet, greet and socialize.

My biochem professor also joined the welcome party with his wife.
This is when I learned that he and his wife are here as a part-summer abroad program, and part-honeymoon.
Now, that's a cool way to go on a long honeymoon!

Photogenic professor is photogenic.

I am not that much of an extrovert, so I'd been taking pictures primarily during the welcome party.
After a while, I left.

I was hungry, because the food at the welcome party wasn't really a "dinner."
It was more of a "snack"

France is a land of the Baguettes.
It was kind of refreshing to eat a sandwich made with these long baguettes.
The taste wasn't bad, but the pickle had a super strong taste, which ruined the sandwich for me.

[UNC Summer in Grenoble] Dinner at Mezzo Di Pasta

June 2nd, 2015

This was a relatively free day, because all we did on this day was visit the Bastille, have our first French class, and pay a short visit to the International Student Office of Grenoble.

Since that was the case, some of my classmates gathered together, and went to wander the downtown Grenoble. It was definitely not around the Cours Jean Jaures nor Place Victor Hugo, because if it were, I would have noticed.
Around the time for dinner, we started looking for somewhere to eat.
...
We've experience the magic of being unable to find any restaurants when we needed them...


But after a while, my classmates and I found a pasta franchise called "Mezzo Di Pasta"

 We all somehow ordered our pasta without knowing anything about how to order things in French.
Except for my friend in the blue shirt. He was pretty good with French.

The worker of Mezzo Di Pasta started cooking our pasta very busily.
after a while, we've all received our orders of the pasta and drink of choice,

sat around the table situated outside,

 and enjoyed our pasta and the gorgeous evening atmosphere of Grenoble.

I had some amori pasta noodles with bolognese sauce and a can of Orangina.
It came out in a cute, green box. The amount was more than I expected.

The sauce was good (I mean, it was bolognese... you can't really go wrong with that.), and the noodle was fantastic!
It was the most perfectly cooked pasta noodle I've ever had in my life, which I can't really replicate the sensation in words due to my weak expressions and vocabulary.

Oh, and Orangina!
It was one of my "must have" drinks while I was in France.
These were so good! These are basically carbonated orange juice that are just sweet enough to please and not annoy the tastebuds.
Ah... I would love a can/bottle of Orangina right now....


Mezzo Di Pasta.
While it was very good, and an inexpensive place to eat at.
I would recommend eating other food if you're a traveler or studying abroad for a short time.
I personally think it is a smarter decision to eat something you can't easily have access to at your home town. (e.g. Kebabs)

...
I miss Orangina and Kebabs.

[UNC Summer in Grenoble] Alliance Francaise, The Bastille, and the Landscape of Grenoble

June 2nd, 2015

It was my second morning in Grenoble.
When I woke up from sleep, I saw this very cool scenery through the balcony.

but all of us had to follow our program guide, Damien, to some place within the city of Grenoble.

and that "some place" turned out to be "Alliance Francaise."
It was the place where all of the summer abroad participants took French classes.

Unfortunately, I don't remember much of the beginner-level French that I've learned, but I still do remember how to order food, get tap water for free at restaurants, and how to get the check after eating at a restaurant.
Oh, not to mention "it's very hot" (Tres Chaud).
Pretty much, the phrases I remember are the ones I used very frequently.

On the first day at Alliance Francaise, we had a "welcome breakfast party"
We ate croissants!

and after the Welcoming Breakfast, we divided into 3 groups and went out to the city.
My group first went to the Grenoble's public transportation center ran by Tag.
However, we needed a picture to get our transportation card, so those of us (including myself) who weren't able to prepare ID pictures, had to go to a grocery store, Monoprix, and get our pictures taken there.

Regardless of that, we needed to buy ourselves lunch at Monoprix, so the instructor of Alliance Francaise told all of the students to buy something for lunch before taking our ID picture for the public transportation card.

After paying for the ham sandwich and a bottle of water, I got my ID picture taken at the "Photos" booth,

returned to the public transportation center,

and finally got my Tram card, with unlimited ride for a month.
It is rechargeable. You can add more number of rides, or more days.
This moment on, I no longer needed to rely on Damien to take Grenoble's trams.


After all of that, we made our way to somewhere else.

We passed Cours Jean Jaures

Some cool looking buildings like this one...

and reached this area, where most of the buildings were built in a more modern architectural style.
All of the older European style architecture that predominates the city are gorgeous too, but the modern style buildings were beautiful as well, and blended well with the other buildings.

From here, the Alliance Francaise teachers told us of which building to come to for French class... I think...?
We were supposed to have classes in the Alliance Francaise building, but there were some logistics issues that gave us no choice but to have the class in some other building that was around this area.

Then we started walking again!

After seeing countless numbers of cityscapes of grenoble,

... we've reached the telepherique station.
This was where we took the cable car up to the Bastille.

Around the telepherique,

there was this gazebo, which are often inhabited(?) by hostile people in the afternoons.

and this small, but beautiful garden.

and thus, it was time to take the cable car up to the Bastille.
All of us still needed to wait in a line to go up, so...

I took some pictures of the scenery around the river, L'isere, while waiting in the line.

This is the cable car that takes people up to the Bastille.
It has the nickname of "La Bulle" because it is shaped like bubbles.

The platform where people get on and off of La Bulle.

and there came the bubbles that we took to get to the Bastille.

The bubbles opened up like this, and we got on it.

The view is great while going up and on the way back down in La Bulle, but be careful not to drop your cellphones or wallets. The doors of La Bulle do not close completely, and leaves some opening that is large enough for phones to slip through.

Anyway, we took the spherical cable car

and upward on to the Bastille.
The view is great, but the slightly opaque windows of the bubbles would most likely ruin the pictures.

After a short while, we had arrived at the Bastille.
and guess what I saw when I got off the cable car!

AW YEA! This was what I saw!
The view was beautiful!

Waiting for the rest of the fellow study abroad students to arrive.

This was the pamphlet of La Bastille, which I, of course, could not read at all.

They also had this kind of recreational facility at the Bastille.
It must be fantastic, at the same time, a bit frightening, to enjoy such activity high up in the mountain.
I mean, there were actually people zip-lining at the top of the mountain!!


and beside this recreational facility were stairs that took us to the sight-seeing spot on top of the fortress...

where it was possible to take vast landscape of Grenoble, like this one.
The mountains and the city together, created a very unique landscape.
This picture even is my desktop background image!

There are the bubbles, arriving at the station.

What a beautiful city.

This was the guide map of what the mountain peaks were called, and etc.

Cours Jean Jaures was beautiful from above the Bastille as well as it was down in the city.

and here's something unexpected, a sports stadium!
I had no idea Grenoble had a sports team!

While it was one of my goals to go see a soccer game at a stadium in Europe, the circumstances never did really work out for me....
Damn!!... I really wanted to see a soccer game with European people!

Oh Grenoble~
Why are you so pleasing to the eyes and to the soul?

.....
I'm sorry my friends...
you all just came out so well in this picture.

This is the North West of Grenoble.
This is science complex of Grenoble, this area is also where the ESRF is located.

After sight-seeing, everybody sat down and had some lunch,

then the Alliance Francaise teachers divided the students into different levels of French, and there, at the Bastille, we had our very first French class!

Without a doubt, I was placed in the very beginning level.
We learned things like "Je m'appelle _____" and "Je suis etudiant(e)," and some stuff about the geography around us.... that I don't remember, of course...

After lunch and our first French class, it was time to head back down...

On La Bulle....

We came back down to the city of Grenoble,

and then we were dismissed.

For those of you thinking of visiting Grenoble, I highly recommend visiting the Bastille.
No, it is not the Bastille you see in the history textbook for the French revolution part, but it does have an amazing view like no other you'll probably see in your life.
Even though many cities of Europe has hills or structures for sight-seeing, I would still choose the Bastille of Grenoble as the best one.