[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.