[A] Briançon- June 4-6

Brian and I took the 5:12 Friday train up to Briançon from Aix, and the entire four hour ride was a lesson in scenery. What started as rolling Provençal hills turned eventually to alps, and we found ourselves wedged between four mountain in the small town called Briançon. We had little idea of where our Hotel de Paris was other than near the train tracks, so with luck we started right towards it. The room itself was fairly bare bones, but had a balcony, two beds, and a functioning shower, so all was good. We left the room at about 9:45 in search of a late dinner. When we arrived at the town square, we found that most of the seasonal ski town's bars stopped serving food at ten. We were directed to a small ITalian restaurant where a couple german groups seemed to still be eating. I spoke to the owner in Italian, and asked if he had any food to serve us. He paused, and said "pizza?" We were appropriately ecstatic. He brought it out with two Peroni, basically unfiltered water. We devoured it, and, satiated, rolled back down the hill.

The next day at 8:30 we ventured out in search of a hiking trail we had seen on a map. It started from near the old town, which itself was up quite a hill. On the way we stopped to buy water and breakfast. The town was deserted at 9:30 am, and we walked through the streets, entered the central cathedral, hiked up to an old fort overlooking the town, and by 10:30 were ready for the trail.

We picked up some sandwiches to go, a great decision, and made our way up to the top of an alp. It was about a two and a half hour hike, taken at a good pace considering the slope, and by the time we reached the top we were gassed.

The sheer altitude we had ascended astounded us. We were looking down on things on surrounding cliffs that in the morning had seemed insurmountable. We ate our lunch, and begn our descent from 3000 feet. On the way down we refilled water at a cold, clear mountain spring routed next to the trail for that purpose.

Back at the old town, we rewarded ourselves with treats, Brian with ice cream, and I with a nutella crepe.

We rolled back down the hill and into bed until dinner, when we woke up, stumbled up to "The Club," and had our first burgers of the trip.

In the morning, being surprisingly unsore, we roused ourselves and stumbled upon an open market a-la-Aix. We bought apples, peaches, strawberries, grapes, and some delicious potato-filled ravioli, a regional special. We made our way towards what we had been told was an easy valley trail, finding ourselves instead headed straight up another mountain. It was almost as if we didn't have the energy to resist, and we continued to climb. Once we got to where a road split off lateraly, we opted instead for that, and stopped at a routed waterfall to eat some of our food. Continuing on, we found ourselves on a road frequented by motorbikes and, formerly, tour de france members (one of whom had apparently died in the course of the event on the side of this road). We were far above what we knew to be a river, but could not see it. We turned back. Out of curiosity, we went down a road that had the illusion of access to a dam. Quickly we saw that it did indeed lead to a dam, which was holding up a gorgeous, bright blue lake. We spotted a picnic table and made a beeline.

(The picnic table is in the bottom left of the second picture)

We then ate most of the rest of our goodies, and took in the view for another half an hour. We decided to catch the 1:00 train home instead of the 4:00, feeling our energy sapping. We returned to the hotel to grab our things and headed for the train home to Aix, capping off an incredible weekend trip.

Ciao,
A