First Big Hike in the Chartreuse

Posted July 17, 2014

We’ve had another two great days here at the chalet. The weather has been great. It rained here all last week so we sure got lucky arriving this week. On Tuesday we drove down to Grenoble to go to the Grenoble Museum, only to find out that the museums close on Tuesdays. Instead, we walked around the downtown area. We took a 45-minute tourist “train” ride that explained much of the history of the area and pointed out all of the old landmarks. We found an amazing pastry shop and stopped in for a snack. After a bit of shopping we came back up to the chalet and hung around for the evening.

Yesterday we had an amazing hike up to the summit of Petit Som. The first part of the walk took us past le Couvent de la Grande Chartreuse. It is a huge working monastery nestled in the mountains. As we walked by, signs indicated it was a quiet zone so there was no talking until we got past it. Unfortunately the public is no longer allowed in to see what goes on inside. We did see a few monks coming and going, though.

The hike took us over 900 m up to the summit at 1772 m. The views were gorgeous. We could even see Mt Blanc in the distance. We decided to eat lunch on the summit before heading back down. The boys did amazing, and we did our best to keep up! After five hours of hiking we made it back to the car and headed home for showers and dinner (including Auntie Kim’s world famous European Cocktail Wieners)

After watching a movie we decided to call it a day. Tomorrow we hope to get in to the Grenoble museum, then come home and put a few last minute touches on our Tour de France signs for Friday!
Thanks for reading, everybody. Bonne journée tout le monde!