I’ve lost track how many times we have spent our winter vacation in the Serre Chevalier Valley in Hautes-Alpes department, but one thing is sure: the weather has been mostly good. And so it was this time, too. Actually it was extra good, since the sun shone from the clear […]
We spent the extended holiday weekend in the area where most of town and village names sounded like they were taken from Asterix. The area, called la Dombes, is an undulating plateau in the department of Ain consisting of 1200 ponds or rainwater pools that are man-made, most of them […]
As the weather forecast looked very promising for the last weekend of October — with lots of sun and the daytime temperatures in upper teens or lower twenties — we decided to take Monday off and head for a short bike tour on this All Saints’ holiday. We had just […]
Thanks to the recent gas crises — due to the strikes at oil refineries 30-40% of the gas stations have shortage of at least one type of gasoline — Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes announced last week that all regional trains and buses were free this past weekend. We though about taking our bikes […]
We briefly visited the French capital this past weekend to leave our passport applications at the consulate. The Paris consulate is the only place to for the Finnish expats to apply for a passport in France, and it’s been made extremely expensive compared to applying for the passport in Finland; […]
Those who know wines, especially French wines, likely are familiar with the wine growing regions such as Bourgogne, Côtes-du-Rhône, or Loire valley, but may not know that grapes are grown and wine produced also here in the Alps in Savoie and Isère departments. The nearest vineyards are less than half […]
After a very short morning run in Pont-Saint-Esprit we packed ourselves in the car and started driving to Coux. On our way we stopped to visit the small village of Saint-Thomé in Ardèche. Climbing the steep trail to the village located on the top of the hill gave us a […]
From Aurillac to Pont-Saint-Esprit After we had already extended our stay in Aurilliac by two days, if was time to move on and start driving home — kind of. We had booked the first two nights in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small town by the river Rhône in the department of Gard. […]
On this hike (13.4K in 3h 30mins, D+/D- 360m) we expected a different scenery since it was going to be at the lower altitude by the lake, far from the mountains. Actually this hike almost did not happen at all; as soon as we reached our car and started driving […]