Some Extra Trip Pics

A friend asked me to post a few more photos from the trip.

The clock tower in Anduze. Anduze is also known as The Gateway to the Cevennes. It is about 22 miles from St Roman. The restaurant, La Place, has incredible pizza and salads. I think it's the best food in town.

Looking for a place to pee on the Col de Galibier.

A view of the high French Alps.

A street in Turin at dusk. I wish we had kept walking another 1/2 mile because we would have then found ourselves in the heart of old Torino. Which from the pictures I've seen is spectacular. We unfortunately only saw the more industrial parts of the city. Too bad. I need to go back. Just around the corner is a great restaurant we found called Mina's. The special of the day was fresh mushrooms grilled, fried, and raw with a little olive oil. That was proceeded by a small plate of Taglietelle with a light tomato sauce and washed down with a very nice local red wine. A very nice, hic, wine. I've never had the Piedmontese cuisine and wine before and was very impressed.

The Fiat office building at left. The old factory at right. I've had four Fiats and loved them. Maybe because I'm half Italian or I'm a fool.
The bank and post office in Wallgau, Germany with our rented turbo diesel Renault in the center of pic. I could go 750 miles on a tank of gas, averaging about 40 miles per gallon. Because Americans have better technology in our vehicles here, I get 21 mph and can get 400 miles on a tank with my personal car in Arizona. Hmmmmm. The cable going to the top of the Aiguille de Midi at Chamonix, France.
A couple of last thoughts about the trip. I did not have one bad meal the entire trip. This was a first. In every restaurant or cafe, the food was excellent. The weakest meal was in Oberaudorf, but it would still rate as four star quality here. Every beer and bottle of wine was top notch, too. This was a first for me. I usually have one or two food disasters in France each time I go there. These are the meals where the service or the food are not even up to Denny's standards of presentation, taste, and hospitality. And, though I groused about the Germans in Wallgau, in retrospect it could have just been an off night for the owner in combination with a barrage of flash photography from Arlette. I would go back to the Hotel Post in a heart beat.

Although the American style of fast food has invaded the shores of Europe and one finds McDo's, Burger King, the Colonel with his chicken, and awful cafeterias, there are plenty of smaller places where the food is top notch, the service is excellent, and the prices very reasonable. I love eating in small villages. We ate lunch in La Grave, a small French Alpen village, and spent quite a bit of time talking with the server would had lived her entire life in this one small village. We were not treated as customers but as old family who just stopped by for a quick visit. (The restaurant is La Meijette in La Grave. Order the Tartiflette). Wow, now I'm hungry. Time to call Papa John's Pizza.....yeah...right..