Day 10: A Day in the Life of a Frenchie

Today we basically did what I think a French Alps Family does on a lazy day, and we know they have many.  In the morning we went to the giant Saturday market that filled the entire street of our cute little town of Bourge D’Oisans and bought a bunch of fruit, three delicious sausages and bread for our picnic.  Justin had gone on a nice little ride earlier that morning and found the most perfect spot for a picnic so we planned out our lunch.  We also spent a lot of time at the loveliest toy booth.  The man was selling toys that he had made himself and they were really unique and beautiful.  Henry was obsessed with the crossbow suction cup stick shooter and we told him that it was too expensive, but guess what we got him for Christmas? haha.  I played with it the other night and I have to admit that I would love to have one too.  So fun.  Anyway, so after sneakily buying some things for the kids we left for the mountains and found our perfect picnic spot on the grass overlooking a giant gorge and looking up at the glacier covered mountains.  The spot was ideal and so picturesque.  The ground was dotted with little crocus looking purple flowers and the food was spectacular.  Why, oh why can't we find food like this in America at every street corner? The most delightful part was the pastries we ate.  They were so delicate and beautiful and the flavors were to die for.  Blueberries and cream with crusty layers of dough and chocolate mousse and a blueberry tart with tiny wild blueberries all over the top.  Yum, yum.  I think I may go back to French pastry school when I'm older.  

Henry found some nice kids to play with and had a blast running around with them and of course was doing things that little French kids aren't allowed to do, like climbing trees and getting too close to the edge, so he was constantly getting reproved by their parents, but we Americans let our kids live!  Then after that we took a little hike down to a gorgeous waterfall that was coming from a river made of glacier runoff and as you can guess was extremely cold, like one degree from turning to ice itself.  So we did what one would naturally do and went swimming....French style.  I know only about one person will actually read all of these posts so I'll just say that skinny dipping in glacier water was so liberating and breathtaking...literally.  Like, I couldn't breathe. After finally taking breaths all we could do was scream at the top of our lungs.  haha.  We even got Henry and Bea to come in with us.  Bea actually had her swimsuit on, as usual, but Henry went in sans clothes with us and dunked his entire body.  Woo hoo! What a trooper.  I think it was so fun that my kids didn't think it was strange that we were taking all our clothes off to swim in a freezing cold river.  haha.  Five minutes after we got dressed we saw that a family was up on the bridge looking over at us and we wondered if they saw anything.  Ooh, la la.  Well, it's not like they don't see that at beaches all over the place in France so I doubt they were offended.  This moment was probably one of the craziest and most fun of the entire trip. 

On Justin's ride he also discovered this tiny little town on the mountain that was famous for all it's art and craftsmen so we headed up there and found one of the most charming little streets I have ever seen with stores and unique arts and crafts. We went into a leather store, kitchen store, and the best one of all, a toy store.  As soon as I walked in I wanted everything I saw.  There were little framed windows with teeny tiny little rooms inside decorated with the tiniest little furniture.  Then they had really unique little wooden toys, all of which were too large to fit in our two pieces of luggage.  There were French dolls and cute jewelry and little spots to put lost teeth in.  I could have spent a thousand dollars there.  I reminded Justin that Bea's Birthday was coming up so we settled on a small red polka-dot tea set  in a picnic basket and a butterfly catcher.  After we were done we ran back up to the car where Lucy was trying to corral the kids and I brought them back down to the store to show them how cute everything was.  I told them not to touch anything because even though it was a toy store, from past experience I knew they wouldn't even let kids touch toys.  They were really good in there, which surprised me, but as soon as we were about to leave Clementine touched a little wooden toy and the owner almost had a freak out.  Seriously? She didn't even throw it on the ground or anything!  

Then, sadly we had to return home early because we had to clean our own rental home and the instructions stated that if it wasn't perfectly clean we would have to pay 80 Euro per half hour of cleaning lady, so we spent the entire night cleaning while the kids slept and then woke up at the crack of dawn to finish cleaning.  Thankfully, that was the only place that made us clean up after ourselves.  No wonder it was so cheap!