Day 5: Rain and Castles

As I was woken up by a serious hail storm, my thoughts were directed to poor Justin who had gone on a road bike ride early that morning.  He came home totally soaked and freezing cold with his hair shaped like the inside of his helmet.  He took a super hot shower and got into some comfy clothes.  We spent the next couple hours deciding if we should do laundry or go see castles and finally decided to see the castles just after I put the baby down to sleep.  So we packed everyone in the car and went to visit two antique castles/towns.  The first one was called Le Mont du Dauphine, which was really old and in a very well preserved state, but was more like a historical ruin.  The kids got to play with some other French kids in a park and we wandered around the town looking at the cemetery, the church and taking photos of the beautiful mountain views from up on top where it was built.  Strangely enough, the air smelled exactly like Utah air, whether it was because of the scrub oak or the slightly deserty vegetation or pine trees, it smelled exactly like Utah for some reason.  Looking in one direction the mountains looked like they could be part of the Wasatch mountain range, however instead of turning to find not much in all the other directions, there were giant jagged mountains and cliffs surrounding the entire place.  We couldn’t get enough photos of the hundreds of waterfalls coming off the glaciers high up the mountainsides.  The views are really spectacular and I can’t even explain how majestic they are. 

Then we headed over to another town called …….with an antique part of the city.  This place was so much more inhabited than the first place.  The main street had wonderful little antique shops and modern stores with restaurants and creperies with what looked like apartments over the top.  The town had been kept in pristine condition but looked like a legitimate midaeval town.  It was quite charming.  We ate some crepes and walked around town until it got dark and then headed home.  It was a pretty amazing day seeing things I have never seen before.