High Adventure at the Bastille

When we first arrived in Grenoble, Ella and Katy spied the 'Acrobastille' - and adventure activity around the walls of the Bastille castle above our flat. But, like many of the outdoor activities, the Acrobastille was closed for the winter, and we have been gazing at it longingly every time we pass the Bastille for the last 3 months. Finally our patience has paid off - it re-opened yesterday, and so off we went. Wanting to conserve our energy for the activities, we caught the baubles (cable car) up to the top of the Bastille. Our timing, though, was poor - as we discovered the Acrobastille office had just closed for a one hour lunch break. Lazing around in the sun waiting tested the girls patience to the limit.

Finally, we bought our tickets. A variety of activities were on offer, but are restrictions applied. Unfortunately this meant that Katy was too young and small for the large ropes course. Instead, the girls started with Mission Bastille. The objective was to complete a challenge or solve a problem that unlocked the door to the next room. We stood outside watching their progress thanks to a series of cameras. Carefully avoiding stepping on the crocodiles the girls went only to retrace their steps a few times. Looking like they were stuck, Andy disappeared inside to help them. Turns out that they had crossed the room successfully, pushed the button but the door wouldn't open! The simple explanation - they were trying to pull the door when they should have pushed it! Andy was now committed to continuing on with them although apparently he was a bit hopeless setting off lasers (his bum was too big) and generally finding the tight spaces a challenge! Eventually the three successfully emerged.

 

The next activity was the Speleobox described as a real caving simulator offering 120m of tunnel in the dark. A one way route that had the girls twisting and contorting themselves in all different positions as they negotiated the various obstacles all in the dark. As you can see they found this fun too!

 

Next the ropes course. I followed Katy on the La galerie des sorcières (Gallery of the Witches), a rope course designed for the little ones. It is set within two arches of the Bastille and finished with a small zip line. It was all over before the others had started. Katy was pretty disappointed that the course was so easy and that she wasn't able to join the others on the much more exciting course. Ah c'est la vie Katy.

 

 

Meanwhile, Ella and Andy signed up the for the Acrobatic Course described as

• The Great Divide - Discover the fort on a route between ziplines, walkways and thwarting the pitfalls of different balance games.
• Airbastille - Two 300m zip lines have you flying over the glacier of the Bastille while enjoying panoramic views
• Via Acrobatica - An aerial journey that takes you along the wall of the fort 20+m above the ground.

Katy and I watched and encouraged them from below! The course scaled the side of the building before numerous crossings of the moat including a zip line or two! Unfortunately Airbastille, the very long zip lines were on wind hold. They continued on to Via Acrobatica, hoping to come back to the Airbastille later.

  

 

 

As you can see, the ropes course involves lots of interesting manoeuvres as well as a dash of courage! Ella nearly didn't make it across the hanging boulders (see below photo) as she struggled to reach the monkey bars!

 

Just around the corner from the above photos and out of our sight, the course traversed the side wall of the fort with a 20+m drop. With each challenge becoming slightly more difficult, Ella reached her limit at station #16/19 where you held on to a trapeze that was secured onto the end of a long wooden pole which then swung in an 180º arc. Andy was secretly pleased they turned back as he said he was getting close to his limits too! Luckily they only had to retreat two stations to an escape route. An adventure never to be forgotten!

Hiking in our Backyard

We are now at the stage of counting weekends, as our time in France is coming to an end. There are two weekends left - this weekend we hung around Grenoble, as the following weekend we will be skiing.  The weather was beautiful coinciding nicely with the clocks changing for summertime. With Bill joining us, we caught the local bus alighting 10km north east of Grenoble at the Col de Vence. Our choices were to climb Mont Saint-Eynard, the imposing impressive 1300m peak to the east or skirt west along the ridge below Mt Rachais, all below 1000m. Not surprisingly the girls chose the latter.

 

The route climbed slowly for the first few kms with spectacular views over the Gresivaudan valley to the Belledonne ranges. There were lots of stops, interspersed with complaints, but generally it was a lovely walk.

 

 

We veer off to Mt Jalla and spend time there watching a bird of prey and a bunch of paragliders enjoying the mountain thermals.

 

Clambering down the small steep rutted path on the south side of Mont Jalla, we arrive at the Bastille, before winding our way down the hill to pick up a flute from the boulangerie for lunch.

Tour Eiffel

When we started planning our  detailed itinerary for Paris sometime last week, the first item on the list was to go up the Eiffel Tower. ‘Good idea,’ I said, ‘it looks like we can walk up to the second level via the stairs, and it won’t even cost us very much.’  Nope, not good enough, Dad ... Both of the younger ladies in the household assured me that one has not been to Paris unless one has actually travelled to the very top of the Eiffel Tower (only accessible by lift). By the time we looked, only a single time slot (9:30am on Wednesday) was available, so we snapped it up.

It wa a pretty inconvenient time for us. It meant checking out of our AirBnB super-early and, since the stingy owners wouldn’t let us leave any luggage there, we had to travel across Paris in peak hour to store our bags at Gare de Lyon. Then we had to travel back across Paris in even peaker hour to get to the tower on time. This latter journey was interesting to say the least. The train on the platform was too full to get on. So was the next one. In the end, we played sardines on the 3rd train, which was no less full than the first two. To be honest, if we weren’t near the door I’m not sure how we would have escaped from this train ... But, in the end, we got there, in time for a croissant and a coffee before we had to start queueing.

We have now come to accept that buying a ticket online before you get to your tourist site does not obviate the need to stand in queues. But, to our surprise, the queue at the entrance wasn’t too bad - only 15 minutes or so. We then discovered that was just the first security queue, there was another queue to get to a second security check which allowed us to then queue to hand over our ticket. The good news was that we were then allowed to queue for the first lift to the second floor, which led directly to the queue for the lift to the top ...

The lift itself was kind of interesting — first it travelled at an oblique angle up one of the tower legs. Then it transitioned to vertical. There was some consternation about the safety of this contraption (to me it felt several orders of magnitude safer than the roller coaster we took on Sunday), but we all made it to the top without misadventure. Of course, the view is pretty decent ...

... we took a few obligatory selfies on the top ...

... and eventually made our way down.

Once we emerged, we had the best part of 3 hours to kill before our train. Not long enough to do anything particularly interesting, but long enough to get bored ... we elected for a walk around the city, catching occasional glimpses of our tower as we wandered along the Seine. We found an Australian coffee shop, are some crumpets, drank coffee and finally headed back to the TGV for our express ride back to Grenoble. A successful trip, and nice to be back in our little flat by the river.