Day 8 – June 23, 2019

Paris, Grenoble

We left Paris early this Sunday morning. We waved goodbye to the good little cat that sat across from our window at the AirBnb and left the neighborhood behind. We walked to the nearby Gare de Lyon to find our train. It was fairly easy, we found it and settled in for the three hour ride.

We arrived in Grenoble at roughly 12:41 pm. In the station we ran into Ruby, a girl I knew from school. We walked together to the McDonald’s where we were meeting Miranda, the contact for our program. I discovered that my family was not arriving until 6pm that day because they had been vacationing in the south of France.

They arrived a little earlier than expected. We grabbed my bags, loaded them in the car and zipped down the street to their apartment. I have never lived in an apartment before, but I had seen the ones my friends occupied at home. Compared to those, this home was like a palace. A kitchen, formal dining room, five bedrooms, a salon, two full baths, and a spare room. Wow! I got a bedroom to myself with a connected washroom and toilette. Down the hall the shower and bathtub were mine too. Luxury!

I was happy to discover that while other families were full of young children, there were none in mine. Only Gilbert and Janine. We ate dinner the first night around 8 pm with their two adult children who had come to visit from Paris. There was a fresh salade with vinegar, a tomato with cooked beef, and riz with butter. It was delicious. I was excited to learn that Gilbert considers himself a lover of cooking. For dessert we had small fruit cups, somehow more delicious than those in the US.