La Rosiere and Italy

2: la Rosière and...Italy?

Last week was relatively uneventful. I took some more time to find my way around town and then started to venture to new new areas with a friend who works with me. On Saturday Jan 18th, we hopped into my Renault Megane (aka The Migraine) and started out for the site of the 1992 Winter Olympics, Albertville, and beyond.

The plan for the day seemed simple enough: visit Mont Blanc, Switzerland, Mont Blanc tunnel to Italy and return to Grenoble for a fine bouteille (pronounced boo-tay) of Côtes du Rhone vin rouge (va roozh). I came to France prepared for my travels with Michelin maps and a guide book that covers the area in great detail, perhaps too much detail. All was going smoothly for the first 30 minutes but, as we departed Albertville, for what we believed to be Mt Blanc, we soon discovered that we were instead headed for Moûtiers and Val d'Isére. But we continued onward since this minor change in plan meant only that we had inadvertently reversed the course of our trip.

The magnificent French Alps were dazzling in the brilliant sunshine, a stark contrast to the foggy, cloudy skies we left behind in Grenoble. We passed through the town of Moûtiers , then Bourg St Maurice, and headed upward toward the pass of Col du Petit St Bernard and the Italian border. As we entered the ski resort of La Rosière, at the pass altitude of 1850 meters, we suddenly lost our way; the signs for Italie had vanished.

No fear, we parked the Migraine and then parked ourselves on the patio of a bar overlooking the valley of the Isére river, and enjoyed a fine French brew, a Krönenbourg 1664. A visit to the tourist office (Maison de Tourisme) quickly enlightened us; the pass to Italie was closed... until June! Daaa, of course. Anyone who has ever looked at a Michelin map of Europe will agree that there is nothing more that Michelin could possibly squeeze onto the map. Unfortunately, the one piece of info that is apparently absent is information indicating that the road is "Closed in Winter", key information on all US maps.

By the way, the soap dispenser at the Maison de Tourisme was really unique. See the photo.

After a brief stop in Moûtiers, the town where my friend Jim worked for six months for the '92 Olympics, we returned, as we had come, to Grenoble. We had been to the valley where Grenoble's Isére river originates and had a chance to enjoy a beer on the French-Italian border, even though we did not "officially" enter Italy. In fact, we probably stopped a kilometer short of Italy, and for good cause: A Krönenbourg 1664.