Hi everyone!
We were all very sore and tired the day after we went skiing so we decided to take it easy and do some shopping and sightseeing in a town near Gap called Briançon. We took an hour long train ride to get there and it was so beautiful! The whole ride was at the base of the mountains with beautiful lakes and pastures with farm animals. It looked like something straight out of a movie. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any good pictures from the train because of the window glare, but don’t worry I got some good ones in the town. If you ever find yourself in Europe and want to take some train rides with beautiful sights, check out this list of the best ones.
Once we got to town we walked around a bit and decided to check out some old war forts that were up on the mountain. It was about a 30 minute walk up a very steep road, which didn’t feel very good especially since I was so sore from skiing. But after we got up there, I realized it was worth it. I wish I could have learned some history about the forts and what war they were used in but it was mostly turned into a touristy area with shopping, so there wasn’t much focus on the history side. Other than that, I really enjoyed checking them out. The view was beautiful! You could see the whole town underneath and the mountains all around.
After we got back I did some research on the forts themselves to learn more about the history. If you are a history enthusiast you can read about them here.
Up in the fort was a tiny old town that was full of shops and restaurants. It was clear that the town was very old, it had cobblestone roads with a drainage indent in the middle. The architecture appeared very old as well, with some very fancy wooden doors. We did some shopping around, my favorite shop was a classic French soap shop, where I found this really cool natural deodorant (my only souvenir from France, weird I know). I won’t go into too many personal details about my experience with deodorant, but let me tell you this one works. You can get a similar one here.
When we were tired of shopping, we had lunch in an old looking restaurant. There were some swords and pieces armor on the walls, and the owners said that some were real and some were fake. The biggest sign of its age was discovered when my mom and I went to the restroom. There was a very real skeleton being used as decoration near the bathrooms! That’s crazy! Who knows how old it was. At first I didn’t think it was real, but my mom told me to look at the teeth, which are a good indicator to see if a skeleton is real. That is pretty weird decoration for the bathroom if you ask me.
After a long day of shopping and exploring, we went back home and started getting ready to travel to Marseilles the the next day for our last day in France.
See you all next week!