Allons enfants de la patrie ...

High on a hill above Grenoble sits The Bastille, as shown at right. It's not "The Bastille" as in the "Storming thereof" that kicked off the French Revolution, but it is 'a' bastille, nevertheless.

A bastille is a kind of fortification that is heavily protected via thick walls, lots of cannons and other bits of equipment used to quell invaders. In the case of Grenoble, the Bastille occupies a prominent point on a hillside that gives a full view of the entire valley. Consequently, invaders would be hard-pressed to take the place by storm. Oh, and it also did double-duty as a prison. A very nasty prison. Being sent away really meant something in those days. No parole-boards to soft-soap your sentence.

A trip to the Bastille is a challenge for some. It's a hefty hike up the hillside that can be accomplished via a switchback trail. This is for the truly energetic. For the sluggish, like me, the trip takes only about five minutes. Since the 1930s a little aerial tramway, with futuristic looking plexiglass cars ride up the slope on a cable. That's the easy way to do it. It's not for the pronouncedly acraphobic, however, I might suggest. Since I am only mildly acraphobic, I was able to accomplish the trip without once wetting my pants.

Once up there the vista is magnificent in all directions. At least it would have been if we had been able to see it other that through an LA-type haze. Grenoble sucks in all the air pollution from major industrial centres like Lyon and Marseille, and the atmospheric crud backs up against the Alps and just sits there. They say there are clear days, but we didn't have one of them. Oh well. It was still cool.

We explored the battlements and the passageways and the tunnels dug into the hillside. According to historical record the place was actively involved in La Revolution, and the guillotine did its dirty duty with much regularity. I had a sort of Bart Simpson thought that maybe they should still carry out guillotinings for the sake of the tourists, but I guess the UN Human Rights Commission would have something to say about that.

Anyway, we tramped the trails and checked out the scary dungeons and passageways of a place that made Alcatraz look like a day-camp -- and then we had lunch. We found a lovely restaurant sitting on a terrace on a bright, warm day, and looking down at the city at the foot of the Alps. Wendy and I savored the fine French cuisine and simply thought, life has been much worse than this at times in our lives, so this is a moment to be cherished. And it was. And is.

As a further bonus, there's no tipping in French restaurants. How very civilized.