The Sound of Music goes: brrrrrrr! 1-3 Decembre 2006

The Alps are the mountains between Italy and the rest of Europe. They are the hotspot come the cold weather for all sorts of people who like to take a break from walking, because for five or six months a year, the Alps are invaded by skiers. One of the popular destinations is the ancient city of Briancon, sitting astride three important valleys near Italy, enjoying the view from the highest point for a city in Europe. We went there for a weekend, to help some friends warm up their house in preperation for their season as ski instructors.















We drove up with our friend Julie, and stayed in the house of Raphael, who has the biggest collection of novelty hats and 3/4-empty bottles of spirits of anyone we know. We arrived just in time for the house-warming, which was lucky because they couldn't get the heating working.















The next day, we explored a little. It wasn't snowing, but we found that it was quite picturesque nevertheless.






























We found a river made of melted snow!















Then Sam put his hand in, which wiped the smile off his face!

Then we were given the official Raphael Visitors Have Come Over Tour of the old part of Briancon, which is an ENORMOUS fort, on top of a mountain, which is full of shops and restaurants.















Obviously, it's been a point of great dispute (hence the massive fortifications) and I guess the city just got sick of arguments all the time. So the local warlord decided to put an end to one object of argument and installed sundials EVERYwhere. In a place where it snows half the year.














Here's the edge of the old city. The only old part that is outside the big old cold walls is the church.















We stayed for two nights, and eventually drove back down the mountain back to Aix, but as a memento we took this photo to show you on a real scale the height difference between some of the highest mountains in Europe and Sam.